Came here to say pretty much the same thing. I run a little hobby site about fixing lawnmowers and I just crossed 300 comments last month. Felt exactly like you described, like what am I even counting here? I had this one comment where a guy described his mower dying on him mid-cut and it turned out to be a clogged fuel filter that I helped him talk through. That one conversation felt bigger than all the 'good info' replies combined. So yeah, those numbers are just kind of empty noise. The real stuff is the back and forth where someone actually gets their machine running again.

The line between crafting and fixing broken output gets blurry pretty fast, @brooket43 might just be a glutton for punishment at this point. That said, if you can't get a basic cat scene right after two days, the real waste might be staying with a tool that isn't built for what you need. Learning to bail early is just as valuable as learning to push through.

Keith from the bike shop down the street swears by a 50/50 mix and lets it sit for a week on the really nasty seized stuff. He says the acetone helps carry the ATF way deeper than it would go on its own, just gotta make sure to reapply every couple days so it doesn't dry out.

The groundsheet under the tent trick worked way better for me once I flipped the order. Cheap blue poly tarp from Harbor Freight cut to size keeps the bottom dry better than anything.

Wait, so you're saying 3/4 inch actually worked better? I used to always pull out the tape measure and go a full inch because that's what my grandpa taught me, but after seeing this I tried it on my last project and man, not a single split. I was wrong about that for sure.