The first step for my shop

[Frank S]

You young guys sure like grunt-work. 
Wish I was as young as you.

My wife is always saying if I don't stop doing some of the things I do instead of my number being 66 she will have to invert it to 99 because that will be the years my body will be like sooner than expected

[Scruff]

I used to work in rock and roll and a circus for a while. 100hour weeks were pretty normal. I'm quite enjoying moving to the slow paced electrical engineering role. Show up to work...spend two hours talking to the client...rude not to but it's taking me a while to adapt.
I used to live in a van too...haha...took me a while to adapt to always waking up in the same place too, and remembering where I parked.

Arah I probably do the same hours but on the keyboard instead of up a ladder.

There's no future in the entertainment business. Legacy of contaminated ground, atmosphere and punters' memories (or not). Catharsis is over-rated.
My hat's off to you Frank.


I can't help but notice, if you'll pardon my back seat mechanicing. That bus frame only needs 4 wheels.

[Frank S]

That's all it has 4 wheels 6 tires and rims 
Sorry an old joke I used to use to win arguments with people. the term wheel on a vehicle is often referred to as the rotating assembly on any given spindle. especially back in the day of the Dayton spoke wheels trucks and trailers used to so commonly use.
the term 18 wheelers was probably coined by some song writer because 18 tires just didn't have the right ring to it.
 the Army always called their tactical vehicles either 4x4 or 6x6 and so on even though they used to have sets of duels on them

[Frank S]

Worked some on the stairway today
the landings and treads are in place. I ran out of 2x12s so for now the top 4 steps are 3 2x4s each
 Now I have to get the walls and railings up so no one can miss step and fall

[Scruff]

 

The front tyre looks a bit pancaked. I'd try saving her and her rim by putting a rear rim with an inflated boot on the front...

....I'm totally steeling that joke. 

[Frank S]

The front tyre looks a bit pancaked. I'd try saving her and her rim by putting a rear rim with an inflated boot on the front...

....I'm totally steeling that joke. 

That is my automatic braking system. Actually about the only thing I found the teeth on the bobcat bucket were good for flattening tires when you least expected it

[Bruce S]

That's all it has 4 wheels 6 tires and rims 
Sorry an old joke I used to use to win arguments with people. the term wheel on a vehicle is often referred to as the rotating assembly on any given spindle. especially back in the day of the Dayton spoke wheels trucks and trailers used to so commonly use.
the term 18 wheelers was probably coined by some song writer because 18 tires just didn't have the right ring to it.
 the Army always called their tactical vehicles either 4x4 or 6x6 and so on even though they used to have sets of duels on them

Frank; this one got me to remembering the Army's "use" of different vehicles and how we had to "FIX" what they hauled back .
Remember these?

6x6 that could be driven as a 5x6. Engine was a 353 diesel.

Bruce S

[Frank S]

Frank; this one got me to remembering the Army's "use" of different vehicles and how we had to "FIX" what they hauled back .
Remember these?
(Attachment Link)
6x6 that could be driven as a 5x6. Engine was a 353 diesel.

Bruce S

I hated those things. As if driving them wasn't bad enough having to shove your knees under the dash less foot room than a Vdub. When we had to umm "FIX" them, a general courts marshal for jack slapping your CO would almost be less painful, certainly less stressful. I always wanted to remove the trailers from 2 of them then connect the tractors together back to back fire them up and start them off in opposite directions to see which one would win.
 But hey those weren't the most challenging things to work on we had a couple of drivers play jousting with a pair of Anthony 6000lb forklifts. During the course of their play both of them managed to get the crab and cramp steering selections screwed up on them so neither still had straight line travel. Have you ever tried to drive an 8 foot wide machine through a 10 foot wide door at a 45° angle when every movement of the steering wheel made it try to pirouette 

[Scruff]

Ow-ar if we're digressing into ATV fancyin'
This machine's hypnotic. Only the Russians can manage to puncture a tyre.

