The "Cone of Silence".....

Ok, not EXACTLY silence.....

It was cold and windy this morning, so I decided to work on the bottom cone of my bin I will use for chicken feed. This is what it looked like when I got it (for free!):



I have since removed the "slap feeder" from the bottom, and have cut the "cone" off of it, and have welded it to the collar at the bottom of the feeder. I also had to unbolt all of the legs so I could get the feeder off. There will be a little bit of modification to the legs to get them to fit around the cone, but that is the next step....

There were a couple of places where it had rusted through, so I needed to patch it. I used some metal flashing and screwed it onto the inside. I also added silicone caulking under and over the patch just for good measure.



I also added some support straps to the inside. I made these from 1 1/2" wide x 3/16" flat strap. The round collar already had holes drilled in it, so I figured that, since I needed to fill the holes anyway, I might as well add support. I thought about putting them on the outside, but there is a "lip" there, so the brackets wouldn't fit very well.
Either way, they will help support the cone.



Since I was inside the barn, and the wind was from the north, it was actually nice in out of the wind. As the sun moved enough to where it was coming in the front door, the cats decided to take a snooze on a tarp. I guess it was a nice warm place, because four of them decided to pile up for their nap.



As it turned out, it wasn't a bad day for a nap.....