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Motorcycles, tools, and garages! A little bit of everything mechanical and technical.

Sunday, December 27, 2015

This Old House #12: Baby, its COLD outside!

So the thermometer this morning said -12. Pretty, but YUCK.

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Interestingly enough- the shop is STILL sitting at about 32 degrees. Havent lit the fire in there in like 2 weeks...

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It was so cold that even our two kitties, who normally won't get within 10 feet of each other, decided to let past feuds lie for the moment...

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The outside temps mean the upstairs temps get a little low. Started checking things with the infrared gun. The one storage room upstairs with the door closed was a*little* chilly.

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I musta not been naughty enough for Santa, so I had to have a friend give me a bucket of coal to try out in the stove.

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Didn't take much to get it going,

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Threw in a couple of scoops of coal and viola!

HEAT!

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Stove works great with coal, which I guess isn't surprising since that's what it was designed for... Going to pick up a few buckets of free coal tomorrow. We'll see how well it works over this week while we're home.

Tuesday, December 08, 2015

Custom Hot Wheels: Steampunk 2-4-2 #4


Made the stack with a little piece of copper pipe and flared it with a flaring tool.

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Not sure about using the hood.

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Time for some nitty-gritty figurin'. Enter the glass and sharpies! Planning phase on how to bolt it all together.This was my first idea- laid it all out, bent it all up and didn't end up liking it.

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The goal was to hopefully get something along the lines of my penny engine in there so it could actually be POWERED...

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The first attempt at the frame:

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Looks like a pooper scooper. :bluduh

Attempt #2. Frame rails.

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Liking this- lots more room to tweak and adjust as I go, and I think in this case less is more.

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Yeah. Starting to dig that.

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This Old House #11: Thanksgiving and Dining Rooms.

What, y'all thought I gave up? Spent a portion of Thanksgiving break sucking up leaves...

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Then the snow hit, and it got COLD.

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Then we had a poop-load of people over for Thanksgiving dinner...

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And the day after Thanksgiving, my wife decided to enlist everyone that stuck around in ripping the dining room to shreds. Something along these lines:

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That left me to the simple task of peeling the wallpaper strip off the ceiling, cause, you know, I'm the tall one. :doh

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I scraped, I rolled, I sprayed, I sanded, I tired everything under the sun and that stuff DID NOT want to come off... Finally what ended up working sorta okay was the iron- yup, I spent the first three hours trying things out, and the last 2 hours holding that iron over my head while standing on a ladder, heating the strip up and scraping it off an inch at a time. Barf.

Moving on. Starting to look pretty good! One problem- never ask an "artist" to help you "paint".

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Alas, it was in an awkward spot and had that green showing from behind so it got painted over.

Some of the help.

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