I'm getting into perfomance sailboat racing in a big way...ohh can't wait for the Vandee Globe

..ah the things one does to avoid filing their tax returns...

[Bruce S]

Frank ;
Never had to pirouette like that but did have to un-a$$ a 5-ton wrecker during a hydraulic test. newly made Sgt quickly became a PFC ( he for got to put all the bolts back in ) boom was at pull extension and high-steppin' off it was almost easy , rode it to the ground with hyro-oil spewing all over the place. Needless to say I took the rest of the day off.

Scruff
Those look like those tries that they use for mud-racing around the sand flats here.
Sailboats are too much $$$ for my pocket.

I do miss some of the fun "stuff" the military came out with.

Cheers
Bruce S

[Scruff]

Ah ya just haveta get the right sponser Bruce!

I trade electrical fitments for day trips.

Apologies Frank, I'll stop spamming yer thread now and go do me taxis...

[Frank S]

Bruce; those Austin Western rotating wrecker/ crane booms were a lot of fun to work on. One of my 63B20 mechanics learned the importance of procedural disassembly and reassembly when replacing the bevel gear housing and why when I TI'd a vehicle for repairs I always noted page and paragraph in the TM's to review before starting repairs. 

[Frank S]

Ah ya just haveta get the right sponser Bruce!

I trade electrical fitments for day trips.

Apologies Frank, I'll stop spamming yer thread now and go do me taxis...

Scruff; had I been at the helm when the suit was standing at the top of my mast I would have quickly tacked the opposite direction lets see him do that dive from 50 feet in the air

[Scruff]

Hard to resist alright.

That's in the outtakes the boat canted when he was at 15m.

Reminds me of that time I was in the circus when I was trying to get a focus on a rope artist's position and being a lighting newb at the time; instead of using the shadow I climbed the rope to see if the light was in my eyes.



Then the artist came in. Told me to hold on and gave me whatfor at 7meters. 

{Edit} "The suit" is the one of the best sailers in the world by the way, it's his boat except the sponser paid for it. Interesting guy. He'd be a world champion if he'd ever slow down and stop breaking the boats doing 40knots

[Frank S]

Hard to resist alright.



{Edit} "The suit" is the one of the best sailers in the world by the way, it's his boat except the sponser paid for it. Interesting guy. He'd be a world champion if he'd ever slow down and stop breaking the boats doing 40knots

Wouldn't be the first time the cpt. the purser, or the owner was tossed overboard for one reason or another,
 Once while crewing (serving as extra ballast) in an open class  regatta down in the Gulf of Mexico, after being becalmed for 3 full days. at the first puff of a breeze sometime during the dark of night the owner/cpt. ordered full sail on his twin mast schooner before checking the weather instruments or the radio. The next puff of air was a full on 60 knot micro burst. What seemed like several hours in actuality probably less than half an hour the only one who wasn't drenched to the bone and half frozen from being pelted by rain drops the size of oil drums was the owner who had remained perfectly dry in his wheel house. He popped off some remark that didn't sit well with the 1st mate (His wife), so she tossed a couple of life preservers overboard then got him outside against the railings  and shoved him overboard. It took us hours to find him 

[Scruff]

 

I was going to add ...40knots (more like a rounded up 35 really) in his sleep. He lost a transatlantic race running aground after sleeping through the alarm having slept 1 hour for days on end single-handing. 24hour penalty for pulling himself out with an engine and still finished 3rd.
Finished 2nd in a cirumnavigation with a broken hydrofoil one third of the race in. I can't begrudge him the suit...it's a multi-million [insert currency of your choice here] boat.



I think the best leaders lead from the front.

I never ask an underling/pere to do something I wouldn't do myself (then I check it and often fix it after them anyway).
I also rarely ask someone to undo their work (if I c0cked up or made a bad call) I wait until they're not looking or divert them and then rectify it...bad for moral that.
Bad decisions don't make bad leaders, no decisions make bad leaders.

