Rhubarb Time

Skipped a couple of days of working in the shop, mostly due to the weather. Tuesday because it was really nice and yesterday because it was cold, damp and gloomy. It got up to 77 degrees Tuesday so I spent a few hours working on the yard and garden along with a few other chores including picking up some steel for the jitney project and to stretch the frame on the little midget racer I made years ago. As soon as I finish putting the Rapido back together I'll tackle that one so the grandson will fit in it.

Yesterday was a mostly indoor day due to the rain and gloom so I baked a couple of loaves of rhubarb bread since the rhubarb was ready for picking. Today's weather is calling for a similar day but dry up late afternoon but temps only in the low 50s. Might make a couple of more loaves this morning to stock the freezer with. Looks like it might be a wise idea to top off the pantry and the freezer with the way things are looking with the ag distribution system. With packing plants closing and vegetables rotting in the fields due to the virus, you know that's going to have an adverse effect on what will be available and the prices of what's on  the store shelves.

I picked up a small heavy bag yesterday to hang out in my shop. There's already a bracket for it out there, so it should be easy enough to get it rigged. I've been wanting to get back to something close to my regular boxing workout. I can do a few rounds, ride my bike and work in the garden and I should be golden. I ordered some perennials to dress up the yard a bit and I'll be planting a few veggies in the next week or so as the ground warms up. 

Grifters

There were a few really smart people in my high school class and I'm sure there are a few smart ones running the country but on a whole, what a bunch of immoral grifters. If you go here, and scroll down until you find the article by Bill Bonner titled No Crony Left Behind you'll see where all the money the Feds are handing out is going. I'll give you a hint, it's not to small business or the working class. You have to read the numbers very carefully so you'll know if you're looking at millions or billions and I'm sure you'll agree with the author when he questions why the money was allocated as it was. In my book, it's absolutely disgusting. Take a few minutes and look where our money has gone and then decide for yourself.

Staying With It

I thought this was pretty funny, especially since the U.P. pulls a coal drag past the shack at least once a day on the way to the generating station. However, the generating station is scheduled to close in a few years.  I would guess the air quality has improved noticeably in the last few weeks with all the lay-offs and travel restrictions. Since I live out in the country I haven't noticed a lot of difference in the traffic but I haven't been out much either. I just hope this virus goes away soon. The Missus and I are doing OK but it's putting the pinch on a lot of people and if things don't get back to "normal" soon it's liable to get ugly. Unfortunately, there has been a jump in cases both statewide and locally in the last few days. Not good.

While working in the shop yesterday, the radio came on with their virus update. From what I heard, looks like the social distancing will be around all summer long. And this is right after I heard from Cuzzin Ricky about another train museum out in Nevada for us to go visit. Balls!

Here's my lovely mower blade sharpening atelier. Part of my duties at the part-time gig is sharpening mower blades. There I use a professional grinding gizmo. I was planning on taking my spare set of blades to work and sharpen them there but that only works if you go to work. The set-up in the photo actually works quite well. Clamp the blade to the horse and turn the 9" hand grinder loose on it. It only takes about a minute to sharpen each end . The mower has a 48" deck under it using three blades. Since the blades are short I don't worry too much about any imbalance from taking too much off of one end. I don't own a balancer but I can always hang them on a nail if I think they're too far out.

And from the diamond in a pig's ass department, I painted the cover that holds the sprocket on. As you can see, the rear wheel is in rough shape. Between the rusty chrome and the faded silver paint and the dirt, not much hope for making this one look good. I'm going to look into buying some rims, spokes and new rubber. I can always re-lace the wheels at a later date. I'm just hoping the little Rapido is going to run when I get it back together. I certainly don't want to split the cases and put new crank seals in it. I just want a decent little bike the grandson can ride around the yard. I should have the answer before too much longer.

Rapido Clean-Up Continues

Two separate projects going on here. The swingarm for the Rapido. Obviously in need of some paint. Some of it is just dirt that washed off but as you can see in the photo the right leg is pretty much void of paint. In between the legs are the flanges for the Slant-Six headers that came in the other day. I haven't tried them on the cylinder head yet but I'll get around to that in the next few days.

The swingarm looks a lot better after being bead blasted. I got it primed and painted yesterday. Since I reworked the blast cabinet, doesn't take long to clean up parts like this. I should have modified the cabinet right after I got it - would have avoided a lot of frustration.

Cleaned up the hub while waiting for the primer to dry on the swingarm. Washed most of the grime off, then rubbed it with some steel wool with AutoSol polish, then finished it up with just the polish.

Since there's no front down tube, there's a head steady to keep the engine where it belongs. That could use a coat of paint. If I take that off not much else holding the engine in the frame at that point so I might just yank it out of there. Or I might just pull the air filter housing off and throw a blanket over the motor and spray what I can get at and call it good. Have to see how it all unravels when I get out there. I'll give it my customary two hours of shop time and see what I get done. I need to get some garden work done if it stops raining so I can plant some peppers and tomatoes. I also need to sharpen the mower blades and get those swapped out. It's that time of year again.

Fillet Welds

I've been working on cleaning and organizing my big barn. I rent part of it out to the young man who farms my property. The balance is mostly a disorganized mess. I've been behind the eight ball to a certain extent ever since I left the high school. I had planned on retiring one year later but the heart attack changed that. It also had me dragging some stuff home in a hurry and being on light duty for a while. The Missus had her medical issues that slowed me down and I ended up working more than I planned at the college. Not complaining here, just trying to justify why the barn is such a mess. Now that I'm not working at all, no reason what-so-ever for it to stay that way. In fact, I'm going to look pretty silly having all this time on my hands and not get a few things done around here.

