Misc. Mechanical & Metal Fabrication
Hello, Loren here. Car guy, metal fabricator also (sometimes work, sometimes hobby). Along back in these pages exists a thread of a project of mine. And, another. Also maybe two more? They don't get attention for long stretches, usually set aside for something else although small bits of progress plod on...
Rather than go back and bring those up separate, I'm gonna start just posting things on one thread and the theme shall not be this car or that project but rather car-related work in general and the only continuity will be how time goes on. The work in the post may be anything more-or-less car related...if it's not an actual vehicle, the techniques or ideas could still apply. Are you with me? If so, welcome to the MM&MF thread and if you have anything pertinent to post in here yourself, like how you made one thing into something else with a hammer one day and it's too minor to start your own thing about it, have at it. I won't regard this as my thread only.
So with that intro, I'm going to start with something that's not a car but I couldn't do much mechanical work without it. We've spoken about work benches around here...who has, who doesn't, how much effort is appropriate to put into such an item. I myself couldn't get by without a good one.
The Workbench, Part I
I may have been around age ten (making it 1970) when I wandered into Dad's workshop after dinner to find him with a hammer and saw breaking up the old table against the wall he had been building odd things out of wood, metal and wires on for all my years. Destruction! Wow, can I help? No, I'll get hurt. Can I watch? Not 'til after the nails and splinters stop flying. He hauled out the debris through the smallish door, swept the place up then started cutting and bolting-up 2x4's and 4x4's and plywood to make it all over again; a brand-new work bench, not just a table, this time bigger and heavier with drawers and everything. Measure, cut, pound, fasten...the last thing he did was squirt a few giant random lines of white glue over the plywood top in preparation for laying a final sheet of 1/8" Masonite, hardened-one-side, down on top. Man, I really wanted to be the guy with the Elmer's, I'd never been able to handle a bottle of glue like that without getting into trouble. He did let me squirt a circle as I recall, then it was covered forever with surface material and tacked down with about a hundred tiny finishing nails.
He capped it all off with some brackets to hold pliers etc. and a small stainless-steel front panel made at his work, for testing power presence and continuity on 110v electrical devices. I thought that really looked neat.
For years he built and repaired things on that bench. He riveted together box-shape hiking backpacks for our yearly fishing outings that looked like they belonged on spacesuits. Fixed the Mix-Master, listening to ball games on the radio. When moving day came in the mid-'70's from the big house he'd built with Mom (didn't borrow a cent) to a small rental so as to use the money elsewhere, that workbench would not fit out the door so he took a circular saw and cut it into sections half-way up to move out. When it got to where it was going, he patched it back together with aluminum plates and some new plywood.
After perhaps five years it moved again, this time in one piece to a property he was improving on so as to sell for retirement money. As that project progressed he made new built-in workbenches at that location, and ten years after it was built the old one became mine.
I moved it in a tiny box trailer from there in Sunland/Tujunga CA for use in an industrial unit a buddy and I were renting in Glendale, then as time went by to a rented garage across the San Fernando Valley. A couple years later back the other way to storage in Burbank, then to a small home shop I had after moving to San Diego. In 1995 it was needed for business where it served another 15 years. When the time came that I'd had enough of that it finally came home again, now to a 1200 sq. ft. garage built by myself and Dad back in 2002 when he was 80.
Here it is; that workbench through all it's use and moves had become a little worse-for-the-wear. Earlier in the summer when I had brought in a punching machine I wanted which had a very particular footprint that needed to be accommodated, my old task buddy was finally facing the one thing that would bring it's end after it's 45 years...it didn't fit now! It was finally time for something new, maybe a little tougher and nicer-looking, and designed for the space.
It was kinda sad to have to haul my old companion (and the product of Dad's handiwork) outside to give it the chopping up it's own predecessor'd had suffered long ago. I remembered about that glue he had squirted under the Masonite in 1970 and peeled the deteriorated material away to put it in the light again nearly half-a-century later.
You can see about how tough this thing was built...plenty of wood in there, and lag screws not just nails.
I hafta say I was getting a little sentimental at this point. Really, with a little work it could have been repaired but still I needed a new one and I didn't know anyone who could use this. Why not try to take a few of the things that could still be used and transfer them on? It would give the replacement some of the spirit of the first, and I think I could live with that. So the drawers were set aside to not go to the firewood pile, and the small stainless panel with the electrical tester was removed and saved.