I've often put the foot down to my superiors and said get the robots instead man! Manitous not humans!
One of the joys of freelancing...I can fire my boss anytime I want.

I'm not saying there's a right or wrong way but this is my way.

[Bruce S]

I'll add my Apologies to Frank S for running this afoul of the OP too.

BUT. what we used to call being "neighborly" talking about past stuff is hard for me to pass up.

I've not missed one posting of Frank S's on this build, all the while wishing I could grab my skills and tools and just show up to hep a bit (even if it only means putting on the coffee).
 

Cheers
Bruce S

[Frank S]

I can be as guilty of hijacking my own threads as anyone else who chimes in bringing up things seemingly unrelated to the gist of the thread. I feel when this happens it is all part of dislocated conversational comradery.
 years ago on another forum which was essentially dedicated to preserving the history of a certain industry and all things related to that industry.  The problem was every time research into a particular study would head off in one direction there would be branches sprout off from the trunk line those branches could become limbs with branches of their own which eventually flourished with leaves on them.
 The admin hated this and felt that every subject should remain strictly in context so they would strip off the leaves and branches even at time the limbs. Pretty soon the research into that topic would stop. They never could understand that it was the veins in the leaves which were feeding the trunk line of the subject.
 Whereas had they thought for a moment that eventually blooms may have blossomed creating seeds which might eventually detach and become sprouts of new trunk lines of their own.

[Frank S]

After months and months or power tool abuse on my shop some of the aging cords began to fail one by one So yesterday I decided to do something about that.
 Armed with a few new cords I set in to repair this drill or that saw or a nut runner basically killing time to save time
 The first drill I repaired or replaced the cord on turned out to need new carbon brushes very badly so rather that complete the job I tagged it noted the size of the brushes to order and put it away then the next drill tuned out ready to be put back in-service a porta band saw just needed new tires a circular saw just needed a new end on the cord. on and on this went until I got to one of my nearly new Milwaukie screw guns that would only run if I joggled the reversing switch back and forth. I knew it was a switch problem so all I could do to it was get the numbers to order a new switch. that done the whole day had been killed   

[Scruff]

Most tools are designed or otherwise to fail at the switch. It's usually quite anaemic on cheap tools and even on good tools gets a hard time of it, being the interface of the device. Most users take the displeasure of a blunt bit out on the switch for instance.

As regards cable. "H07RN" (heavy-duty level 7, rubber jacket, neoprene conductor insulant) branded flex is the best for most porpoises. It's a heavy duty rubberised flex. €1 per meter this side of the pond, worth every penny.
In the cable world it's equivalent of grade 8.8 bolts.

Our building reg's dictate that's it's exempt from the need of protective conduit when surface wall mounted. It works out cheaper and much nicer to work with than solid core NYMJ and conduit.
Not suitable for chasing as cement will cause it to break down.

AKA TRS (tough rubber shielded) and pond flex.

[Frank S]

Scruff; my biggest pet peeve when it comes to the power cords on corded tools is from the cheapest off brand to the most expensive industrial grades is all of them come from the manufacture with undersized cords by at least 1 gage which shortens the overall use life of the tool itself . My next biggest pet peeve is seeing people thinking they can pull 15 amps for a circular saw or miter saw at the end of 300 feet worth of extension cords only rated for 10 amps each.
 I probably have enough heavy extension cords to reach my neighbors 3/4s of a mile away but by the time all of them are connected together the voltage drop would be such that about the only thing you could power off of them would be a 10 watt soldering iron   

[Scruff]

Does that 10W soldering iron get much work?! 

As a rule I find you can tell the quality of the tool by the length of the chord. It's a sign of how much control the bean-counters got.

Makita and DeWalt are pretty good they use H07 and a healthy 2m or better I quite often find.
I stopped buying super-market bargain bucket tools with PVC 300mm chords a while back. My e-waste has significantly less turnover these days I've noticed.

