Oil would foul injectors.
Power would drop.
Fuel consumption would rise.
Everything downstream would suffer.
He pulled the cylinder head on a Saturday in late October.
Then he measured the bores with Ansel’s telescoping gauges.
Cylinders one and three were four-thousandths over service limit.
Cylinder two was six-thousandths over.
That was enough.
He ordered oversized pistons and rings from Eau Claire.
Cost: $287.
While waiting, he cleaned the cylinder head, lapped the valves, and installed new valve-stem seals.
Cost: $41.
Two evenings.
When the pistons arrived, he spent three days on the installation.
The service manual sat open on the workbench.
An old John Deere publication Ansel had somehow collected years earlier, shelved between two volumes of a 1964 hydraulics handbook.
Gideon torqued the head bolts exactly in sequence.
No guessing.
No “close enough.”
A specification existed for a reason.
The hydraulics took longer.
When he opened the gear pump, he found scoring deep enough to catch a fingernail.
That told him the pump had spent years moving contaminated oil.
And contaminated oil did not stay inside the pump.
It traveled everywhere.
Lines.
Valves.
Reservoir.
Cylinder bores.
Gideon flushed the entire system.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
On the third flush, the oil came out clean enough that he could see printed letters through a sample jar.
Only then did he install the rebuilt pump from a hydraulic shop in Rice Lake.
$312.
He rebuilt the grapple cylinder with $68 worth of seals.
Replaced the electrical-tape hoses with properly cut and swaged lines.
$104.
Found a used rear tire at a salvage yard in Ladysmith.
$90.
Mounting cost another $35.
Filters.
Oil.
Hydraulic fluid.
Gaskets.
Thread sealant.
Brake cleaner.
Shop consumables.
Another $111 and change.
By the third week of January 1994, Gideon added the column.
Skidder: $1,100.
Transportation: $140.
Pistons and rings: $287.
Valve parts: $41.
Pump: $312.
Seal kits: $68.
Hydraulic hoses: $104.
Tire: $90.
Mounting: $35.
Consumables: about $111.
Total:
Approximately $2,288.
He stared at the number.
His worst-case estimate had been $5,800.
He had more than $3,500 of margin left between what he feared the rebuild might cost and what it actually had.
But the number mattered only if the machine worked.
So Gideon filled it with clean fluid.
Checked everything again.
Then started it.
The diesel came alive.
At first, nothing dramatic happened.
It simply ran.
Gideon let it warm.
Increased load gradually.
Watched temperature.
Listened.
The blue smoke at idle was nearly gone.
The engine settled into a smoother rhythm.
Then he operated the grapple.
It opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
No lazy delay.
No weak hesitation.
The rebuilt hydraulics moved with the authority the machine had probably possessed years earlier.
Gideon ran it for two hours inside and outside the bay.
No leaks.
No abnormal pressure loss.
No unusual noise.
A few days later, on a Wednesday morning, he drove the Deere out of the bay, down the county road to the edge of Radisson, turned around, and drove it back.
Only one man saw him.
Lambert Ingersoll.
Lambert worked the parts counter at the implement dealer on the south end of town.
He was outside drinking coffee when Gideon passed.
Lambert watched the 648 go one direction.
Then come back.
He went inside.
“The Voss kid got that Pelletier wreck running.”
The man at the next counter shrugged.
“I’ll believe it when I see it work.”
That was fair.
Gideon would have said the same thing.
Starting was not earning.
Northern Wisconsin timber was in a bad cycle in early 1994.
A major hardwood mill at Park Falls had shut down after a fire in 1992 and a dispute over rebuilding costs.
Two smaller mills remained in the region, but they could not absorb the same volume.
Logging crews slowed.
Some shut down.
Some sold machines.
Others parked equipment and waited.
Rates softened because mills had less competition for logs.
The Pelletier operation had been one of the casualties.
Their bankruptcy auction was why Gideon owned the Deere.
Most men in the timber business knew these cycles happened.
Mills closed.
Markets tightened.
Operators disappeared.
Then conditions changed.
Ansel’s thirty-one-year ledger documented several such cycles.
Gideon had read every one.
He also read the county newspaper.
One article in particular stayed in his notebook.
Four paragraphs.
The closed Park Falls facility had been purchased by a timber company based in Rhinelander.
Gideon cut out the story and taped it between two pages.
He studied the sale.
The building was still mostly intact.
Much of the equipment remained.
The purchase price, compared with old mill transactions in Ansel’s ledger, looked to Gideon more like a reopening purchase than a liquidation purchase.
That did not tell him when the mill would reopen.
One year?
Five?
Never?
He could not know.
But he believed one thing.
If the mill came back, logging volume would rise faster than machinery could return to service.
Crews that had sold machines would need time to replace them.
Machines that had sat unused would need repair.
For twelve or eighteen months, perhaps longer, contractors with working equipment and low debt could command better rates.
Ansel’s records showed the same pattern in 1971.
Again in 1979.
Gideon did not tell anyone at the café.
He did not make a speech at the co-op.
He worked.
His first meaningful contract came from a landowner near Draper named Everett Radke.
Twelve acres.
Select-cut hardwood.
Fourteen dollars per ton.
Gideon won the job partly because he bid two dollars below the competition.
He worked alone for six weeks.
Four hundred sixty tons.
Gross billing:
$6,440.
Fuel:
About $920.
Gideon recorded everything.
Not only money.
He recorded hours.
Ground conditions.
Travel distance.
Fuel consumption.
Hydraulic temperature.
Maintenance.
The job paid.
More importantly, Everett Radke liked the work.
Gideon did not tear up haul roads unnecessarily.
He did not smash residual trees with the grapple.
He did not scatter slash everywhere because cleaning it would cost another hour.
And when he told Everett he would arrive at seven, he arrived at seven.
That sounds small.
In contracting, it is not.
Everett told the owner of an adjacent forty about him.
That brought another job.
Then another.
By the end of 1994, Gideon had something more valuable than an auction bargain.
He had a reputation.
A narrow one.
But useful.
The young man with the old Deere showed up.
His machine ran.
His work was clean.
His bills matched what he said they would.