When faced with a thousand projects, where do you start? With a fun one, of course. I want to get a speed bag hung up around the house here so I needed to cut a couple of identical circles out of the piece of 3/4" particle board I bought a couple of weeks back. With my woodworking set up, it seemed the router was the best bet. I made up the circle cutting gizmo to hold hold the router and used it to scribe the circles and route the edge of the particle board nice and round. I rough cut them with a saber saw first staying about an 1/8" proud of the line. Finished with two identical circles and a tool for the next time I need to do something similar. Hard to beat that. Now that I've got the platform boards cut I need to pick up a couple of 2x4's so I can get the job finished up. I swung by the high school and picked up the swivel that was on the platform I had in the Weld Shoppe. Dave said he had an identical one at home so he unscrewed my old one and sent me on my way. I also need to pick up a little hardware for the double end bag so I can get that installed. I was going to put it downstairs but decided up on top would be better.
We got a surprise visit from a couple of my nephews over the weekend. The younger one is still planning a big bicycle ride I mentioned in a previous post. Seems as if there have been a few major changes, however. He has a couple of new people he's planning on riding with and the route has changed. He'll be starting in Vancouver, B.C. and heading southward until he hits San Diego. Two of the members will head for home at that point and he and the remaining rider will continue south on the Pan-American Highway. Sounds pretty damn ambitious to me - and a little scary. It's bad enough dealing with all the cars, dogs, people, weather and road hazards when you're close to civilization and there's no language barrier to overcome. Not so sure I'd try that trip. He's supposed to head out in about 6 weeks. He'll be posting to Facebook and a blog as he travels. Hope all works out as planned. Or at least works out even if it's not the way it was planned. That's sometimes the best on big adventures.
Got some training on the new virtual welder at the college Monday. It's pretty cool. It will do stick, MIG and FCAW on a variety of joint types and positions. All of us old guys had a little trouble getting the helmet adjusted to our eyes. It'll take a little time to see what works best for us, glasses on/glasses off, reading glasses instead of bifocals, or utilize the "cheater lens" function built into the machine. I'm not sure yet how to best utilize the machine with my classes but I'll play around with it some more and see what comes to me. I was looking at the website and saw that there's a bend test function with it. You can weld up a Vee groove and then it will both a face and root coupon and print out a certificate of the results. That's pretty cool. I'm definitely going to have to come in early a few days and play around with it. In order to simulate a real welding environment, however, I might have to round up some bees to turn loose in the room when they're welding to simulate the welding sparks. Maybe just light up a big cigar, blow smoke in their face and flick the hot ashes on them to get the true welding experience.
And finally, woke up to more snow this morning. Won't it ever end?
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