Having said that Makita gardening electrics are woeful. Mrs Scruff keeps igniting them with moderate use. I opened up a few to see if they were worth fixing. Nope...complete jank. 20 hour tools if that.

I built all my small gensets with the inspiration of not using any small engines on the property and rolling them around the garden.
Turns out every time with the choice between a 60kg €2k piece of hardware or a 100m 5kg cable we go for the cable every time. I love those reality wake-up calls.

I thought it odd once I heard a saying. "We always go for the lightest tool for the job"...because I always bought the heaviest tool for the biggest job I would ever do first before the nimble ones. Well turns out they were right...
My 10v Makita screwdrivers beat the 18V first outtov the toolbox nearly every job.

Artful Bodger has a good one too. "The human is the least reliable part of every system" I took umbrage to that too...until I realised he was right.

[Frank S]

when buying power tools you really have to watch where you buy them and pay close attention to their data labels almost all brands have 2 to 4 differing grades of the same exact model power tool. and not always all that easy to distinguish the difference between say a consumer grade and a contractors grade. And when I replace cords I want the replacement cord to be capable of handling locker rotor conditions for quite a while if need be, one of the reasons why new cords will almost be the next step heavier both in copper and in insulation  sometimes it may be a salvaged cord off of a larger heavier duty tool.
 But unlike you I find that Makita cords are among the worst my 3/4" 2 speed VSR combination drill/ hammer drill burned through 2 sets of carbons before I figured out most of the wear was caused by the power cord being undersized somewhere in the range of 1.3 mm or possibly 16AWG for USA standard this for a drill that had a data tag of 13 AMPS? I don't think so. When I finally got around to replacing the cord I went with 2.5mm or about 13 AWG its been 5 years since I've replaced the brushes.
 But I have an old industrial Makita 9" grinder that came with a 5+ mm cord 10AWG this thing is every bit as much as 20 years old and still has the 3rd prong on the plug

[Scruff]

almost all brands have 2 to 4 differing grades of the same exact model power tool.

'eff that for a game of soldiers plenty play that over here. If that's there M.O. I boycott them. I just get the ones that make good tools

 But unlike you I find that Makita cords are among the worst

The standards are slipping alright, Milwaukee is building down too.
I have angle grinded my angle grinder chord and lived to tell the tail...er I guess than proves nothing other than I've a high tolerence for stupidity.

16AWG for USA standard this for a drill that had a data tag of 13 AMPS?

You crazy kids. That drives me crackt. Gauge gets bigger reference gets lower.... ...What's bigger than AWG 00000? "Shut up! There's no cable bigger than 00000...we're not making anymore ya sarcastic tunt! Use two AWGs 000 and get outta my shop!"

AWG just serves for me to bias European suppliers or lookup cross-reference charts.
Your cable lugs!! AWG by fraction...oh my...it hurts!

But I have an old industrial Makita 9" grinder that came with a 5+ mm cord 10AWG this thing is every bit as much as 20 years old and still has the 3rd prong on the plug

Don't build 'em like they used to.

'effin bean counters

[Frank S]

Scruff don't you just know it. During the time I spent in the Middle East I probably had more fun out of proving to people their Makita power tools they were trying to sell were of one quality versus another due to the country of origin
 What they couldn't understand was
Makita Corporation (TYO: 6586) is a Japanese manufacturer of power tools. Founded on March 21, 1915, it is based in  Anjō, Japan and operates factories in Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, Romania, the United Kingdom, Germany, Dubai, Thailand and the United States. tools made in certain countries are not imported to certain other countries due to international trade restrictions.
 Mitutoyo is a company that has been imitated by other companies call them what they are knock-offs  in 2007 it became impossible for us to import measuring instruments for sale from the Kunrei-shiki/Nihon-shiki manner "Mitutoyo" company in Japan so we bought from Mitutoyo America Corporation. the only real Mitutoyo products sold in Kuwait from 2007 through 2010 were from our showroom. because of the Foreign trade commission's ruling against   unrei-shiki/Nihon-shiki manner "Mitutoyo" of Japan. we were the only licensed trader with the USA company in Kuwait.
 Many so called Mitutoyo products started showing up all over the middle east but were from the PRC IE fakes 

