Taking Care of Business

 Busy day, yesterday. I got my grades posted in the morning and then went to the steel supplier.

One of several engine stands I've made over the years. This one was designed for motorcycle engines. There are several slots allowing to bolt most anything on there, and if the engine won't bolt up, make a couple more brackets. As it sits, it's set up for a Sprint. 

Since the stands were made with what I had on hand at the time, there's no standard design or sizing on the material. I've got a VW motor in the dump trailer that needs to get moved out of there. The yellow head in the above photo is for the VW but it fits in the stand that's holding the spare Slant-Six. I bought a short piece of schedule 40, 2-1/2" pipe yesterday and slipped it over the 2" pipe of the VW head and tacked it on so it would fit the bike engine stand. There's a stiffener on the back of the upright tube but I'm going to weld on a couple of braces down to the legs before I bolt up the VW engine to the stand. Probably give it a fresh coat of paint while I'm at it.

The piece of grating I use on top of the horses sags in the middle if it's not supported. Instead of laying it on top of a couple of pieces of flat stock like I've been doing, I welded on a couple of pieces of angle. Something I should have done quite a while ago.

I put up another shelf yesterday. I had some plywood that ended up here courtesy of the wife's sister. I ripped it down for a couple of the shelves to keep short pieces from falling through. I need to support the center of the empty shelf, but other than that, I'm hoping that's all I'm going to need.

I've got some errands to run and some chores to take care of today, but I'm pleased that Surly lit a fire under my ass to get going on this.

People Get Ready

Another oldie but a goodie. Now's a good time to get ready in all aspects of your life - " You need to get your mind right, Luke." 

I did a clean-up, paint-up on my little grill yesterday as a small part of my getting ready. It was looking pretty rough but it's almost ready to go back into service. The inside of the top has a nice coating of smoke and grease, and the outside coating of heat resistant paint needs some heat to cure. I'm going to load it up with some charcoal and bake the paint and melt some of the schmutz out of it. 

The students in the metal shop where I started my career used to make these. I liked the looks of them, so the instructor gave me the plan and I made myself one. It's light, durable and big enough to cook four big burgers at one time. I remember taking it to the bike races at Elkhart Lake one year. There was a couple of guys in their "ambivalance" parked next to us and they couldn't cook their breakfast due to a no open flame rule in effect. The little grill came to the rescue, we combined their grub and ours and we all ate like kings.  

One more bracket for steel storage in the big barn. This will be the last one for a while. I've got a bunch of small aluminum sheets and plates I need to get a home for as well. I've got a piece of aluminum diamond plate I'm going to put on a couple of blocks and then stack the pieces on the diamond plate either laying flat or leaning up against the wall.

I dug out my old Coleman camping stoves yesterday as well. I've got two of the two burners, and one single burner. The old two burners run on white gas or Coleman stove and lantern fuel. I've got a place in my teardrop trailer specifically for one of those, so I'll put one in there. The other two burner is going to go to my back-up location. I need to figure out if there's any issue with shelf life with the fuel, however. A tankful goes a long way. If I fill up the tank, that should be plenty for my 72 hour emergency plan as long as the fuel is stable. Since I've got at least two of most everything - whether I need it or not - I shouldn't have to buy anything besides some batteries and a mouse proof container. Since I'm off this week, it's a good time to get it done.

More Brackets & After Action Report

 

From Here

I got up off mine yesterday and made a couple of more brackets for the clean-up/organizational marathon. I got them painted after they cooled down a bit and they'll get installed today.

While I was waiting for the brackets to cool down so I could paint them, I decided to see if the point adjustment on the welder did anything, and boy did it! I brought the torch down towards the scrap piece and when it got to within about an 1-1/2" it jumped right across. Startled me in fact. The three short beads were mine. Not my finest work but I was fiddling with the controls a bit and the piece moved for the one on the left. More practice will be required, but it now works as advertised.

I've been reading some more things about the hurricane preparations - what worked, what didn't. One common theme is cash is king. With no electricity or internet, without cash you're not going to able to buy anything. And the time to get your cash is long before the storm's on the horizon. ATMs ran out of cash and banks were closed. Get a stash of cash and keep it in a safe place. 

Food, water and security are always mentioned, as are first aid kits, medicine, batteries, and physical conditioning. Radios were mentioned, regular battery-operated ones, as well as ones with weather alerts and shortwave bands. Also, ham radios were mentioned. Ham radios seem to always come into play whenever there's a big weather emergency. That's one of the reasons I got my ham license.

I'm going to be taking stock of my preps in the next few days and put together a kit I'll keep at a separate location. A few days food for the Missus and I, as well as some pet food. A stove, cooking utensils, flashlight, lighter, etc. Basically, everything we would need for a 72-hour outage except water - my secondary location is not heated. With my experience taking bicycle camping trips, I've got a pretty good idea what it takes for minimalist gear. The Missus won't be comfortable, but if the tornado blows the house down, at least we'll have something.   

