Monday, February 20, 2017

Wonderful Weather For a Weekend


Absolutely beautiful weekend. We've had record warmth and looks like it'll continue at least until Wednesday. Kind of a mixed blessing, however. It's so nice you want to get out and get things done but at the same time, it's so nice you want to blow off the honey-do list and just enjoy the weather. I compromised and did a little of both the last couple of days. I went to the gym Saturday morning, came home and worked in the shop a bit. I made the plate in the photo above to mount the shear on the new tool stand and I also fixed the "gooseneck" for one of the MIG welders at the college. 

I wanted to swap out the wire on one of the welding machines that's equipped with a push-pull arrangement. The contact tip was galled in place and it twisted off while I was trying to remove it. Never had that happen in all the years I've been working with MIG guns. Whoever put the tip in last had to notice that it was going in real hard but kept at it anyway. I drilled it out, chased the threads and installed a new tip with a bit of never-seize on it. The saving grace was the fact that the tip had a hole through it so I could run a drill down through it and it would be on center. 

About the time I was finishing up the plate and the MIG gun, a friend stopped by on her bicycle to see if I wanted to go for a ride. We put in about 11-12 miles, so with my time at the gym in the morning and the bike ride I got quite a bit of exercise on the day.



Sunday started off with Surly and one of the boys coming down for a little range session. Later I got the gutters cleaned out and did a couple of other piddly things around the shack and then dug out the parts to hook up the exhaust fan on my welding bench. My shop has a Gothic style arched roof/sides made from corrugated sheet. The box in the photo will get welded to the sheet metal on the outside with the louvered vent screwed to that. The fan is an exhaust fan like you would have in your bathroom and takes standard 4" vent pipe. I made this up years ago but never got around to hooking it up mostly because I never needed it. Now that I no longer do most of my welding at the school, the fan will come in handy to suck the welding fumes out as needed. The list of things to do to get my shop in order before I retire keeps getting shorter and shorter. I should have put my big screen in while I was out there working, however. I managed to get my first mosquito bite of the year. I don't know where the buggers were hiding but there was a bunch of them flying around out in the shop when I had the big doors opened up.

While the nice weather continues, I'll try to balance my project work with enjoying the weather. Hopefully, you'll be able to do the same.




4 comments:

Rich in Ky said...

Nice here in Ky yesterday, and today is gorgeous. Got the shop garage doors open, the floor is sweating like a sonofagun. Pulled my '01 jeep xj into a bay yesterday to replace rear brake shoes, and discovered a lil too much slop in the right rear axle. So bearings and seals on order. Needed to flush the rear end out anyway. Always a project. :-)

Shop Teacher Bob said...

Seems like the nice weather always makes the work go better, though. It's a bit overcast this morning but supposed to be in the 70's tomorrow for another day of record breaking temps.

How's the truck project coming along?

Rich in Ky said...

It's coming along. I spent a little time with her yesterday evening. Got the bed welded back up where they hacked into it to gain access to the fuel pumps. Hope to have the bed ready to put back on in a few weeks.

My five year old grandson is staying with us this weekend, and he has instructed me NOT to work on the truck (named Blackie) until he comes down, which puts a smile on my face. He is becoming interested in tool use, and will pull tools from drawers and ask what each one is used for. Which puts me right back to that age when I did the same thing with all the stuff in my Dad's wooden machinist toolbox (parallels, edge finders, calipers, mics and such) and garage toolboxes.

Guess what I'm saying is that the Blackie project will take a while, but for a good reason. :-)

Shop Teacher Bob said...

Sounds like one of the best possible reasons!