Recent content by Gordon Bartlett

I love hunting divers on open water. Bluebills, redheads, and cans in particular. Given a decent marinade, and not over-cooked, they make GREAT table fare. In fact, we usually end up cooking a mix of divers and puddle ducks and find them indistinguishable from one another. Duck dinners are a big...

Nicely done. I like it. We see lots of goldeneyes on Lake St. Clair, but I have never seen a Barrow's in person, although I have occasionally heard rumors of guys having taken them

Hello BigB, If you're asking who the boat belonged to, I have no idea. But if you are asking what kind of boat it is, then I have your answer: That's a traditional Great Lakes sneak boat, used for open-water diver duck hunting. That one was built by Miley Smith, who built a ton of them. That...

I have no secret way to grease the swivel. On my trailers, the swivel is so crude that I hesitate to even call it a "bearing". I think it is just a large rivet that passes through a hole in the caster's mounting plate. It is not peened down tightly, so the caster is free to rotate. I just...

This might sound a little too simple, but I have found that routinely greasing the thrust bearing (or what passes for one) at the bottom of the telescopic leg keeps it swivelling pretty well.

Or maybe a seat for operating a bracket-mounted outboard motor. When running a motor on mine, I sit on my shooting box, which I place right about where that seat is. Any evidence of a bracket having been clamped across the gunwales?

Back in the early 1980's I had a friend who was living in Ohio. He worked with a couple of guys who claimed to do pretty well on puddle ducks from a layout boat. I think they were hunting somewhere near Sandusky Bay. If I'm remembering the story correctly, they were using strictly puddle duck...

I did that for a few years back in the late '70's or early '80's. I have not heard from them since then.

I have a different approach altogether, depending upon what kind of hunting I'll be doing: Layout hunting -- number of decoys that will fit comfortably on 10 mother lines. Somewhere around 100. Sneak hunting -- number of decoys that will fit into the sneak boat. Usually around 5 1/2 dozen in...

It's not an uncommon requirement in machine control circuits. Look for "make-before-break" contact sets. I have used them in control relays, but I seem to recall they also offered them in pushbutton and selector switches as well. Allen Bradley stuff is really pricey, but it can had on eBay for...

Wonderful news Dani. Glad to hear it.

Eric, If you are going to fight the ticket, I would suggest sticking to the relevant legalities and avoid the emotional stuff. Anyone who watches the evening news has seen what police brutality looks like, yet even that often goes unaddressed, and this doesn't come close to that level of abuse...

Scott, Here's one more long-shot troubleshooting trick you can try. (the nice thing about troubleshooting tricks is they don't cost money) Try pulling the spark plug wires off one at a time. In other words, try running the motor on just the top cylinder, then just the bottom cylinder. Here's...

Again, probably not a fuel pump issue. Under normal circumstances, pumping the fuel line bulb pushes fuel past the fuel pump into the float bowl on the carburetor. When the bowl is full, the float rises and the float needle cuts off the intake of more fuel, preventing the bowl from overflowing...

Scott, I don't think it's your fuel pump because you said you tried running it while continuously pumping the in-line primer bulb. That bulb literally is a manually operated fuel pump. It's whole purpose is to pump gas to the carburetor when the regular fuel pump is not working (meaning when the...