Just a quick note to those who care, this was what the drive to work looked like.
As I drove to work I was thinking to myself , ‘wow fog already this year?’ Nope. Thats smoke from all the fires in California ringing the Central Valley. When I got to work it looked even worse.
The smoke was so bad the airport turned on the runway lights so that FedX 757 cargo flights could see where they were going.
Sometimes I just cant get things outta my head. I saw a blog the other day touting the ‘Manly Arts’ and just had to shake my head in wonder. Listed posts under manly arts were things like ‘how to build a campfire, ‘beard oils’, ‘mustache taming’, ‘car camping’, and my favorite (yes, that is sarcasm) – ‘what men complained about women 50 and 100 years ago’. W….. T….. F….. ?
I was thinking about this as I fired up the forge and collected the materials and tools to start melting old lead weights and scrap into usable ingots. In case no one out there has melted scrap down into ingots, there is actually a lot of time to contemplate life and its mysteries as you go about it. The only time you really need to pay attention is when there is hot liquid metal present and ready to splash everywhere it can and solidify. Thus plenty of time to let your mind wander….
So, what all is needed to melt lead down you ask? Does it require the insane amount of heat that aluminum and brass do? Nope, lead is easy, any campfire has enough heat to melt lead. Does it mean that we don’t respect it when you have hot liquid metal sloshing around? Nope, it will still F your sh*t up if it gets on you or something you dont want damaged, thats all the warning your going to get. Here’s a pic of my lead smelting set up.
Pretty simple really, something to hold the charcoal, a cast iron melting pot, and the charcoal to heat it up. I do use the blower on occasion when melting lead just to ramp the heat up for melting larger pieces quicker, but it isn’t a necessity. I throw a couple pieces of lead in the pot when I get the coals lit so I can see when I get to melt temp. As the lead melts and makes a nice puddle in the bottom it gets easier to melt lead that is added since you have a nice big thermal source immersing the new scrap. Almost all scrap lead, like old tire weights, have a bunch of dirt and junk on them not to mention the steel weight clips. Most of that stuff will float to the top so you can scrape it off, which you want to do. I lose a little lead with the crap, but in the scheme of things it’s better to have clean lead than try to save every last gram.
Enlarge the picture and you will see the weight clips and dirt floating on top the lead. I use a small casting ladle I have had for years to scrape the scrum off. I usually just tap all that junk out of the ladle onto the ground then sweep it up and discard it once I’m done with the melt and everything is cooled. Get enough lead melted and the top cleared of junk and you will have something that looks similar to this.
Here comes the fun part, and since I work solo I couldnt take any action shots. Lol. Pouring requires holding that little wire bail in the picture above and using the tab opposite the spout on the pot to tip and pour the lead. Having an aversion to serious pain (I know, not very manly, but I don’t have my beard oil on. In? What is the proper way of wearing beard oil?) I have made a small tool to hook the bail wire and lift the pot that keeps my hand away from it’s contents and I use a pair of pliers to grip the tab for tipping. Oh, and I wear a big ole pair of welders gloves for good measure.
Mmmmm, lead muffins. Seriously, this old cast iron muffin pan makes a heck of a mold for pouring all kinds of ingots. Just don’t use it to bake with or you may have elevated metal levels in your blood. Lol. There is no need for a release agent in the mold as the metal contracts once its cooled sufficiently and falls right out. You can see the gap around the cooled ingots in the pic above.
A couple hours of work turned half a 5 gallon bucket of scrap into the ingots above and it was done before the clock struck noon. I bet a few of you are thinking to yourself ‘Why does he have thick ingots and thin ingots?’ Well kiddos, put on your thinking caps and leave your ideas in the comment section. First one to come up with the reason I do it will get a little of the finished product in the picture sent to them.
One final thing. I did the above work with an untamed mustache, no beard oil, and without complaining about women 50 or 100 years ago. After all, I have enough complaints about women without having to go back in history……. LMAO!
