Life Comes At You Fast

Remember this commercial?

That has been this year.  If I could find out who is running that switch, there would be sweet..... justice!  ha.

Update:

 Made friends with a welder here in town.  And I have spent some therapy time over there helping him getting underfoot.  He's patient, and hasn't thrown anything at me yet.  I'm hoping to trade some help for some TIG instruction. 

And I'd rather work till I sweat through my jeans and shirt helping someone than spend a 100 bucks to lay on a couch and talk to a stranger.  Hard work therapy seems to help my mood and outlook.  I don't have the head weirdness as much now as before.  Pressure waves still come when I have a conversation about 'that'.  And so far, the coming front has not caused my brain to go foggy all at once.

Decades ago, driving from Longview to Houston on 59, I passed through a cold front into warm moist air.  The windshield turned opaque gray in an instant.  It took wipers to clean it off until the defroster could bring the window temp up where it quit condensing water.  When the weather has changed in the last few months, my noggin has done similar things.  But it hasn't so far this week.  fingers crossed.

I hope to have more for you soon.  I started working on the Mr. Pete drill press vise...  Pics to follow.

Quality Assurance

 I'd thought about that plate and collar for a few days and nights...  Made sense to me.

Dropped the bundle off to the friend, and he said, "What is this stuff."

So, I drew a picture...  

"um.... you need to stop by, bud."

So, I essplained meself, and he liked what he saw.

 

Finished product.  

I love it when a plan comes together.  And most especially when the customer is happy.

Thanks for stopping by the shop.

Yeah!

Wednesday, 19 Aug - Nice thunderboomer is rolling past, good cool outflow.  Friend needed some work done, and it's not too hot to do it!!  WOW.  It's still August, and I didn't drown in sweat out in the shop!  Win.

An old tractor needs a new plate for water temp guage.

Friend got the plate made, and wondered if I could help with the threaded part.  Oh boy.

Drilled a scrap to 9/16, next is bore to .588, then try and thread it to 5/8x18...  Only need 3/8 of an inch of threads....  Fingers crossed...  First try was toast.  Not gonna work.  I couldn't be sure if I was using leaded steel or not, and that don't weld so good.

I can still hear the music and the announcer...

 

I remembered watching a "How It's Made", manufacturing air tanks for truck brake systems.  They had this little part, with pipe threads in it...  Hmmmm....  Found out it's name is thread-o-let. 

I was down in the oil patch, so I stopped by a valve supply house, and they had some.  Manger GAVE me one that is a 1/4 NPT and caked with dust.  So, I'm a customer for life.... 

Okay, let's go.

Saturday 22 Aug - Outside is tapered, can't grip that. It took 90 minutes to make the mandrel to hold this thing.  No tooling I needed was close to the lathe, and I'm rusty as a neglected tap wrench.  Finally got this thing done, threaded 10-32  on the end, and starting turning the bevel-o-let into a cylinder.  Missed my size by 2 thou, and that came back to haunt me.

Howie Man-drel

 

I have some 5C collets (not a complete set) and a collet block because of a gracious benefactor and mentor.  I missed sizing this for the one collet I had that was close, so it would be a booger to thread, but not a major problem.  

Temp sensor has a 5/8-18 thread, and, amazingly, I have a tap that size from the same benefactor / mentor.  Blew a 9/16 hole-o-let, cleaning out the old threads, and the proper size for where I'm going is 37/64"  Now, really....  What are the odds of having that....

I shoulda bought a lottery ticket too...

Thanks again to Mr. S.  I owe that man a lot.  He has invested a lot in me and in my shop.  Thank you.  I wouldn't be near where I am today without you.

Got the threaded collar done, and was thinking about it last night as I'm drifting off...  There is a bevel seal on the sending unit, and the collar needs to be centered over it.  Hmmmmm.....  Ordering up a centering plug.  

Got that turned down today, and ready.  Just need to grind the screws to length, and it's done.

Plug dimensions follow.  And I did get pretty close to hitting them all.  The plug needed a bit of polish to slide into the hole and collar.  

