Tailstock - Part Two

I got the tailstock welded up this past week. It came out looking pretty sexy with the silver hammertone paint. It's got about an inch of vertical travel and maybe 10 degrees of swing, both left and right. To be honest I never even measured the amount of swing, I just figured it might come in handy sometime. I still have to cut a groove in the rod that runs through the middle and make a screw with a big washer on it that will fit in the groove on the rod. That will allow me to snug the rod up tight in the end of a shaft I'm going to machine. I'm going to try and get that done while I'm on Christmas vacation. I've been knockin' 'em dead when it comes to finishing things lately. I'm going to try and keep that streak going.

I picked up the flex rod and "O" rings for the steam engine. That project is also a priority for the vacation. They still haven't got the painting done in my shop at school so I'm not going to try and tackle anything big in there yet. A school board member came in to see me about it, though. He's a new board member and is trying to make some positive changes. Let's all hope that's the way it turns out. We've got lots of room for improvement.

Paul Revere

I was here a couple of years ago. The North Bridge in Concord, Mass. The birth of a nation right where I was standing.













When I attended the Appleseed shoot, they recommended reading the book Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer. Since my curiosity was aroused and it was in the school library and it didn't violate my self-imposed 500 page limit on any book that I read, I read it. It's a well written account of the events leading up to the famous ride of Paul Revere and the immediate after effects that precipitated the Revolutionary War.

I've been interested in Paul Revere as a craftsman having seen some of his silver work, but was fairly ignorant of his role in bringing about our independence from England. Paul was a major player in the events leading up to April 19, 1775 when the British marched on Concord and Lexington. In addition to his silversmithing, he also was an accomplished engraver. In fact, the Library of Congress traveling exhibit had a copy of one of his engravings in it.

The events leading up to the Revolutionary War seem to be happening to some extent again in this country. The emergence of the Tea Party in the last election had to be prompted by something, right? Depending on your point of view, there are lots of attacks on your personal freedoms going on. People wanting to take away firearms and if they can't do that then outlaw all lead ammunition. Force you to buy health insurance or else. Tax the poor and give to the rich - oh wait, that's Robin Hood. Here we tax the middle class and give it to the poor corporations who are too big to fail. Any way you look at it, there are parallels that can be drawn.

In addition to detailing the events of Revere's ride, the book also sums up what happened to the major players in the story later in life but I need to find another good book to pick up where this one left off. It's a shame that in all the twelve years you spend in public education, so little of that time is spent on history. The founders of our country were true patriots. Their vision and sacrifices should not be forgotten.

Snow Day

Photo from here:

I had the day off today due to the blowing and drifting snow. Since it rained and froze up good before the snow started, the snow just kept blowing across the driveway for most of the length. The part around the barn and where we park was a different story. I shoveled some drifts that were a couple of feet deep to get the snow away from the vehicles and shoveled about 6"-8" off the sidewalk. The old Allis Chalmers took care of the rest. I started it up about two weeks ago, put a little fresh gas in it and charged the battery up and I ran it a little yesterday. It fired right up this morning and I got everything plowed and shoveled in about 1-1/2 hours. The wind has been blowing, so it'll need another pass tomorrow.

Spent the majority of the rest of the day down the basement. I'm working on a couple of little projects that are mostly an antidote to television. When it's too cold to work in the shop or I don't want to go back to school, I can grab a cup of Joe and head downstairs. As much as I enjoy reading, I still need to be making things. I got an e-mail from my partner on the steam engine project and he's got some parts we've been waiting on. I should be able to get back on that pretty quick. I'm going to try and get a little bit done on the Rickati project this week as well. We've got final exams this week which always leads to a lot of dead time in the schedule. I should be able to accomplish something while waiting for the next final to roll around.

Speaking of accomplishing something, if your looking for a duck or goose call, check out 2 Rivers Calls. I just found out today that my old pal Shawn McDowell and his brother Casey have gone world wide with his duck calls. Shawn used to run the woodshop and was the head football coach when I started my current teaching position about 17 years ago. He was farting around making them and all kinds of other things then and looks like he still is. He's a real good craftsman, especially in the woodshop. I wish he would have stuck around a few more years so I could have gotten some turning lessons from him. I know my way around a metal lathe pretty well but Shawn could have really improved my wood lathe skills. He's a helluva nice guy with a wonderful family. Buy yourself a handmade duck call. If nothing else you can use it for a noise maker on New Year's Eve.

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress had a semi-trailer set up at the Merrillville Reference Library this past weekend. I was a little disappointed in what they had inside but if you've got 145 million things, something has to be left at home. The exhibit was primarily an advertisement for the Library of Congress and it was quite effective in that regard. I've already checked out the website and have kicked myself in the ass for not at least going in the building while I was there this summer. The building is remarkable from the outside and from the pictures of the interior I've seen, the interior is even more remarkable.

The Library is also a founding partner in the World Digital Library where you can find cool pictures like Elvis and Tricky Dick Nixon.