The Labor Day 3-day weekend finally gave me the opportunity to get some things done that I have been wanting to do. I still have a big project for work that needs to get done (turning a discarded airplane into a usable flight simulator) but that went on hold so I could get some things of my own accomplished.
First things first, on Saturday noon I went and looked at a couple pieces of property. There ware some parcels with definite possibility, but I’m waiting to look at another property that caught my eye also. All of these were 40 acres or larger and I’m beginning to think that I may be happier with the extra room that 40 acres has. More of a ‘buffer’ between me and other people and I can let friends ‘camp’ out occasionally if they want and not feel like they are too close to the house. Not to mention more room to hide small outbuildings for various hobbies. lol.
One of the things I have been keeping my eye out for is a small wood burning heat stove in case I ever do get property. I bought a wood/coal cook stove/oven project last year and it is well under way on it’s overhaul. The cook stove is a 1920’s Wedgewood and was in deplorable shape. Barely any of the original color was left on it but the cast iron cooking surface and the oven door were in amazing shape. I’ll make a separate post about that oven in a few days, but I still didn’t have a wood heater. Saturday morning before going to look at property I took a look at Harbor Freight to check prices on the little cast iron box-heater I had been keeping my eye on. I was waiting for it to go on sale since I had one of the 20% coupons they put out about once a month to really save some cash and I had to drive to at least Gilroy to get one since they can’t be sold in the Central Valley (F* the air quality a**holes). As it turns out, Harbor Freight doesn’t seem to carry the wood burning stoves anymore so I was starting to get unhappy and decided to check Craigslist for anything local from a private seller. The third ad down the page after a ‘wood stove’ search turned up a buy I just couldn’t pass up. In the picture was a beautiful little free standing Wedgewood heater, and the person was asking only $50!! I scrutinized the pics he had on the ad looking for a reason it was so under-priced, but this heater looked like it was off a factory showroom. Needless to say I made a call, got directions to see it, and then went and picked up my dad on the way to the sellers house. When we got there the seller was really nice. Seems the stove was more of a furniture piece than heater and had barely been used. It had been moved to the garage since his girlfriend was redoing the house and he wanted the space to park his truck again. I gave it a quick look over and promptly handed the guy $50, I wasn’t even going to haggle on it since the original enamel was all pristine except where they had set things on the upper grates and the mica windows were broke out. Dad and I loaded it up and celebrated all the way home.
As usual you can click on the pics for a bigger version. Overall, I think I like this a LOT better than a little black cast iron stove. Oh, and the mica to make new windows shipped out today, another $50 but well worth it.
This will be short, but I just had to throw it on the blog.
First off, I did a little rework on the small cnc machine I keep in the third bedroom/office area. I built this one to do small parts inside without having to go out in the garage and fire up the monster cnc converted mill out there. That thing eats energy at a prodigious rate and most things I make are smaller. Anyway, I built in a new circuit in my home made controller board and added automated Z axis part height. Everyone out there can roll their eyes at the geekiness but it saves me a TON of setup work that I had to do before. Here’s a pic of the machine, built from the cabinet up from parts I had laying around.
It’s kinda Frankenstein, but it works great. This pic is after the mods and a test pattern run to check performance. The pattern was a simple DXF file of a chicken I had laying around and had Mach3 do a quick convert on. The results were really nice though, ‘specially after I ran some stain in the cuts and sanded the top down.
I had a scrap of oak to run the file on. It looks good, so I may have to cut it down and route the edge to clean up the block and give it to mom.
If my friend at ThisRusticSoul.com sees this and ever gets her blog up then maybe you will see some of the work she does. LOL!
So I havent posted a lot the last few weeks. It’s not because I’m slacking in Vegas eating really good food and enjoying the suites at my favorite hotel, although its been a while and I really need to get back to my 5 Vegas trips a year schedule. Nope, work has been crazy. On the bright side I have been able to see some really neat stuff. I was up at Yolo county airport last week while they were doing air-ops for the big California fires. I took a bunch of photos and then got a new phone so I don’t have them with me to post. This week I was up in Oakdale to rescue another of our planes and got pics on the new phone. It looks something like this.