Went with a 10-24 screw instead of the 8-32...  Spec change in the field, no change order needed...  heh.

Man, is it ever good to be in the shop.  And with a cool front moving south and bringing rain twice in a week lowering the temps into the mid 90's....  Feels like Christmas in August. 

What a pain in the .... shoulder

 So, somehow, my old right should took it on the chin.  From Mike Tyson.  For a few weeks it's been hurting like a sum!@#%^&*....  Started radiating down my arm past my elbow.  So I thought, what is the worst I can do, make it hurt more?

Ask YT for senior stretching, and this vision of loveliness popped up and said, I'm here to help.

Gentlemen...

My arm feels so much better, I can sleep at night after just the second time. Yes, I am standing up and following along with what she is doing. I'm telling you, it made all the difference.  And she's easy on the eyes, too when I'm not hanging upside down and swaying like a "pendulum".   You are most welcome.

2nd Shift work

The Rusty Wrench Depot is actually a young man that started up a welding shop.  I've been getting under foot after hours.  He's got a lot of cutting to do, and I got to help him with his second hand band saw.  It cuts a lot straighter now, and I have a friend.  A friend who has a ton of rusty crap to paw through at some point.  Gotta help Phil out doncha know.

So, not much time to blog.  But I'm sleeping better.  Working basically IT from 0800 to 1700 and welder's irritant from 1730 to 2000...  I'll post more as I can. 

I have a new project.  Learned a new word, too.  Thread-o-let.  More to follow.

 And I got my scissor lift certification renewed for another three years.  yay me.

 Even small victories are sweet.  I'll take what I can get.

Thanks for stopping by the shop.  

Thanks Phil, and Irish for all the traffic.  You may not know how much I appreciate it this side of heaven.  But someday you will.

The Year of Reversals

To Do List:

Current projects on the languish:   The Three Tumico Terrors

    It's been blazing hot in the shop, and I don't have the heat tolerance I used to.

Future projects on the to do list:   

free for the asking.  mmmmmm, iron oxide....

I have seen those tap handles go for pretty nice coin.  Plan is to clean these up and put them up for sale.  I gotta get some cash flow in the positive direction.  I have everything I need to do it.  Just need to break the cheek weld with the chair, and get to it.

Status Update

This year has been nothing but a  good news / bad news joke.  And I'm the punchline.

Lots of sand in the air at work, and I finally decided to check again on the how and when of the pension at work.  I ran the numbers a while back and it showed about 2500 per month at the normal age of retirement.

Well, the numbers that I ran this week show it's closer to 25% of that number...  I'm at a loss.  So calls will be made next week to see if I'm mistaken or I spent 20 plus years in a gilded cage.

I was lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut last night.  I woke up at 0400 with this crushing weight of lost youth and wage potential.... 

It hit me like a brick, that this is like a betrayal.  And that is the worst.  In my mind, betrayal means the present relationship is undefined because you didn't understand the other party even though you thought you did.  The past is wasted, it was not what it seemed.  The planned future is gone, and what kind of boob am I that I didn't see this for what it is.  It is the destruction of reality as I understand it.  I guess there wasn't as much virgin ground to rip up as I have gone through this once already this year after the head injury.  That took about three months to come to terms with.  I'm sure there is more un-tilled soil in my field, but, God spare me that, please.

Then, I remembered that other men have been zeroed out later in life than this and done well for themselves.... 

"What Are You Prepared To Do?"

It takes industriousness and mental change to get over this.  I'm not wired to mope, or sit in the dark...  My mind started working out how do I turn this around?  What is holding me here?  Why is staying a good idea?  What is the best solution to what I see here?  What about me needs to change to harness this and sling shot off it?  What short term, medium term and long term goals need to happen?  What do I need to prune to do what needs doing?  Basically, a reordering of my entire life.  Overwhelming?   Yes, but necessary.

The plan is, throughout this weekend, to brainstorm what is positive about this position I find myself in.  What options do I see?  I've got to quit limiting the view, get on top of this, stand on my toes and look out to the horizon.