[Frank S]

A while back someone mentioned one of their reasons for liking my progress pictures was because of some what they termed as interesting things in the back ground. I don't remember if it was in this thread or even on this forum but I thought for the next couple of posts I would show some of those things in the background. Some are up coming projects and part of the reason for the shop being the size that it is. some are things I really should just sell off

[Frank S]

2nd set

[Scruff]

Hard to believe there's only one of you!

If yever need a fancy Jap. callipers or the like Frank you can proxy me in Ireland and I can send it on. We don't have trade restrictions (other than EU super-imposed ones), and our passports are golden tickets.

Something to do with being so harmless, unprogressive and never winning a war nor rebellion. No tanks (personnel carriers), no military ships (of stature), Air Force was mothballed because it couldn't keep up with your diplomats' private planes. Politically neutral because we'd rather spend a military budget on...I don't know what we're a decade behind the mainland.

You've clearly got more sense than me. The other thing in the background is dry ground and blue skies.

I spend a lottov time working on machines too and it rains here...a lot. I face the decision of Will I get wet or put a roof over it? pretty often. When I was younger I got wet. Now I just look at them getting wet.

[Frank S]

"you can proxy me in Ireland and I can send it on. We don't have trade restrictions (other than EU super-imposed ones), and our passports are golden tickets."
 ever try to send a liter of German made Pattex construction adhesive to the USA?
 Forget it, it will never get past the Brown's
 I can get a 3oz tube of the china made knock off glue but not the real stuff because it competes with the trash sold here called liquid nails   

[Scruff]

Ya'll haveta start hanging out with more sailers/boat builders Frank.

I know a few can mix things banned in every country.

[Frank S]

Ya'll haveta start hanging out with more sailers/boat builders Frank.

I know a few can mix things banned in every country.

no worries, I have a brand of paint that I can use as the resin for fiberglass repairs which if moisture cured and drives people crazy to think that a paint will have as high of a bonding capacity as some 2 part resin

[Scruff]

What's the paint?
The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

Fiberglass is mad.

If I buy some to fix a surf board its eye wateringly expensive.
If I buy some to fix a car its extremely expensive.
If I buy some to fix a boat its pretty expensive.
If I buy some to fix a roof it's not bad.

If I ever finish that hover van (threw in the towel for the Winter) I'm gonna photo all the empty tins stacked to the roof.
I think I'll start gutting that truck soon. 20 years old....I'm sure I won't find any rust...

I'm mad jealous of you guys south of the rust belt.
They just pour salt all over the roads here doesn't matter if it's +10°C or not...jobs for the boys!!

Some of us have winter tyres and have no problem steering with an accelerator. 
Can't expect people to learn how to drive around here, most of them are running single headlamps.  The best thing for everyone is to spray the roads in corrosives.

[Frank S]

The pain is the KBS rust seal, a moisture cured urethane formula. Clean the part usually a rusted out section of a body part to bare metal brush on a layer of the rust seal then  saturate the patch cloth in the paint and apply. The trick is since it is moisture cured as in 60 to 85%+ humidity is to wait between layered applications for it to cure before adding additional layers. it is not intended for structural or rather I've not tried it for structural. However on body panels particularly if there is a possibility of flexing it seems to do better than using resin since even though it cures as hard as nails it will still flex with the panel. the paint is only about 95% UV stable so if exposed to long term direct sunlight a top coat should be applied over it. the repairs are sand and grind able once fully cured as well.
 I learned this little trick many years ago with another brand of urethane paint with finely chopped glass fibers to fill trim holes in body panels instead of using body filler