Monday, August 19, 2013

Jeepers, Creepers


I decided to build myself a new creeper a while back. I had a nice wooden one that I had bought from Montgomery Wards some time, probably late 60's - early 70's. Like Sears and J.C. Penneys, "Monkey Wards" had their own brand of tools - Powr-Kraft - that you could order in from the catalog store downtown. I had it for years and when I moved to my present location I didn't have any place with decent concrete so I took the creeper to school and it disappeared. I bought a plastic one from a yard sale to replace the wooden one and eventually the wheels quit turning and got flat spotted. I replaced that one with a cheapie from Harbor Freight and some knucklehead decided to try skateboarding with it and that took care of that. Since I'm no longer going to be sharing my creeper with the high school boys I figured I'd make a new one like I used to have.

The top photo shows the donor pallet that I started with courtesy of Surly. I used the Sawzall to cut the nails in half and then punched the remnants out of the slats with a nail set. The pallets are usually assembled with spiral nails spit out of a nail gun and they're just about impossible to take apart without destroying unless you saw them apart. So after salvaging the wood I wanted,  I ripped the slats to width on the table saw and then put the necessary rabbets in with the router. I also rounded the top edges of the long side stringers with the router.


Here's the frame after the glue-up. I sanded the rough surface on the top sides of the boards with the belt sander - a planer would've been nice.  You can see the casters in the background. The old creepers used to have the metal wheels that were angled. This one will have the cheapie Harbor Freight casters. I think they were a buck a piece on sale. They're 2" diameter and a fairly hard rubber. They should roll well on the smooth concrete floor of the new barn.


Here's a shot of the creeper after I cut the plywood for the bottom panel but prior to varnishing everything. I put a coat of spar varnish on it and I'll check it out this morning and decide if I should put two coats on or not. I bought some #10 screws the other day for bolting on the casters but they're just a little short so I need to return them and get some one size longer. If it rolls around nicely on the floor, I'll make up a headrest for it.

I also got started on my first batch of wine yesterday. The fixins are in the plastic bucket and awaiting the yeast packet that I'll add this afternoon. According to the instructions, the must stays in the plastic bucket for just a couple of days and then it gets siphoned off into the one gallon glass bottle for fermentation. That process gets repeated once again after the specific gravity reaches a certain point and then it can be bottled. I need to get some more of the one gallon bottles and airlocks and then I can have peaches, apples and persimmons all perking along at the same time. It only took about an hour to pick, clean and cut the peaches up to prepare the must. The remaining steps are not very time consuming either, so I may have made the right decision to become a vintner. Of course that's assuming the stuff will be drinkable when the time comes. I'm guessing the answer will come some time about February.

I start school again this week. It was a rather short vacation but I can't really complain about this job. Looks like the temperatures are going to go up this week, glad I got some of the outside stuff done. Now that I'll have a creeper, maybe I'll get back to work on the VW. Lots to do still but working in the woodshop on the creeper was fun. 

Have a good week.



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