I laughed at the other end of the runway though because its like they got most of the way done on leveling the area and then gave up and just paved it. There is an obvious change in the elevation on the last few hundred yards. Even better is that it’s the end most often used for landings. Wanna see what I’m talking about? Click on the picture to make it bigger so you can *really* see the thing.
One final pic of just how nice a day it was out there.
So, I am often asked ‘what do you do’? Most days I am in the hanger sorting parts and handing out work to the techs to try and keep airplanes in the air so we can keep teaching students. But on days we go out and recover an airplane that has been left by a student it usually looks something like this.
That is 08L, one of our fleet of Piper Tomahawks. It was left there because the student flew up there and then couldn’t get the airplane started again. So we load up the parts and tools and get on the road. Most of the time we will fly up, fix it, and then fly it back but lately the truck has made a handy tool bench and work surface. Turned out to be pretty handy for overhauling a magneto.
On a side note, I work with these planes every day, fly them, and have known some of them since I first started training for my license in 1990. I know their tail numbers, their quirks, even far enough to say each one has a ‘personality’. Many of them I have gone and pulled out of salvage yards, people’s backyards (see an earlier post), and even flew one back from Florida (90G, my favorite of all our Tommy’s). To me, and a couple other A&P’s here at the school, they aren’t machines anymore. They aren’t dispassionate lumps of metal to be used, abused, and thrown away. They are more like pets, each having it’s own set of markings and characteristics that makes that plane unique and special. Some are temperamental and some are tough as nails, and a few are ‘special’ like that dim-witted nephew that at 13 years old still says ‘airpwane’ and stares vacantly into the distance. But each one has a special place in my heart and I’ll do everything I can to get them home and keep them flying.
We had a huge (for the central valley) thunderstorm last night. I was happy because my plants got LOTS of rain and every little extra bit helps. So the next morning I got up and the first thing I want to do is see how my plants are doing, expecting them to be all perky and happy. Instead I find this…..
All my lovely zucchini plants flattened and ‘nests’ made in my vegetable bed. The destruction was all through the bed, not a single plant left unsquashed.
I try to be a nice neighbor, and those who know me know my version of ‘nice’ is open for discussion. But this is beyond what I am willing to put up with. I went to the neighbor whos dogs are always in my backyard and let him know that his pets will no longer be safe in my backyard. I have a gopher problem now and will be putting out many gopher traps of the vicious two pronged flesh piercing variety. I would hate to see anything bad happen to them…….
Bottom line, DON’T F*CK with my garden.
A few years back I picked up a couple of old treadle sewing machine bases. I think it’s time to start a project with one. My friend who is starting a blog (i think, lol) over at ThisRusticSoul.com should love this idea. They both need some love and attention with the usual various broken brackets and rust issues. One needs a lot more work to restore than the other, so that is the one I will start with ;)-
By the way, those of you who have known me probably recognize the garage (shop) in the pics. It feels soooooo gooood to be finally working out there again and making stuff. Maybe my slump into inactivity is finally over. So, there is the treadle I plan on making into a little side table. Lets take a look at it problems, I’ll show the fixes in follow up posts.
The first and most prominent issue is the wheel broken off of the bottom corner. These treadle bases have little wheels in the corners of the base and this one was abused and the whole wheel and bracket is missing so it doesn’t sit flat. I’m gonna have to build a whole new bracket assembly and wheel to make this right. Time to order a chunk of mild steel.
There is a small break on the back casting that holds the sides upright. You can see the break where I mis-aligned the break just under the bolt tab. This should be a good candidate for brazing the joint, basically like soldering it back together with another metal. I havent brazed cast iron on treadles yet, so I’m curious to see how good or bad the quality of iron is in these castings. Once again, I’ll post later with the fix.