In the photo are some brackets I knocked out the other day. The two large ones are for hanging up my large extension ladder. The other two are for my bike ramp and the track for my track torch. It's just a small step but one in the right direction. I've got a steel rack I'm going to put together and organize my material storage a bit. I'll eventually get it all cleaned up to my satisfaction. I've been retired eight years - no point in hurrying now, I guess.

Detail of one of the welds on the ladder brackets. Fillet weld with the TIG process using 3/32" ER70S-3 filler - that's welder talk right there. If I was to critique this weld, it would certainly be acceptable for the job at hand. However, it's a bit sloppy as a result of being in a bit of a hurry. The right end has a kind of a blob but that's intentional. When you weld a fillet weld like this (a fillet weld being one that is triangular in cross section) best practice is to either come in from both ends and finish some place in the middle of the weld or give the weld some extra material when finishing up the bead to fill the crater to prevent a crack from starting and running back into the weld bead.

Tee or corner joints that will be subjected to movement are susceptible to this type of cracking. On structural steel, especially bridge work, inspectors normally are pretty fussy about filling your craters and wrapping your bead around the end of a component if possible. Likewise the size of the weld must be adhered to closely. Most of this type of construction is governed by the AWS Structural Steel Code and all the welding procedures need to be qualified, or use a AWS prequalified procedure, and the welding personnel must be qualified to the procedure also.

Obviously a couple of brackets to hold up a ladder weighing less that 50 lbs. don't require a WPS (welding procedure specification) but anyone who welds anything needs to remember what's at stake if the weld fails. The cosmetics often are important also - these are getting a coat of paint - but most importantly on this job, things are getting organized.

All American Boy

This one's from my formative years and that's pretty much all I wanted to be - an all American boy. Meaning I played baseball, rode my bicycle and then as I grew a bit older transitioned from bicycles to motorcycles and hot rods. And, of course, there was the music and the discovery of girls. I was a little young for the start of rock and roll and the hot rodding movement but like most guys my age I was certainly influenced by it.

We all have a soundtrack to our lives. I was heavily influenced by Chicago radio back in the sixties. WLS and WCFL were the two biggies for rock and roll. WLS had Clark Weber - in fact I was a Weber Commando. WMPP - "Where the Brothers Are" - played R&B. All three of these were AM stations. Later FM  stations became the go-to with WSDM, "the station with the girls" and WXRT coming on at 3:00 in the afternoon at first and then going full time. WXRT became my station of choice for years. I've still got a button tuned to them on the truck radio.

Starting on Saturday nights I'd listen to the Prairie Home Companion, Mike Flynn's Folk Sampler, Fiona Ritchie's Thistle and Shamrock, and later jazz programming on WBEZ. If I stayed up real late I'd catch Word Jazz - an acquired taste but interesting just the same. Sundays were Piano Jazz and then Dick Buckley playing "the good old good ones", His traditional jazz selections always seemed to reflect the weather of the weekend. If it was a beautiful spring afternoon he'd be swinging. A gray early winter day would be more subdued ballads. The selections were always good, however, coming from his own extensive collection of records. Hard to find any jazz music on the radio any more. I listened to a lot of jazz programming when I had Sirius Radio but they never played the variety that Dick Buckley did - Philly Joe Jones, Bix Biederbeck, Red Nichols, Louis Armstrong and all the other greats from 30s to the 50s.

As I told Surly in a comment the other day, I've got a turntable to convert my LPs into digital recordings. I've got at least 300 albums that I can draw from - jazz, blues, rock, country - to get my own soundtrack playing out in the shop. I need to take an evening, pick out a few of the ones I haven't heard in a while and start converting them. What I'd really like to do is start that low wattage radio station I've thought about for many years. Radio Free Kersey right Kevin?

Stay safe and keep on a rocking!

Typical Day Around The Shack

I was going to run the truck through the car wash when I went out two weeks ago but it was closed. I didn't think a place where you didn't interact with a single solitary sole would have been closed but yet it was. I wanted to get the normal dirt and mud off but also since I had driven it in one of the late snows I wanted to get the salt residue off. Since the truck is skinned with aluminum, I don't want to have problems with corrosion so I got ambitious and washed it at home yesterday. Not that this is a big deal but it does show how far reaching this shut down is.

The painted parts for the Rapido turned out pretty well for a rattle can paint job. I'm real pleased with the way the shocks came out. I started cleaning up the frame and it could use a fresh coat of paint but I think I can make it look acceptable without taking it all the way down. Have to see how that works out in the next couple of days.

Welded up the lead pot yesterday as well. I'm going to hammer in a couple of spouts to facilitate pouring the hot lead into molds. I'll heat up a spot with the torch 90 degrees to the handle and then hit the top edge with the cross peen and form a small vee in the side and then repeat the process for the other side of the pot. Surly borrowed the molds for the lead soldiers for some project he's got in mind but I didn't have a lead pot to give him. This will take care of that operation, plus one of these days I want to pour some more bullets for my muzzle loader. No hurry on that since I've only shot the thing once in the last 15 years or so, plus I believe the range is currently closed due to the virus. Even if it's not, I'm not going to chance it.

I ordered the exhaust flanges and a book on rebuilding the slant-six. I'll keep bouncing back and forth between the car and the Rapido project until the Rapido is completed and then tackle another bike project. It'd be nice to wrap up the 900 project this summer. I'd like to take that sidecar for a spin.

I got a text yesterday from a buddy of mine about a young lady who's touring the world on a Royal Enfield Himalayan like I've got. You can read about her adventures here. I didn't dig into the site too deeply yet but looks to be pretty interesting reading. She's solo touring from South America to Alaska. She's already done quite a bit of touring around Europe.

Stay safe, wash your hands, stay home as much as possible.