Extracteuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur!!! Say it with a french accent…it’s kinda fun.

'Extracteur' failure #1…aluminum plate too soft for my ferocious sledge hammering.

So…I carried the broken parts back across the yard. Everyone looked over at me curiously.

“Extracteur!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I yelled. They just wrinkled their foreheads and went back to whatever they were doing…I’m like a bad rash around …impossible to get rid of…

So next,

1. Make the washer out of a thick piece of steel.
2. Reinforce and re-weld the end plate.
3. Wait patiently for the new pieces to be made.

By Friday afternoon and I was again ready to try my beefed-up ‘extracteuuuuuuuuuuuuur’.

“Sa ne va pas marcher! (It’s not going to work)” Thierry, the mechanic, taunted.

“Extracteuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I yelled back.

After setting it all up, Taputu came over to help me. I held the new steel washer perfectly in the middle of the shaft log from inside Swell, while he slammed on the newly welded piece. But every time he hit it the washed just sucked down into the tube because the end of the tube was cut slightly diagonally.

My ‘extracteur’ had failed again.

But then I thought of something…the epoxy job on the tube that we’d just recently done! Surely the tube was firmly bonded there and no amount of pounding was going to break that adhesion. Maybe it was preventing my ‘extracteur’ from extracting! So on Friday afternoon, while the others drank beer and toasted to the weekend, I took a hack saw once again to the end of the tube and asked Taputu if I could borrow the grinder…I had little to celebrate. My leaky shaft log remained stuck in the hull and poor little Poe was sick…wouldn’t eat and couldn’t stand straight and unusually tired…

4. Tend my poor little sick baby bird

5. Cut diagonal end of tube flat with hack saw.

6. Grind off the recent epoxy job and chisel away all the new ‘filler’.

7. Wait for the rain to stop.