This Old House #4: Deep, Dark, Dungeons!

Okey Dokey.Believe it or not, this one of my favourite parts of this house.  Creepy things are behind this door...



Don't mind the mess in the kitchen. We haven't really unpacked as the plan is to (hopefully) have all new cabinets installed in the next couple of months. Anyways, lets head downstairs.



Yup. Thats dirt. Kinda neat how you can see the different layers as it goes down,



And if you look close you can even see the grass / roots from what is probably the virgin desert sod.



Apparently there used to be a boiler in the second floor as well as the basement- well, here's the remains of the boiler that used to be in the basement. This was not its original location. Not sure why it's partially cut up- but my guess is someone attempted to get it out of the basement, got it partially cut up, ran out of steam and just dragged the rest of the shell into this corner.



Remnants of knob and tube wiring. None of it's currently hooked up. Don' think there's even any wire left, just a few of the knobs.



Crawlspace under the front living room. Bricks are holding up a pipe that is supporting the floor joists. I believe this was an attempt at making the floors less saggy / creaky, and a successful one at that. Home inspector was impressed with how "solid" feeling the floors were.  If I remember correctly, Bishop Adams helped put this and a few others up.  Fitting- he sure put up a lot of support to everyone around him in his life, and I'm proud to have a reminder of him here.



Here's the utility room. Not too big. I was thinking it would be a great spot to set up an indoor pistol shooting range shooting into the dirt, but wife wasn't too keen on that idea.



The brick mixed in with the lava block is the base of a currently extinct chimney. Don't know how far up this one goes.

Some interesting wiring here.



The only ventilation in the basement comes from this window.



Furnace isn't too old, and the water softener is maybe 2? years old.



I just love the lava block foundation.



Rough cut floor joists and underside of the wood flooring. I believe its Red Pine?



Old plumbing that may have gone to an extra sink when it was an appartment? Also another chimney base in the foundation. This one goes all the way out, and the pot bellied stove in the upstairs library is connected to it. Going to give that one a try this winter.



Fun fun! Need to start researching vapor barriers. Soooo many things to do.

Alphatig 200x TIG welder #5: vintagespeed's playing around.

Vintagespeed has been using his welder quite a bit.  Here's what he's been up to lately:

another update. i know my welds aren't great but you can show-off yours & challenge your buddies on IG with #tigcubechallenge

i need to purge better on my SS, learning, learning...





i ordered up some stubby cups & gas lenses from HTP, when they get here i'm hoping to be able to lay down some better welds on thin. and better gas coverage for stainless too.

a buddy of mine challenged me (and the Alphatig) to weld two beer cans together....but i only drink beer from bottles.



it's ugly, but it's getting better. right about when i'd get a nice tight bead going it'd blow out. a couple more tries and i think i'll have a nice one.

the machine does fine on thin. you have to move really quickly and if the puddle starts to spread out, get off the pedal. and keep a VERY close position with the tungsten, what you see in my fail above is too much arc length and not enough speed.

i'm building a girder front fork and using this dyna hub for it, it's going to be a big ass spool hub and i needed to fill some left-over rotor bolt holes after turning it.



dirty, dirty cast aluminum hole filling:


there's extra for re-turning the hub after i drill through the hole pattern from the other side so both sides match:


obviously i dipped a few times filling those holes, hard to get into the bottom and fill solid all the way to the top and i was nervous about packing too much heat into it and blowing a hole. but i think it turned out just fine for a non-critical, non-space shuttle-type of weld. without the Alphatig, i'd just be staring at it sitting on my bench instead of actually getting it handled.

2015 School Year!

So at the end of last year a fellow / former student (I think) came in and spent a day shooting random little clips. This is what he put together. Freaking AWESOME!

There are a few clips from my shop and some of my students projects and even my ugly mug in there for a second or two.

Ready or not, here they come.  The 2015 school year is here!



Students show up tomorrow. Think I'm ready, but it seems like there's always SOMETHING that didn't get done on time.



The entire shop in panorama:



And mega kudo's to our tech guys for updating / expending my "computer lab". Sweet!




On your marks, get set, GO!

Alphatig 200x Tig Welder #4: vintagespeeds welder and review!

So I started a thread over and ADV Rider (found here: http://advrider.com/index.php?threads/alphatig-200x-review.1041922/page-3 ) about my Alphatig, and another fellow there ended up buying one as well.  He gave me permission to share his thoughts and pics of his welder here, so here you go!