The online gift shop has all kinds of things available for purchase. Might be a little too late for Christmas this year but next year I'm going to ask Santa for one of the photographs by Edward Curtis or Arthur Rothstein. An 8x10 photo is $28.00. I'll never be able to afford an original Curtis but I have seen a couple. Shame I wasn't born rich instead of good looking - I'd have myself an art collection.

The Library of Congress has 745 miles of bookshelves in three buildings and as Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams on 6/10/1815: "I cannot live without books".

Pie

"Pie and Coffee is approximately the third best social interaction a man can hope to have with a woman." I'm not sure what's in second place but I'm not going to argue the point.

Quote from the Hoosier Mama Pie Company

In addition to the Hoosier Mama Pie Company, I saw a short blurb in Esquire about The Red Truck Bakery making mince meat pies. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who thought it looked good. They're sold out of them at $26.00 a piece. If you hit the link, you'll see why. The list of ingredients should be enough for the Missus to make something similar. She made me mince meat pie a few years back with real minced meat. Grandma Miller used to make one every Thanksgiving along with her jam cake but she used the mince meat stuff out of the box. It was still darn good. Must have been the buttery flavor Fluffo in the crust.

And this just in (Wednesday at 5:00) - the Missus made a mince meat and a grape pie for the Christmas get together with her crochet group and there was about half the grape and the whole mince meat pie left over. Yippy - Skippy. Home made pie and I'm taking Friday off. Life is good, but it's always better with pie.

Tailstock

I'm finally getting around to making the tailstock to go with the spacer head for my mill. Enco sells one thats a plain Jane for $164.95 and a fancy adjustable one for $362.29. Both of them are too short for my spacer head however, so I'd have to make a block to put underneath it to raise it up an 1-1/2" anyway. Instead of parting with my "hard earned" dollars to buy one, I'm fabbing my own on company time - the American free enterprise system at it's best, though I must confess I did quite a bit of it last night during Open Shop. I'll need to cut a slit in the top for the pinch bolt at home as soon as the weather warms up a little but everything else I can do at work. I need the tailstock to finish one of my non bloggable projects I'm working on and I could have used one several times in the past for other projects. I want to get all my tooling in order for retirement so I'll be able to tinker on whatever, whenever.

I ordered some bearings and Heim joints for the Rickati project and a couple of pieces for the steam engine that should be in today so I can continue working on them as well. Everything is progressing right smartly.

Lookin' Like a Sickle

Starting to look like a bike














Muffler with heat shield













Footpeg







Bike's starting to come together finally. I got the exhaust finished up yesterday. The nut holding the pipe into the cylinder head is kind of rough, though. The nuts were all made from brass with fins ringing the top and unless you had a wrench made for them the standard practice was to tighten them up with a screwdriver and a hammer so you could break the fins off. This one's missing about a third of them so I'll see if I can find a better one. When I worked at the other school we had a CNC mill and I made a couple of them up out of steel. I first turned the OD, built it up with brass, turned and threaded it, then put it in the CNC mill and cut the fins in it. They looked real nice and I machined a wrench up to match the slots and everything. Unfortunately, I didn't save one for myself and I don't have access to a CNC mill anymore. I also don't have a lathe currently that will cut metric threads either so I need to address that issue one of these days soon.

I threw the gear gazer on the engine to see how that looked (that's the shiny thing on top of the motor just under the gas tank.) I made a couple of those up when I had the mill at my disposal and at least I kept one of those for myself. They're really not good for anything other than you can watch the oil splashing around on the bevel gears but they look real cool.

I made up a footpeg mount last weekend to use the original Rickman footpegs and it came out pretty nice but unfortunately, I took one of the pegs off awhile back and now I can't find the darn thing. I made a couple of the aluminum pegs like in the photo a long time back so I think I'll use those and make two new mounts to fit them.

I still need a chain guard, brake stay and some type of piece for the rear brake cable to fit into and, of course, a brake pedal to actuate it. I still need a seat and a couple little brackets but it's moving ahead. I was even eyeballing the Volkswagen the other day. I'd like to hit a couple of licks on that over Christmas vacation. I need to get some rust repair done on the heater channel in order to finish the floor on the one side and I can't do that when the boys are around. Every time I crawl under a vehicle I hear something I can't identify or sounds like mischief and out I come. Oh well, it's not like I never work on my own stuff on company time. Probably wouldn't hurt me to do a little of it on my time.

The construction guys are back in the shop again. I had to move somethings around today so a guy could check out the new heater. Apparently the pulley is the wrong size on the fan and it's running about 50% faster than it's supposed to. It sounds like a jet taking off and it'll damn near knock your hat off in the tool room with the amount of air it puts out. So they'll be back to fix that and they are coming in to paint the trusses they reinforced to hang the platforms on that they didn't hang. The one is right over the top of all the benches and the TIG welder we just moved back about a week ago. I wish they would have kept me in the loop when they were planning all this crap. I would have made a couple of big moves before school was out last year and everything would have been Jake. It is nice and warm in there now though and as Martha says, that's a good thing.