Hello, Loren here. Car guy, metal fabricator also (sometimes work, sometimes hobby). Along back in these pages exists a thread of a project of mine. And, another. Also maybe two more? They don't get attention for long stretches, usually set aside for something else although small bits of progress plod on...
Rather than go back and bring those up separate, I'm gonna start just posting things on one thread and the theme shall not be this car or that project but rather car-related work in general and the only continuity will be how time goes on. The work in the post may be anything more-or-less car related...if it's not an actual vehicle, the techniques or ideas could still apply. Are you with me? If so, welcome to the MM&MF thread and if you have anything pertinent to post in here yourself, like how you made one thing into something else with a hammer one day and it's too minor to start your own thing about it, have at it. I won't regard this as my thread only.
So with that intro, I'm going to start with something that's not a car but I couldn't do much mechanical work without it. We've spoken about work benches around here...who has, who doesn't, how much effort is appropriate to put into such an item. I myself couldn't get by without a good one.
The Workbench, Part I
I may have been around age ten (making it 1970) when I wandered into Dad's workshop after dinner to find him with a hammer and saw breaking up the old table against the wall he had been building odd things out of wood, metal and wires on for all my years. Destruction! Wow, can I help? No, I'll get hurt. Can I watch? Not 'til after the nails and splinters stop flying. He hauled out the debris through the smallish door, swept the place up then started cutting and bolting-up 2x4's and 4x4's and plywood to make it all over again; a brand-new work bench, not just a table, this time bigger and heavier with drawers and everything. Measure, cut, pound, fasten...the last thing he did was squirt a few giant random lines of white glue over the plywood top in preparation for laying a final sheet of 1/8" Masonite, hardened-one-side, down on top. Man, I really wanted to be the guy with the Elmer's, I'd never been able to handle a bottle of glue like that without getting into trouble. He did let me squirt a circle as I recall, then it was covered forever with surface material and tacked down with about a hundred tiny finishing nails.
He capped it all off with some brackets to hold pliers etc. and a small stainless-steel front panel made at his work, for testing power presence and continuity on 110v electrical devices. I thought that really looked neat.
For years he built and repaired things on that bench. He riveted together box-shape hiking backpacks for our yearly fishing outings that looked like they belonged on spacesuits. Fixed the Mix-Master, listening to ball games on the radio. When moving day came in the mid-'70's from the big house he'd built with Mom (didn't borrow a cent) to a small rental so as to use the money elsewhere, that workbench would not fit out the door so he took a circular saw and cut it into sections half-way up to move out. When it got to where it was going, he patched it back together with aluminum plates and some new plywood.
After perhaps five years it moved again, this time in one piece to a property he was improving on so as to sell for retirement money. As that project progressed he made new built-in workbenches at that location, and ten years after it was built the old one became mine.
I moved it in a tiny box trailer from there in Sunland/Tujunga CA for use in an industrial unit a buddy and I were renting in Glendale, then as time went by to a rented garage across the San Fernando Valley. A couple years later back the other way to storage in Burbank, then to a small home shop I had after moving to San Diego. In 1995 it was needed for business where it served another 15 years. When the time came that I'd had enough of that it finally came home again, now to a 1200 sq. ft. garage built by myself and Dad back in 2002 when he was 80.
Here it is; that workbench through all it's use and moves had become a little worse-for-the-wear. Earlier in the summer when I had brought in a punching machine I wanted which had a very particular footprint that needed to be accommodated, my old task buddy was finally facing the one thing that would bring it's end after it's 45 years...it didn't fit now! It was finally time for something new, maybe a little tougher and nicer-looking, and designed for the space.
It was kinda sad to have to haul my old companion (and the product of Dad's handiwork) outside to give it the chopping up it's own predecessor'd had suffered long ago. I remembered about that glue he had squirted under the Masonite in 1970 and peeled the deteriorated material away to put it in the light again nearly half-a-century later.
You can see about how tough this thing was built...plenty of wood in there, and lag screws not just nails.
I hafta say I was getting a little sentimental at this point. Really, with a little work it could have been repaired but still I needed a new one and I didn't know anyone who could use this. Why not try to take a few of the things that could still be used and transfer them on? It would give the replacement some of the spirit of the first, and I think I could live with that. So the drawers were set aside to not go to the firewood pile, and the small stainless panel with the electrical tester was removed and saved.
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