Without any further ado, here's what vintagespeed has to say.

So i've had my AlphaTig 200 for a few weeks. the shipping from Amazon was super impressive, i ordered it on a Wed mid day and it arrived at my door for free on Friday. how's that for service? it was well packed and arrived unscathed.

the machine is good looking, has lots of bells & whistles and weighs about 40lbs, much lighter than my MIG. i bought a 120cu/ft bottle of Argon and some 2% Lath sacrificial tungstens and some filler; 4043 1/16 and ER70S-6.



if you're considering this machine, dont even power it up until you have a 240v circuit for it. it's seriously not worth the time to try to use it on a 120v service line, it works but it's not happy. when i finally pulled my 240v and ran it for the first time on 240v it was literally night & day difference, the pedal was more responsive, the arc was cleaner and the machine hummed along quietly even at high amperage. just beautiful compared to the noisy and raspy way it ran on 120v.

when i first got it i did some DC to get familiar with it and was fairly successful so i switched over to AC and spent many agonizing days questioning my sanity for trying to learn something new....but then i did something that opened my eyes. i switched it back to DC and tried to run a bead with it and hated every minute of it! i jumped back to AC and never looked back, welding aluminum is awesome! it's clean, quiet, and enjoyable. this machine really does weld nicely on aluminum, every review i read said the same and they were right.

i've used all the features of the machine and i most like just running off the pedal, but pulse is really great if you turn it up insanely high speed and just feed it filler. it's almost like cheating. i need to spend more time on pulse and try to really tune it in, if i was doing some kind of repetitive task it would be wonderful for that.

i'll post some pics after i make a new batch of coupons to stick together. last night i was just running some beads at 175amps on 3/16 aluminum plate and the machine was quietly humming along at 170hz laying nice pretty, shiny beads.

i'm stoked on it and will report back with some pics and any issues that arise. i'm almost ran out of argon so i'll pick up a fresh bottle next week and keep buzzing away. so far so good!

Thoughts on bein' a teacher.

Well, here we go again. Starting year 7. First item of business at the faculty meeting: Anyone wanna take an early retirement package or do we have to lay off 4 teachers? It seems that our brilliant former superintendent overestimated the demand for this year. Not that he's around to have to clean up the mess.

Long story short, we start the year in the hole, again. Hoping I still have any type of budget to play with but we'll just have to see how it goes. At least I still have a job for the time being.

On the positive end. Its going to be a busy full year (thats a GOOD thing, right?!). Going to try a few new things, hoping to be able to get lots done with my (very large) new classes.  Several new teachers to meet and get to know.  Lots of old timers back at it still and I'll enjoy working with them for as long as possible.  We've got a PHENOMENAL administration/support team and great faculty. Onward and upward! Students arriving in 5, 4...

This Old House #3: Hidden Treasure.

So on top of this wicked awesome house, the people we bought it from left us some "hidden" treasures. I'll be throwing them in randomly to help keep this going a bit, especially as I start school tomorrow.

Here's the first hidden treasure. This giant armoire(?). No info, no markings, have no idea when it was brought in to the house, just that it looks fairly old but not ancient. I say that because I doubt a *really* old armoire would have had any type of glass, let alone a mirror this size...





There was some serious head scratching about how to move it... We wanted to put it in a different room. I noticed it was kinda shaky- when you open the door the whole thing shifts to the side. I got to looking an it turns out the whole thing breaks down into much smaller pieces rather easily. Loosen a couple of "nuts" on the top, and a couple more on the bottom, and viola.

The whole top pops off.





The sides could easily come off too, but this made it short enough to fit through the doorways.



Has some pretty cool carvings,



And dovetail fittings.



Has a wooden "lock box" inside behind the door, and then the drawers on the front. The lock box looks like it was added later but still has working skeleton key locks.

Any ideas on age or manufacturer?

John Deere Greene but a little bigger than normal!

So dorkpunch joins the major leagues...



This is a 1955 John Deere 60. It came with the house we bought and theoretically ran, but had been parked a year or two before and sat since. The nieces and nephews thought it was the best playground equipment in the world! The feller in the pic is who we largely have to blame for my engine addiction... He taught me everything I know over several summers spent working at his shop. He also has a thing for Deere's.





So I got it running, but... Watch the video. Right at the 33 second mark.



