seeing the signs

Yesterday there was an auctioning of the estate of welding business. I'm in the market for a powered hack saw, so I thought I'd go check it out. I've been looking for a powered hacksaw for a year or so, but the 500 - 1000 price tag turns looking into dreaming. And yet, I have sooo much metal to cut and only a simple hacksaw and a bicep muscle--well, okay, two biceps.

Sure enough, there was a big, water-cooled, brute of a saw there. About 300 lbs of steel on a good rolling cart. Sticking around to bid on it, though, was pretty disheartening. A feeding frenzy is what I was witnessing. Three hundred buck paid for an old AC buzz box gave me a picture of what I should expect when it came to the hacksaw I was hovering by. I decided I'd go a hundred bucks max, but knew that it would sell for way more than that.

The old auctioneer (who laughed at his jokes much more than the rest of us) came on over and the crowd followed him.

"Let's start the bidding for this ol' girl at 200."
Silence.
Alrighty, I see you like to work up to her true value. Can I hear a hunderd?"
Disinterest and far away looks.
"So, jump in there fellas with fifty."
"Huop." barked his assistant.
"And now sixty."
I nodded in my best rancher fashion.
"There."
"Sixty an a half"
"Ho!"
I nodded for seventy.
My challenger bowed out and there it was going, going, gone to me.
And the crowd went on and I stood there dumbfounded on how in the world I ever got this machine for a mere 70 bucks.
As the shaker quote says, "When the way opens, proceed."
So I do. So I am.

and (de) cart rolls

Enough penetrating oil and enough persuasion with a copper hammer and enouhg patience. And a good whack after you loose your patience. A tried and true recipie.

Got everything apart after being siezed up for who knows how many years. The rollers in the bearings were so pitted, I had to take a power wire brush to them. Even afterwards they are pitted so I sanded them up a bit with emery cloth...it'll make for a bit of bearing backlash, but I suppose that's not anything of consequence for a pull cart going at, say, 3 miles an hour.

The main thing is that this cart will be able to carry a good 1000 lbs or so of weight. And I'll be giving it the what-for what with a 100 gallon sandblasting pot mounted on it.

It was a lot of work to get this cart rolling again, but the cart is of the vintage that deserves the tlc.

(de) cart gets its bearings

I don't know exactly why I like this old cart enough to pound the keyboard at length about it, but here I am doing it some more.I discovered that the back wheels were frozen solid. I pulled out the big cotter pins to discover these very unusual bearing. Like a flat roller bearing, but no cage or anything to imprison the rollers. You can pull them all out clean it up and reassemble. There's a grease zerk, but I decided that rather than give them a shot of grease, I'd need to clean them up and give them a fresh start on life. I'll give them a day soaking in Kroil (very good stuff...I like it better than PB Blaster) and then see if I can get them apart.

affirmation

So, I'll be honest: I've lost hope. I look at this big rusty hulk of a boat (not to mention the other sections that are laying on the road side halfway up the mountain) and I think to myself "What the hell have you done here?" There are so many, many unknowns, not the least of which is how am I going to get this thing back in the lake and then, oh yeah, where am I going to moor it? I've spent so much money and the final goal is so far off and I'm feeling pretty down about it all. And, then,even if I get it all back together, back down to the lake, and successfully floating, how am I ever going to have it working for hire? I mean, the existing barge service is already doing great work, and there'll be no need for my old WWII relic. I'll be out all this money, and should have just bought a speed boat. Think of the new boat I could have bought for the same amount of money and I'd already be having fun with it!

Then today happens.

I'm down at my wife's house (we're separated) checking on the pets while she and the kids are out of town. Just as I am leaving, the phone rings. I hesitate answering it--it's not my phone and it's probably for Leigh--but, then think perhaps it;s the kids trying to reach me. So I answer it.
"Hello, I'm looking for Martin."
"This is he."
"Hi, this is Joe from the Forest Service and we have some work projects for you and are wondering if your barge is ready to work yet...."

This FS guy did not have this number. And even if he did, what are the chances that I would be there in this house that is not my house at that time?

Some might see this as coincidence and, to be honest, at a different point in my life, I would have also. Not any more. This was God. God giving me a little boost, a little reassurance. Hey, I know that what I'm doing with this project is crazy, from start to finish, but it's my crazy. Soren Kierkegaard said that our ultimate goal is to be our best self, this best self that God designed us to be. Not anybody esle, or their best self--you and your best self. This kind of thing that I do, the collecting of tired iron, the making of things out of cast offs, the fixing of things others can't fix, the big crazy dreams, this is what God made me for. I can't explain how my purpose fits into the big Plan, I just know this is me and this is what I am supposed to be doing.

(de) cart

Rene Decart - is a great French philosopher who was the first to connect the ideas of the greatest Italian physicist and German astronomer. Decart verified Galilei law about inertia and constructed the mechanism of Universe, where all the solids are made more by pushing.

So, I took this great little cart I got from a ranch up the Entiat River road and am going to turn it into my sandblaster cart. It's the coolest thing: art deco look to it, big silver steel wheels and built to haul a heavy load. I couldn't even guess as to what it was originally, but I know that it's last life was as a mobile air compressor.

As I stripped off all the unneeded stuff, I began getting a sense of the man--the rancher/welder from the Entiat River--who made it. He didn't have much money, turning making-do into an art form. Indeed, none of the twenty or so bolts I took off were the same. They all were scrounged out of an old Maxwell coffee can, no doubt. And the cart/air compressor wasn't pretty. But he wasn't building it to be pretty; he was building it to work, to deliver air. Cobbling together an mysterious compressor from some refrigeration unit, a handmade expansion tank, a small electric motor, a belt to drive it, and an emergency brake from an old car to serve as the belt tensioner.

Just stop for a minute to measure the huge distance from this machine to "Oh, I need a compressor" and driving down to Home Depot and buying something made in Korea and shrouded with plastic.

His unit meant something to him and it does, now, to me. And I will reincarnate his cart into something different but similar. I could buy a sandblaster from Harbor Fright, I suppose. But what's the fun in that? Instead I am halfway to mine and it's been a fun story. The cart I've told you about and last week I got a tank for the sand pot from my Friend, Randy. I told him I was looking for a tank..."I've got just the thing for you!" he exclaimed. "Come over to my place right now and we'll load it up in your Subaru.

air for the sandblaster

Just got back from hauling my new air compressor home. I had to haul it over the Cascade mtns on Stevens Pass with my old, trusty Subaru. Pretty slow pulling up thru the grade but, all in all, she did jsut fine.

It's a older Sollair. Four cylinder GM gas engine driving a 100 cfm compressor. I had been getting depressed looking around for a compressor as everything I found was in the 3 - 5 thousand buck range. I knew that rental charges would kill me, but how could I justify plunking down several grand to by one? Well, I found this one on Craigslist for $550 (I wonder why the 50!?). It even had a fresh rebuild on the engine. The catch? The engine hadn't been run since the rebuild...hmmn. Well, it all looks good--new frost plugs, gaskets, engine painted. The guy--a nice guy whom I trusted right away and ultimately, in my book, that's worth lots--reported that he just is too busy and it is one of those almost-finished projects.

So, I'll drain the gas, squirt a bit of oil, put in a new battery and we'll see what happens.