The threads and pictures of Marty and Ferry's shiny engine builds have got me slightly jealous, so I thought I'd share my latest build.
Not an engine, but a precursor- my new workshop!
The barn where I am at the moment is great, but

1. It's not mine
2. I have to drive there
3. The friend who lets me use the barn is probably getting fed up with me spreading my stuff all over the place
4. Its a bugger keeping everything clean and me warm in winter
   so having a small mountain of earth up the side of the house it seems to make perfect sense to move that mountain and replace it with a workshop.
   
   Today, the fun begins- the groundworks
   Have to move this:
   
   To here:
   
   Using these:
   
   In theory, should have the mountain moved today. Hopefully the bits I don't want to move will stay where they are until I can get the raft and retaining walls poured
   Fingers crossed!

Nice project!

Are you going to build a pit in the floor?

I'm thinking about it Spiggy, but we're already hitting shillet (decomposed granite) which forms the base of everything here on Dartmoor, so I fear it'll require major mining plant to dig the required hole rather than the mini-digger.
Just have to be content with a 2 post lift if I can persuade it to work after a long hibernation

SpiggyTopes wrote:

Nice project!

Are you going to build a pit in the floor?

Looks good! That will be a members competition then for Marty's workshop ;)

Don't tell me- the prize is....
Winner gets to host next Summer Camp :)
Current one looks like this. More space than the new one will have, but more draughty too!

I have no doubt the OB's workshop will probably be far more insulates and kitted out than mine! And it won't have 2 RR's already in it!!

Though I have been toying with the idea of running in some air line around the walls with plug in ports for tools, a bit closer to where you actually need it, rather than having to get to the compressor all the time....

At that "Oh sh!t, what have I done stage now..
Her to me:
"What the feck have you done to the bottom lawn?!"

Me to her:
"That's nothing, you want to see the incomprehensibly large hole I've dug round the back"

Bahaha, excellent!

Mud, glorious mud ....

Looks more like shale to me, you sure you can't start up your own small scale fracking plant and run your heating from it?

The monsoon that obviously happened last night while I was sleeping did not do the lawn any favours. Another couple of runs with dumper this morning and it's now a scale replica of the Western Front trench system in WW1 :(
I'll put a pic up when I stop sobbing (with fear about what other half will do to me when she gets home)
You're right Gilbertd- shillett is a local term for shale. Maybe it's not water the lawn is saturated with. It's oil squeezed from the shale? I'll go outside with a match...

Aftermath of the battle. The Western Front is quiet. No birds sing.

Good Lord :)

You may as well go all in and make a driveway to the shed!
More seriously, are you certain that bank is stable? It would be a sad moment if you woke up and found it had arrived in your new shed after a heavy night of rain....

It'll be stable after I've laid the rebar mesh, built the shuttering and pumped many cubic metres of cement into it :)
The shale is stable, the topsoil not very, as it stands at the moment

Morat wrote:

More seriously, are you certain that bank is stable? It would be a sad moment if you woke up and found it had arrived in your new shed after a heavy night of rain....

Another couple of days have passed with no significant progress to report, apart from going to dig out the ginger car and finding that the battery had finally given up the ghost so, thanks to Battery Megastore a nice new one is now sitting in a box ready to go in when it stops raining for long enough.
Oh yes, that and the fact that apparently I now have to procure and re-turf the Somme before I'm allowed to continue construction! The prime stakeholder is wise to my "of course I'll tidy it up when I've finished" approach and won't fall for that again!

Wrong time of year for laying turf, surely? ;)

Hah! Tried that one but she says "according to the Royal Horticultural Society",
When to lay turf. Turf is best laid in mid-autumn, but can be laid any time between mid-autumn and late winter whenever the soil is not too wet or frosty.
So apart from the not too wet criteria, it's ideal, unfortunately :(

Arse, done her research then. The battle appears to be taking a civil turn.

In unrelated ramblings, my first car was a first gen Matiz! Mine was gold, an SE Plus top of the range edition! 800cc and three cylinders of pure power.

The best bit was, when the air conditioning worked (for the upcoming reason, it was never used and thus leaked), if you turned it on while coasting, the drag from the compressor made the car slow down quite abruptly and you'd lurch forward in your seat! If you actually ever managed to be going at a decent speed, you could almost use it as an emergency brake... you probably needed a cliff to get to any decent speed, mind you.

How about a compromise of seeding it? I reckon that grass would mostly grow back through the mud anyway. It's resiliant stuff.

That one's first gen SE (I think) as well. It's an amazing little car, for the £350 that I paid for it with full MOT, 50k miles. Perfect for my daughters 1st car.
Best thing about it is the engine note. With 800cc and 3 cylinders it sounds exactly like a Triumph Trident or Laverda Jota (70's 3 cylinder motorbikes). Floor it and close my eyes and relive my youth.