The Merry Christmas Top Ten of 94/95 (very long, really long)
Patrick Olguin
A few months ago, there was a thread requesting that some of
the "Best articles of 95" be reposted for the benefit of
the recent throng of new people in this group. I volunteered
to collate this list, and then promptly fell down on the
job. Well, I'm back, and here it is. By popular demand, and in
no particular order, are:
1. The Shark
2. The Patternmaker's Toolchest
3. Death of a Workmate + follow-up
4. Gay Woodworkers (a parody)
5. BIG Plane in my mailbox
6. The becoming of a neanderthal
7. ActionNorm
8. Clamping with K-bodies/The Gospel according to St. James
9. Band saw trapeze act
10. The O'Deen FAQ (apologies, but a lot of misguided folks asked for this one).
Big Jim is not on this list, as it's available at Tom Gauldin's
ftp site: ftp.vnet.net /pub/users/scoundrl
Editor's note: There were literally hundreds, if not thousands
of "collectible" articles this year, and I'm dead certain that
I've missed some funny/entertaining/informative ones. I've
deliberately left off the flames, save for #4, which was an
excellent parody in it's context. My thanks to the thousands
of people who contribute to this news group
O'Deen
#1 "The Shark" - May 25th, 1995
From: Kenneth Black <bl...@JUPITER.ESD.ORNL.GOV>
Subject: Another Tool Collection Story
The following account is a true story and it is being written in the
spirit of Patrick Leach's recent pattern maker's tool collection story.
This story details what most probably represents a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity for me. It is the proverbial "big fish that got away" story
- however, in this case the "big fish" was an incredible tool
collection.
I live in Knoxville, TN, and I have been building a nicely equipped
woodworking shop for the past eight years or so. I have a full
complement of power tools and hand tools. Although I am not a
professional woodworker by trade, I have spent many hours studying
woodworking tools of all types. I primarily study hand tools - planes,
chisels, rules, etc.- and my constant companions are price guides for
older tools. With that background in place, I will begin with the
story.
In the spring of 1993, I traveled to visit my Mom in a Chicago suburb.
On a Friday morning at about 9:30 I picked up the local newspaper and was
scanning the classified ads section when I came across a small ad that
said, "Table saw and band saw for sale." Out of curiosity, I called the
number and asked about the saws and the lady said, "They have come in
droves." I asked her if she had other things for sale and she said yes
but she wasn't sure what was left. Since she was only a mile away, I
drove over to her house. When I arrived I was the only person at her
house.
The lady was about 75 years old (I'll call her Ardel) and was in the
process of selling her deceased husband's power tools so that she could
raise money to help her daughter pay-off school loans. Her husband was a
machinist who worked for about 40 years in the Chicago area. He died in
1973, and since that time Ardel kept his woodworking shop in tact. The
shop was in a small room about 15 feet by 8 feet but was masterfully
designed and organized. It was clear that this woodworker was very
meticulous about his tools and bought only the best money could buy.
When I arrived Ardel told me that many men had come to her house early
in the day. She had planned to sell only the power tools which included
(but not limited to) a table saw, band saw, drill press, shaper, jointer,
jig saw, lathe, and the accessories for these tools. The men, however, were
after the other tools she had that were stored in the drawers and
cabinets. She had a difficult time handling the situation because these
men were too aggressive. She told me that the above mentioned tools
sold very fast and she was proud to announce that she raised nearly
$300! Although I didn't see the power tools, based on what I saw
remaining I figure that the tools were either older Delta or Craftsman
brands. I explained to her that the tools were worth much more money than
that and that she should think about what she wanted to do with the rest
of the collection before selling anything else. After we became
acquainted, she allowed me to begin looking through the remaining tools.
I started my investigation about 10:00 am on Friday. I worked until 6:
00 pm on Friday, from 9:00 to 5:00 on Saturday, and five hours on Sunday
before driving back home to Tennessee. I never saw the whole collection.
The tools were tightly packed into large metal cabinets and large
wall-hung wooden cabinets. The tools were machinists tools, woodworking
tools, and mechanics tools. Most of the tools were in excellent
condition. Along one wall was a cabinet full of hardware stored in about
100 drawers, full of every fastener I had ever seen including sold brass
hinges and brass screws of most any size. The hardware selection alone
made me think that this guy must have bought out a hardware store before
he died. It was amazing and completely organized. I spent only a few
minutes looking at the hardware because the tools were beckoning!
When I began looking at the collection, a man came back to Ardel's house
(I'll call him "Shark"). He explained to me that he purchased "several" of
the tools earlier in the day and was interested in what was remaining
(I'll just say that the term "interested" is a misnomer - Shark was
sensing blood in the water and he was hungry!). He watched me as I
began cataloging the collection - in fact, he tried to stay at the house
all day with me! Since he had to leave to pick up his young child at
school, I was with Ardel longer than he. When he left, I explained to
Ardel that this guy was a "Shark" and he wanted to buy her tools for
very little money, and that she had to beware of him. At the end of the
first day, based on the tools I saw I was thinking the collection would
easily top $5,000. Was I ever wrong!