COVERED everything within about 20 feet in hydro fluid. Luckily all I needed was a shower, but I usually need those anyways so...

Don't have to worry about the rust getting any worse for a while either.



Took some doing, but it RUNS AND DRIVES! Had battery issues at first, then I couldn't get the clutch to disengage so I had to pop the cover off, loosen the 3 adjusting nuts almost all the way off, and let it smoke a bit. 10 lbs of crud and rust came out from under the cover. Blech. Got some air in that flat tire, figured out how the blinking shifter works, and viola!



And the first drive!





Took me 2 weeks of tinkering on it here and there for 5 minutes at a time between other projects.  Mostly because I had to sit and wait for the battery to charge, again.

It has a looonggg ways to go.  This poor thing has been used like you would expect a 60 year old tractor to be used.  The loader is terrifying, the cable pulleys are all about ready to pop off.  If that were to happen, the cable that sits right behind my head would suddenly and rapidly move forwards... Not pleasant to think about.  Hey!  One more thing to add to the list...

This Old House #2: History Lessons.

Okey dokey. Hows about a history lesson?

Like I said, the house was finished in 1903. Since then, it has (supposedly) been a home, apartments, a school, a museum, CONDEMNED, and then a home again. I'm hoping to dig up some more info on the history of the house from when it was built to about 1975, but from 1975 to present I have pretty darn good info. We are purchasing it from a daughter that inherited it from her mother I think somewhere between 1995/2000. The mom had bought it in 1976, supposedly saving it from being knocked down to make way for newer houses. So for the last 40 years it's belonged to the same family, but everyone around here STILL refers to it by the name of the original builders. Kinda funny.

Pic of the house supposedly from around the time it was finished in the early 1900's.



Couple more from between then to maybe the 60's?







And a pic when it was a musuem.



Here's where it gets fun. When mom bought it in 1976, she started this.



Which has these.









She has hand drawn maps for the yard, where she planted all the trees, drawings of each floor and then individual rooms detailing what she changed and how she went about doing it.







And she even has a bunch of pics from who knows when. Apparently, the house had been painted white at some point, and then sand blasted back to original brick. Don't know if she was the one who did the sandblasting or not. Notice the lack of the porch and the cupola? on the roof.



Porch is back, still no cupola.



This is the back of the house. Now there is a carport attached to the bump there, and lots and lots of trees.



There were also a couple of interior pics but nothing that really shows much of what was going on.






Now its our turn to start / continue the story!

This Old House: dorkpunch Edition.

Y'all thought I was dead, didn't ya?

So, not to jinx anything (knock on wood and all that) but it looks like we are set to close next week. We have been working towards purchasing this house for over a year.

A bit of back story: We've been looking to "upgrade" for a couple of years now. We knew our price range, we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted, but there was just nothing that fit the bill. We *love* our teensy little community. I got to thinking about an acquaintance who mentioned they were going to be retiring eventually. They have this gorgeous old house, that oddly enough I would see ever time I pulled out of our driveway- it was 2 blocks away at the end of the "T". I called him and one other acquaintance who also had a home a couple of blocks away the same day, explained our situation, and asked them to let me know if they were ever interested in selling. Well, we got a call back saying yes, they were planning on retiring in the next year or two anyways so why not come over and take a look at the house to see if its anything we might be interested in.

Lets just say its about as close to love at first sight as you can get. Both my wife and I (and the boys) *loved* it. The boys took a while to warm up to it but warm up they did! We worked out a deal giving them time to get retired and figure out what they wanted to do with life and also giving us time to sell our home and get our ducks in a row.

The best laid plans...

Didn't have any luck getting our house sold. Through a series of small miracles, we have been able to liquidate some assets (er... sawdust some timber?) and find renters for our house. So in the last 3 weeks, We've moved out, moved in, spent a week at Scout camp, unpacked, hauled more stuff, cleaned the old house, still working on a few other items over there that need attention, got the renters moved in, hauled more stuff, etc etc etc...

I'm pooped. School starts in a week and a half.

Anyways, without further ado- here's This Old House.













Some random specs:

Started being built 1897/98, and finished in 1903. Has had a very interesting and storied life, of which I hope to chronicle here. Sits on 1.3 acres, has a wicked awesome 30x60 shop and lots of space and one of the best parts- LOTS AND LOTS of BIG trees!

Wish us luck in getting all the i's dotted and t's crossed next week!