Precious Metal, the phoenix from the ashes!

So I don't follow sports.  At all.  Not even the gear head "sports"- Nascar, MX, etc.  Don't get me wrong, I love the science and engineering behind all of it, but I just don't have time for that sort of thing.  That was, until last year.  I discovered the Reno Air Races through the coolest bird I've ever seen- a highly modified P-51 Mustang.

They had a pretty good run last year.  This year, only a few hours from their home base in Florida, the plane caught fire on the ground at a fueling stop.

At first, it sounded like the goose was cooked.  The cost involved with getting her back in the air was astronomical.  However, it seems I wasn't alone in my love for this plane- there was a tremendous outpouring of offered help.  Thom Richard, the pilot, retracted his statement about the days of Precious Metal being over, and issued this statement:


"Dear Race Fans,

Precious Metal is more than an airplane; she's larger than life. You have all proven it since our ground fire incident mere hours ago. The groundswell of support is humbling. So what are our options? We could throw in the towel and move on from this tragic chapter and leave the world wondering what could have been.

Or...

We could, in true Team Precious Metal fashion, NEVER GIVE UP! Precious Metal does not deserve to be parted out and disappear into the history books as a failed attempt at the World's Fastest Motor Sport. She deserves to rise out of the ashes in true Phoenix fashion and prove her worth!

Everything is repairable; it's all a matter of capital. If we can raise the necessary funding to make this happen, she will race again!

Many things have to be repaired: wings, fuselage, engine, systems, cowling and last, but not least, her famous paint scheme. The Precious Metal program is run on countless hours of dedicated volunteers and a shoestring budget. This most recent set back is too much of a financial burden for the program to handle. As we know, a setback is just a setup for a comeback. Which brings us to our proposed solution. Here's Team Precious Metal's offer to you, our fans and supporters:

We will give you one square inch on Precious Metal for a donation of $50 towards our rebuild. We will fly your picture around the course embedded in our new paint scheme and you can be part of resurrecting one of the most iconic race planes is history.

Team Precious Metal will be in Reno this year. We will have our pit and sell our team gear. Chances are we'll provide some evening entertainment as well. Come see us there and purchase your squares!

There are several ways to support our cause: through our Precious Metal gear sales, our newly invented onboard picture program, or by supporting our sponsors and purchasing their products.

There's no limit as to how many square inches you can purchase, we'll just make your picture larger! Or submit pictures of friends, family, pets or whatever you desire. Precious Metal is the people's racer. And with your support she will growl around the course again!

Make your mark in air racing history here:

US fans: https://squareup.com/market/AirRaceTeam

Foreign fans: http://warbirdadventures.com/inc/sdetail/160/3086

On a personal note, air racing has been the most rewarding experience I have ever had. Not in the form of trophies and bragging rights, but in the form of enthusiasm, excitement and dedication of the fans and crewmembers. It's been a magical life experience, which I've been very fortunate to be a part of. We, as a team, will do whatever it takes to keep the dream alive. Please join us in making history and carrying on the legacy of the World's Fastest Motor Sport!

Thank you for making it possible,

Thom Richard"

I'm writing this in hopes to see this incredible plane back in the air again.  Do your part, help out if you can!  Hoping for blue skies again for Precious Metal!

They have also set up a gofundme campaign here:  http://www.gofundme.com/dg4s583w

This Old House #6: Excavating for Hidden Treasures.

Yesterdays project- excavating some of the ruins that occur when you move... We started moving stuff from the storage room over to the "library" room they had emptied out. Most of it was irrelevant junk not commonly needed that we probably should have just tossed. We moved maybe a load or two a month for several months, and then when we moved officially the room got stuffed full with everything we just wanted out of the way for a while.

I didn't take a proper before picture, so here are some half way through pics. Stupid chandelier lights make it really hard to get a good pic.



The whole center area was stacked up with totes, bathroom stuff, and clothes / blankets in garbage bags.





I relocated a bunch of the long term storage stuff into a closet, got the bathroom type stuff put up in the laundry room storage, and the board games moved to their new home in the built in cabinet downstairs. The rest of it got re-stacked and a little more organized.

There was a built in bookcase right here, so there wasnt any carpet. You can see more wood floor. I think the wood floor upstairs is going to be REALLY rough when we eventually rip up the carpets. Can feel all sorts of wonky things through the carpet.



And that brings us to our next Hidden Treasure.

This little stove was left behind. Aside from the little electric heater built into the bathroom ceiling, this is the only "permanent" heater upstairs.





It's a 112 Oak model, made by the Peninsular Stove Co.











Neat little stove that appears to be in great shape. No proof for sure but from what I could find on the internet it was probably built around 1920. Don't know that it'll put out much heat but we'll give it a try and see how well it works. Chimney may have some issues too, its a little to short apparently, and sometimes doesn't get the best draw.

Finished with the library for now.





Stove's all dug out and "useable".



Trying to decide what to do with these ginormous book shelves.



And here's a little sneak peak at a future Hidden Treasure report- The table was also left behind... Solid would and weighs a LOT.



Managed to get all this done Sat. morning, and still had time to get a couple of paying jobs done in the shop and have a wiener roast in the fire pit last night!

This Old House #5: Labour Day and Wood Floors.

Labour day and we be labourin. Here's the front room- our first project.  Some before pics:







The trim, while it looks really cool, is NOT actually a wood grain. It was all hand painted with a roller to look like wood grain. I like it a lot, but after some discussion it needs to go. The trim will be white to brighten in up a bit and add some contrast to the wood floors under the carpet. We'll keep the yellow for now. Spent the day sanding and painting. Still have to tape and paint all the little edges everywhere, but its starting to look good.



Peeled back some more of the carpet. We had pulled a little corner back and were excited by what we saw- floor looked to be in pretty good shape. Of course, you KNOW it couldn't be that simple... Right!?





Yeah, the wire there by the door... Not too impressed with that.

  Haven't talked with Mrs. Punch yet, but the carpet will probably get rolled back in place while we finish the painting in here and then redo the dining room. The floor is definitely salvageable, but its going to take some elbow grease. I think it would be best to get the dining room done and any other room downstairs that we plan on having as a wood floor, so we can rip all the carpet out at the same time and sand / seal / stain / whatever we decide on the floors all at once.

Suggestions?

"It doesn't matter what you make, and it doesn't matter why. The importance is that you are making SOMETHING."

 

Love this.  Wife and I were talking about something the other day that made me remember this post I had started a long time ago.  We like to think we've done okay for ourselves.  Our conversation basically boiled down to the wondering why we were relatively "stable" in our lives.  What we decided is that because we know how to "make", create, build, DO- we've been able to save ourselves a LOT of money.  I was looking at a diagram the other day that showed what basic repairs on an average vehicle would cost.  This isn't the same diagram but you get the idea:

FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY THREE DOLLARS!?!?!  For an ALTERNATOR?!  Holy cow.  The alternator all by itself is usually less than a hundred bucks, and unless you're working on a foreign car they aren't that hard to change.   I just replaced the starter in Mrs. Punches car.  Took maybe an hour, and the starter itself cost something like $65.  Not to mention we purchased the car for under $1,000 in need of some work, with low miles, fixed it, and have put almost 70k miles on it in the last 5 years. 

Moral of the story- everyone, man-woman-or child- should now how to weld and sew, and everything in between.

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!