On Saturday, I began cataloging again and the Shark showed up to "make
sure Ardel was O.K.". The shark stayed with me most of the day and again
tried to stay there longer than I. Again he failed. Before I left, I
told Ardel that this guy meant business and she should not give into any
pressure he applies to her to sell him the tools. During the day, the
value of the collection kept climbing as I discovered wonderful tools,
some of which I had never seen before. By the end of the day, the
collection was topping $10,000 without much trouble. I started to
discuss with Ardel the techniques she could use to sell the collection
and maximize her income. I talked about selling the whole collection,
selling at an auction, or selling at a well planned yard sale. The yard
sale idea was imposing, however, since it would have taken a couple of
weeks to complete the cataloging and pricing of the tools due to the
shear volume of the collection. Since I had to drive back to Tennessee
on Sunday, I did not have the time to catalog everything and set
appropriate prices, not to mention the time needed for the research
needed to price some of the tools. Before I left her house, I explained
very clearly to Ardel the value of the collection and that I would
contact her on Monday from Tennessee to talk more about what she wanted
to do. She said she would like to sell me the entire collection, but I
told her I was not sure I could raise enough money. I told her that
I would only purchase the collection at fair market value - I was not
about to take advantage of the situation.
When I left her house I began thinking of this collection. How would I
raise $5,000 or so to purchase these tools? How would I be able to
transport everything to Tennessee? I began thinking of investors,
trucks that can carry some serious weight, etc. By the time I reached
Tennessee, I was ready to rob a bank! The passion was intense.
And now the rest of the story.
On Monday evening I called Ardel. And this is what she said (as close
to it as I could remember since my blood pressure spiked to the point of
nearly passing out): "Oh hi Ken. Do you remember "..." (the Shark)?
Well, he came over to my house yesterday after you left. He helped me
out." "What did he do for you, Ardel?", I asked. She said, "He plugged a
telephone into the wall for me. He is such a nice man."
At this point I new it was coming...
She said, "Yesterday I went to Sears and looked at the tools. I saw the
prices and have decided to sell the whole collection." I said, "Ardel,
I think you are making a mistake. Who are you going to sell them to?".
She said, "I am going to sell them to "..." (the Shark). I said, "How
much are you going to sell them for?" She said, "..."
Before I say how much she sold them for, I have a few comments I would
like to make. If I were the Shark and bought this collection, there is
no way I could use these tools. How could anyone work with tools from a
collection like this after having acquired them in such a devious
manner? This man blatantly ripped her off, and I was unable to stop the
bloody feast. I believe that when you work with tools there is a
connection between you and the tool, a spirit that develops over time.
This spirit cannot develop with tools that literally have been stolen -
at least not for me. In Patrick's case, he has a magnificent collection
that he will use in the proper spirit. The tools will live on along with
the spirit of their previous owners. In the case of this collection, it
will die piece by piece as the Shark sells a tool here or there for his
personal monetary gain.
So she said, "I am going to sell the entire collection for $300." Yes,
that is correct - THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS. I said, "You are selling
everything for $300?". She said, "Yes, everything." I said, "I wish I
could convince you otherwise, but apparently you have made up your
mind. I wish you luck."
So ends the tale. So ends the dreams. Even if I knew she would have
taken $300 for the collection, I wouldn't have bought it. I simply
couldn't do it. Could you?
Ken
#2 "The patternmaker's toolchest" May 22, 1995
From: Patrick Leach <le...@BEDFORD.PROGRESS.COM>
Subject: Re: alt.tools.hunting (was Re: Bagging and Emmert! (was re:
Bagging the big iron))
It all started on a recent trek home from doing the 9-5 selling my soul
to the 'man' thing, when I happened to notice a yard sale in my rear-view
mirror. I say to myself "screw it, I never find chi-chi at yard sales" (in
choicer expletives), and continue home. Besides, it was a Friday and yupster
pal was coming over the following morning to play with that bubinga - the
wood that launched a thousand slams in rec.norm - and I wanted to get a
start on jointing it.
Next week, on Monday, the yard sale is once again going on as I again
notice it in my rear-view mirror. This time, however, something told me
to turn around. I made a quick u-turn in the Dunkin Donuts pahking lot,
and pull into the driveway. My first impression of the wares was that it
was the typical chach-kees one always finds at suburban yard sales, but
at least there were no kids' toys or baby furniture. So, I decided to get
out of my bubba-mobile and have a look.