I ordered a couple books off my goto book site.  They'll be here in a couple weeks.  Nice cheap used books, from the Rich Dad series.  I need a fresh view from that perspective.  It's been on my list for quite a while, but I just never did it.  My previous forays into entrepreneurship foundered on the rocks...  And caused a crop of grief.  But I should have different issues now.  I learned some good lessons from the past.  I hope.  My goal is to leverage the info in the book to make smaller mistakes by aiming better. "Aim small, miss small."

I don't believe "the way is shut".  I think it's I'm not used to seeing this kind of situation as a positive place.  But I am seeing glimmers of that now.  I don't know if the head injury was a reboot into a new way of life, but things have gotten very different after that happened.  The world seems to look brighter and quite different than at anytime before.  The previous post was a glimmer of the change I'm seeing.

Postlude

I don't know if you even care to read about the status updates.  If not, I don't blame you.  There is enough heart ache out there to overload everyone.  Consider the status update title an exit ramp if you aren't interested. But I feel a bit of responsibility to keep you apprised of why I haven't posted like I had planned and where my head is at.  You have invested some time reading what I post, and I appreciate it.  

If you can take a warning from this, Great!  If you can take encouragement, Excellent!  If it kicks you off high center into a change, it was worth the time to write it up.  If you just laugh and point, then it was good entertainment.

I got work to do, thanks for stopping by.

What do you even call that?

I read a post over at BRM, and it started me thinking.  I've been doing something for a while now, that I find immensely enjoyable.  I don't even have a name for it.  Maybe facilitating?   Who knows....  Here's the comment I left over there:

I work for a major shipping company. We have seen our Christmas level volume since the lock down. I was just at a major location 2 days ago, and packages were stacked everywhere. The volume on Monday was overwhelming.

We have a mom and pop hardware store in town, and I hesitate to buy anywhere else. They have a lot of what you need, and can order in if you don't. The truck comes mid week. I know I could probably get it cheaper online, but I haven't yet.

I started "networking" with folks I meet now... An electronics engineer that is on his pension and working as a security guard (terribly underutilized, he is brilliant), a welder that just started a business a few months ago.... I aim to help them find work, keep an eye out for opportunities, as well as learn what I can from them and hopefully reciprocate with valuable knowledge.

I don't know if that even has a title... I'm working to facilitate as much as I can. At this stage of the game, it seems to be what I do best. I find things that others need and hook them up. Case in point: I wound up with a bunch of old western magazines from my dad, and found an author that could use them as background for his writing. I got such a charge from passing those on... it started a new chapter in my life. (no pun intended, but if you want it, it's yours, proof reading not included) I found some equipment that was about to be scrapped and got it to the welder as he needed it to do a project. His margin will be better with free material, and I traded for some welding lessons. 

As the landscape shifts due to societal, microbial, and normal change, being aware of alternatives is important.  How do I add value to my circle of influence?  This has become important to me.

I'm still working to find a way to pass on the skill set I have.   My kin have their own bent, so it has to be outside the family.  And I'm up for it.  We'll see how this plays out.  I'm starting to get excited about the possibilities....  May starve to death, who really knows....

Too Important to miss

This guy gets it.  I have been on the 'net since 1993.  I had a buddy that let me use his UofH account to surf around and read the usenets...

I Myspaced and Facebooked for a little while, but it was too constraining and appeared to be engineered to drain all my time.  Thank you, no.

I'm a social interneter. 

...the Social Internet is the frontier, the Agora of Athens, the Senate House of Rome, the Mead hall of the Vikings, where free men and women greet each other, exchange ideas, treat each other with the respect and measure due free individuals in a free society, where the individual matters as much as the whole, if not more.

Go, read the whole thing.  (RTWT)  He is a deep thinker, and I need to read folks like that to help me grow.

Oh, yeah....  I finished the second one....

On this one, I measured, cut, test fitted, and then finished the piece before final assembly.  The finish looks a ton better.  Still need to Deft the top, middle and bottom.  But Hanna may come for a visit, so, I'll wait for less chance of solid humidity.

Here's where I got the plans.

I really enjoyed the project, now it's time to clean up the shop.