Looks like I have a lot of age and dust to clean up. I can’t wait to see this stuff all cleaned and refreshed without all the crud burying the surfaces. In the meantime, lets start the work on the top of this table. I want an old look to the top, which means I can’t just leave it as a plain flat top. I want oak for the look, since a lot of oak was used around the turn of the last century, and I kinda want an old ‘school desk’ look. So, lets get started.
Here we have 3 nice planks of 3/4″ thick oak. I spent a little time looking at grain and coloration when I went to get the wood. It has a nice open pattern and the coloration is a decent red in most of it. Now I need to fasten them together to form a top.
Three strips of oak to tie them together. The outside strips fit just inside the sides of the treadle, making a good snug fit. It left some marks on the oak as I did trial fits to make sure the runners were where I wanted them . I glued the runners before doing the final tightening on the screws, so it should all stay nice and solid.
Now it’s time to flip it back over and knock the rough spots down and make the top surface nice. There are slight variations in the wood surfaces where they meet, so I want them to blend smoothly and take out any small imperfections in the boards at the same time. Once thats done it time to add some ‘charm’ to the top.
To add charm, I’m going to use some more oak, glue, and a brad nailer. I want to run a small rail around three of the sides like I have seen on many old jewlers benches and other work tops. I like the idea because it keeps small things from falling off the table, contains small spills, and overall looks better than just slapping a plank on top of a treadle and proclaiming it a table.
I cant just slap on a couple pieces of wood and call it done either, so over to the bandsaw I go. I want the outside corners of the table to be rounded off nicely. So I rough cut the shape with the bandsaw and then go over to the belt sander to finish it off. One both sides are done I can put them on.
Now we are getting somewhere…. just in time for me to stop. I was hungry and the temp/humidity was getting to my comfy point so I quit there for the day.
I mentioned the tomato plant has followed the usual course of tomato plants in my back yard by taking over all the available space it can. So, while I was out watering this morning I thought I would share a few more pics of just what they like to do. First a general pic of the plant as it now grows.
Yup, that sprawling mess is a tomato plant. It has overgrown its bed out onto the ‘lawn’, over the side of the box to the greenhouse, and deeper into the bed climbing the helpless carrots. If you click on the picture you get a larger pic so you can see just how bad it is. In previous years the tomatoes overgrow the whole 3′ by 8′ bed and still get into the lawn and neighbors yard, killing off everything they overgrow EXCEPT the carrots.
That doesnt mean that they leave the carrots in peace. Oh no, that wouldn’t do. Instead you take over their space and use them to your own purposes. I swear tomatoes are the original evil supervillain. Lol. Squeaking an existence out between the carrot/tomato and the fence are a few of my dwarf sunflowers. They just started to bloom yesterday and are opening up nicely this morning. I can’t wait till they start to turn up to the sun and really get going.
I have another dwarf sunflower from that sprouting that I put in a pot to see if it would grow as well as the ones in the ground. It has gotten more light since it isn’t hidden under the shadows of the other plants and has done surprisingly well. It’s almost double the size of the sunflowers in the beds and has really healthy fat leaves.
That flower is in a 14″x14″ pot, I think I will grow all my sunflowers like this next year.
Its been a little bit since I posted. Im doing the Couch to 5K (c25k) program to get my butt back in shape. I’m starting week 5 today and if I survive then I’ll keep posting. Also, I’m getting things cleaned up and organized out in the shop (garage, whatever) and plan on getting elbows deep in some restoration projects that I can post also.
The garden is coming along. I pulled some goodies off the vines to take over to my parents this weekend and took a pic to show what I can pull after a week of watering and tending. It looks like this.
Overall I’m pretty happy with it. I don’t pull ‘orange’ or even ‘orangish-red’ tomatoes, only the really ripe ‘red-red’ tomatoes. Everyone I have given some to comment on how sweet the tomatoes are. If anyone is interested the type is S100 Super-Sweet. I have to admit, I’m not much of a tomato eater, but these are damn good.