I walk into the garage, which right off the bat indicated to me that it
wasn't really a yard sale, but a garage sale. Out here in New England, we
have several kinds of sales - like tag sales, moving sales, yard sales,
garage sales, and I've even seen signs that read "Yard Sale in Basement"
(but that was in Fitchburg, so it's no wonder). Anyway, I digress.
Inside the garage, I immediately notice some tools hanging on a pegboard.
As I'm scoping them out, the owner of the place comes out and greets me.
He's a friendly fellow, in his mid-70's, who, if he lived anywhere near
Hollywood, woulda been a celebrity double for Burgess Meredith (but not as
the Penguin). He sees me eyeing the tools and tells me that they're not
for sale, that they are his users. I'm sorta pissed since there's a nice
centering head from a Standard Tool Co. combination square hanging there.
I appologize for checking out his tools, and walk around looking at all
the knick-knacks of days long past (salt and pepper shakers really do come
in an infinite variety) arranged nicely on two picnic tables. I'm about
ready to punt, and start to chant my standard mantra "I never find chi-chi
at yard sales" when I notice a hollow auger and a wooden tap and die sitting
on one of the table's benches.
I asked him how much, and he began asking me questions about them, to
see if I knew what they were. I was thinking to myself "hmmmm, he's either
starved for company or he must be thinking I'm a total post-neanderthal
maroon what wouldn't know an old tool if it came up and nipped him in the
arse." So, I answer his question, and then proceeded to the next round by
telling him a bit of the history behind each tools' manufacturer. This is
when the game started to get interesting.
For some unknown reason I mentioned the word 'patternmaker'. When I did,
it was like correctly answering the Final Jeopardy question of "The pro-
fession of my long-dead father". I instantly became his long lost son,
as he and I slugged it out trading patternmaker vollies in a game of one
upsmanship. He was totally amazed that I, being a 30-something-Chuck-Taylor-
wearing-in-sore-need-of-a-shave-who-looks-like-he-oughta-be-tending-a-
garbage-scow-for-a-living-'murican-male would have even a remote clue about
a trade that's all but dead.
He tells me about all the patternmaking that his father did while employed
at a firm just down the road from where he lives. His father made patterns
for machinery used to process wool. He then tells me that his great uncle
was also a patternmaker. The chat is going back and forth, and I'm thinking
"OK, it's time to leave - don't want the poochie tinkling on the Sheraton
sofa if I'm not home in time to let him out". I again ask him the price for
the two tools that I was interested in, and he says "20 bucks." I counter
with "American?" as I whip out a Jackson, and hand it over to him. But, he's
not through talking about patternmaking with me. He knows he's got a sucker
on the line, and he's playing him for all he's worth.
This is when he decides to tell me that he has a patternmaker's chest that
belonged to his father. This is when I decide to say the hell with the dog,
my wife can clean up the puddle. I then start to probe him for the parti-
culars, and he responds with vague answers, but he tells me that I can go
look at it. I'm starting to get this throbbing sensation in my groin area,
imagining what's to come. But it was all premature since he told me that
we couldn't look at it then, that he was expecting a phone call, and that
I'd have to come back later to have a look. We agreed that it be the
following day, and finally bid each other goodbye.
My mind is going nuts, with visions of #56's dancing in my head for
several hours, when reality suddenly hits. I tell myself to get a grip,
that the chest will be crap, filled mostly with air, and that all he'll
have in the way of tools are rusted-solid Coe's wrenches, crappy cherry
Stanley levels, taps and dies, and the usual tool detritus I luck into.
So, I set my expectations at that level, hoping that finding a #5 will
be a pleasant bonus.
I arrive at the guy's place the next day, and he greets me right away.
He asks me if I'm ready, and I tell him it's time to rock n' roll. The
chest is in the garage down at his son's house, which is a short walk
through the woods from where he lives. We're fighting the black flies,
chit-chatting about his acreage, when we have to cross a field of dog
jigs and the creator of them, right before the garage. We negotiate that
successfully (if you're wearing Chuck Taylor's, you learn early on to
avoid dog crap), and proceed to the garage, with Fido endeavoring to
introduce himself to my crotch and leg.
Inside the garage is a pile of stuff, all arranged about its perimeter.
We move to one side of it, and he begins to show me the feared pile of
rusted Coe's wrenches, etc. Sure enough, I thought, it's as predictable
as stink on crap that I'm gonna be offered rusted Coe's wrenches and
cruddy Stanley levels. They were all there, in their filthy glory, before
my dejected eyes. The view is salvaged somewhat by my noticing some old
patterns hanging on the wall, so I give them a look and comment to the
guy about what nice work his father did.