High Frequency Adjustment

 

That's what the inside of an inverter welding machine looks like. I've read how they work, but I'm still not convinced all of that electronic mumbo-jumbo is necessary. The old transformer-rectifiers worked well and were pretty much fool proof. Also, are these things going to work in the event of an EMP event? Should I store it in a Faraday cage when I'm not using it? Anyway, I took the cover off so I could adjust the contact points on the high frequency generator. I'm hoping that makes starting the arc easier now when I weld aluminum. It was dinner time when I got the cover back on, so I'll try it out today and see how it goes. Going to pick up some steel as well.

Hose Job

 

I bought a hank of hose yesterday for the new welder. The TIG torch, ground and electrode leads are all pretty short. The welder is on wheels and I have an extension cord for it, with the longer argon hose I can roll the welder around and reach most anywhere I need to. I have longer leads for stick welding I can use, but right now I can barely reach the vise on the welding bench with the TIG torch. I should have specced a longer torch when I bought the machine, but the longer hose should do the trick. 

Thinking about the finish of the vintage trials bike - powdercoat or paint and what color. I'm leaning towards a green frame, which should look good with the alloy fenders and tank. The photo shows a Francis-Barnett Plover that came in Arden Green. To my color deficient eyeballs, looks like British Racing Green. I put in a search for British Racing Green and found there are several shades of British Racing Green. There's a real good article all about that here. I have a Plover like the one in the photo, but mine is blue. If it was green I might be able to find a spot on the bike somewhere that wasn't faded and get it matched up.

This is a '67 XKE I assume is British Racing Green. It shouldn't be too difficult to track the color name and code for that one. I'm planning on making the last part for the bike's shift linkage today. Shouldn't be much more in the way of fabrication left, so conceivably, I could get this one finished yet this year. I'm going to have eye surgery sometime after my class wraps up in December - be nice to have it done prior to that.

I hung up the latest bracket yesterday and loaded up some stock on it. I think at least one more set of brackets would be advisable, maybe two. I need to get some more angle before I can do that, however. I also need to make a couple of hangers for some wire and a gaggle of swingarms. Lots to do, but since I'm off next week I'm thinking about going camping for a couple of days. It's been a long time since I've had my little camper out.

 

Never Ending Clean-Up

 

Shop Teacher Bob doing my thing. The junk on the table is part of the crap that came out of a couple of the corners of the shop. We're still cleaning and organizing but there's been a lot of progress. The pile destined for the scrap yard keeps growing, anyway.

Another wall bracket for the big barn. I've been making all the brackets out of whatever material I've got laying around. However, I'm about out of angle like I used for this one. I need to replenish my inventory of both angle and square tubing. I'm pretty well fixed for round stock for lathe work, and I bought a bunch of aluminum round bars years ago from a supplier that was closing down. In fact, I'll probably never use all of that, but it was one of those deals if you take it all, I'll give you a real good price. So I did.

I need to head back to the college in the next couple of days to grade the final exams and swing by Menards to pick up a few things while I'm in the neighborhood. I've got a week off and the weather's nice, so I want to tackle a few things on the to-do list. Steady by jerks as my old pal Joey used to say.

Races, Pie and Final Exams

 

A little something to think about now that the election is a short month away.

Cuzzin Ricky went to the Silver Crown race at Terre Haute Sunday night. We stopped in at the Grand Traverse Pie Company like we usually do on our way into town for lunch and a piece of pie, only to find out they close at 3:00 on Sundays. Major disappointment there.

Races were good however - 100 lap feature but boy it was dusty! 

We went to Steak & Shake after the race like we normally do only to find ordering kiosks rather that servers waiting tables. No-one coming around to check on you or buss the tables. This 3rd World country thing is going to take some getting used to. 

Rick had booked us a nicer hotel than we normally stay at due having accumulated reward points, so we had a nice breakfast that was included with our room. And then we topped off the gas tank with reward points as well. With the rewards points they almost paid us to go racing - then we stopped and got some pie to go on the way out of town. That's always like the cherry on top.

Final night of class this evening - welding final rather than a paper final. Should go well. Since they no longer teach any sort of blueprint reading in high school in most places, some of them had a little trouble interpreting the print I handed out the other night of the required weldment. In addition to not being able to tell time on an analog clock, many of them are seriously deficient in the use of fractions. Not only in being able to add and subtract them, but they have no idea even what a 1/4" thick piece of steel looks like or what a 3/4" fillet weld should look like either. To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, it makes you wonder what they've been doing for the last 12 years before getting to college.

I'm off next week, then another eight-week session.