The bell peppers have been coming alive and producing like crazy over the recent hot weather we had. I’m curious to see if they will taper off on production since this last week the temps dropped back 10-20 degrees. Yes, it really dropped that much, from 105 highs to 85 or so. On the bright side, the lower temps have allowed some of my other plants like the mints some needed relief . I have noticed that one bell pepper plant doesnt yeild the usual bell pepper shape. Instead this one grows what looks like a overly large jalepeno, but it still smells and tastes like a bell pepper.
About now you are probably wondering about those giant carrot plants from previous posts. The flowers are starting to go to seed and I have put plastic bags over the flowers to capture any seed that falls from them. Even the seed on these things are huge compared to ‘normal’ carrots. I don’t know what I did, or how they got this big, but it’s going to be fun seeing what grows from these seeds if they sprout. Till then my plants look goofy with all the plastic on them.
Did you notice in the lower left corner you can see the tomato trying to take over the carrot plants? It has started using the carrots as a sort of trellis to climb for more sun. Crazy plants. Speaking of sun worshiping, I didnt have much hope since I have never successfully raised a watermelon plant, but my sugar baby is giving it a heck of a try.
So far it looks healthy and happy with plenty of flowers and little watermelon buds. My real concern now is the damn ‘possums that my neighbor INSISTS on feeding cat food and treating like they are something special. Did you know in Cali it’s illegal to kill a ‘possum? Frickin’ ridiculous. And now that I finally have one of these to look after….
So, if I see so much as a ‘possum track in my backyard the gloves are coming off. My great grandad had a way of dealing with cats on the farm, seems like it would work well for ‘possums too.
One of the things I love about being me is that I have attempted most everything that has caught my interest. That includes making RTV silicone molds. It’s really not the hardest thing, just a few basics to understand and you can make replicas of most objects. So, since I wanted to make some copies of a part I need in bulk I figured I’d take a few pics and throw it up here for those interested.
Lets start with the basics, this isnt inteded to be a step-by-step (I’ll do one if asked) but more of an overview of the general process. Here’s a pic of the basics needed to get started.
We have a paper plate, a wad of modelling clay, a chunk of abs (pvc will work, but I had this handy) plastic pipe, and a part to be copied. Double bonus points if anyone recognizes the part and what it is used for. The paper plate contains the mess, an important piece of the puzzle. lol. Now to start getting the part prepped to make the mold.
Here is the part mounted on a base of modelling clay. After looking at the part geometry I figured this made the most sense for casting the part. The end that is up needs the shape and recess in it, the other end mates up with another half and isn’t critical. The worst part about making molds is learning to view things as ‘negative space’ that needs to be filled. Remember everything you see on that plate will be a hole full of nothing when the mold is made.
So that is why I mount it to the clay with a tapered base that blends out into the end. It makes it easier when casting a new part in the mold. Just trust me, it will likely make sense later in the post. Now to put our outer container in place.
Just eyeball it centered around the part to be molded and press down into the clay. Unfortunately that wont make a good enough seal. The RTV mold material WILL escape from the smallest openings, trust me I’ve made my share of messes. Thats why I know to use a paper plate.
So to try and minimize the leakage I push the extra clay up around the base of the outer wall and hope its good enough. Usually it is, sometimes not. Now that we have the part to be molded in there, outer wall in place, everything looks sealed…
Time to mix and pour the RTV.
Damn. See the drips all over? The blue RTV sneaking out of the base between the clay and the plastic pipe? This stuff is engineered to make a mess… or maybe I am. Better just walk away and not think that one through…..
RTV has set up and its time to pull everything out. The clay ring and pedestal came out pretty easy, but they do if you use the right clay. We can see the part still in the mold waiting to be free so we can pour resin in the cavity. Best get to it.
HAH! Finished the mold and here it sits. The mold is fully cured and ready to use at this point. Next up is to clean up the mess, put the supplies away and start casting parts. The resin I use cures in around 5 minutes, so it doesn’t take much time to crank out bunch of replicas. I’ll have to count the number of molds on the shelf in the office, but I have made well over a hundred now and even the oldest still works as good as new if properly taken care of.