We turn a corner, and there's an oil-covered, beat-to-hell bench piled
up with open end wrenches, screwdrivers, and a host of other junk that all
belong in the Land of Misfit Tools. But, on the bench is an Emmert's
patternmaker's vise. I scope it out, asking him if it's all there, including
the near-impossible to find bench attachment which allows it to swing up
from the face of the bench. It's there, as he demonstrates. I give the vise
a closer look to see if the mounting bracket was broken and repaired, com-
menting to the guy that most are damaged one way or another. His wasn't
broken there, but the face plate was cracked. He didn't know that it was,
but it's a no-harm damage. He also has the original instructions for
mounting the vise. First time I ever saw them, and he later gave me a
photocopy of them.
He then leads me to the other wall of the garage, finally to show me the
chest. My eyes are sweeping across the floor trying to beat him to it. Thing
is, my eyes shoulda been looking up, since he was fumbling with a lock that
was chest-high. It's then when I first noticed the chest - there it was,
hanging on the wall, with two raised panels on the front, looking like some
4' x 3' x 1.5' piece of furniture you'd have behind your wet-bar to keep
junior outta the drambuie and cognac. This is when it finally dawned on me
that there was some real potential here; that this was no John Q. Pattern-
maker we were dealing with. More like John Q. Rembrandt, I thought.
The lock was giving him a bit of a hassle, but he finally managed to pop
it free. The massive hinges creaked as the front of the chest swung open to
the right. I damn near fainted with what treated my eyes! A chest that was
virgin, jam-packed with every freakin' tool what ever went into it. A chest
that hadn't had a tool added to it in over 75 years. A chest that you only
dream about or find on the back page of FWW. To get an idea of what this
chest is like, imagine a functional, non-decorative version of the Studley
chest. This is it, with perhaps more tools in it than that one has.
This chest wasn't made to be pretentious, just purely functional, with
every available space crammed with the tools of the trade - saws galore,
3 sets of chisel (none of which are cranked, strangely enough), machinist's
tools, bench planes, shrink rules, trammels, braces, drills, marking gauges,
drawers filled with whatever, blah-bity, blah-bity, blah. And get this,
there is even a mint Coe's wrench. There are two internal hinged doors
that swing open to reveal even more tools. It was tools-a-go-go and I was
booga-looing in my drawers.
The chest originally belonged to the current owner's great uncle, who was
a patternmaker at Simonds Saw and Heywood Wakefield (the chest even has his
15 year anniversary pin in it). When that guy died, the guy's father inherited
it since he was a practicing patternmaker. He used it for years, until he
retired in the mid-1960's. He took the chest and hung it in his garage where
it remained, mostly unused.
For two hours it was tool-orgasm, as he and I talked about the tools, his
father, and the state of the nation. Toward the end of talking, he decides
to ask me "well, what do you think about it?" I told him that I was just
lucky to be able to see, touch, and experience the tools of his great uncle
and father, and that I would kill to own it. He then asked me what it was
worth to me. I answered that there are 3 ways to value it - one, which is
the way that pains me to witness it as it happens, is the value of the tools
as they are thrown to the wolves when the chest is pilaged for profit; two,
the value where the sum is greater than the individual parts; and three,
the value as a family heirloom, which is impossible for anyone but family
to assess. He indicated to me that he did want to sell it, but only for
the right price and to the right person. I told him that I would get back
to him in a few days with my offer, what it was worth to me, after I had
time to stew on it.
When offering somebody money for something that they hold near and dear,
you always run the risk of insulting them, if they place a value higher
than what you intend to offer. Naturally, we all like to get good buys
and I try to make fair offers for stuff that I want to keep. I decide that
I'm not gonna mess around, and that I'm gonna make him an offer he can't
refuse.
I returned to pay the guy a visit, with cash in hand, a few days later. I
tell him that a minute hadn't gone by without my thinking about the chest,
and that I was going to be heart-broken if I didn't get it. He asked me
what my offer was, and instead of my blurting it out I handed him a fistful
of Benny J. Franklin's to let him count it, to let him get the feel of cold,
hard cash. He non-chalantly counted it, handed it back to me, and said that
it was a fair offer, about what he had in mind. And then he drove a stake
in my heart - he told me that two other guys had to look at it over the week-
end. I got thinking that I was going to get involved in one of those dreaded
bidding wars, where you never know what's going to happen, that even perhaps
he was just using me to 'appraise' the value of the chest. All impure thoughts
since I was so sure that I was going to go home with it that day.
He told me that he would have the others over to look at it, and that he
would get back to me. He re-assured me that my offer was fair, that he had
good vibes about me, and that he wasn't so sure about the intentions of the
others coming to look at it. This tempered my anxiety a bit, but the pessi-
mist in me had taken control of my mind's jukebox, where the tune "You
Ain't Gonna Get It" played over and over and over. I find waiting for some-
thing big to be the worst part. My mind races over the shoulda's, woulda's,
and coulda's, which had I done them, I might have been able to take immediate
ownership. I had a full week of listening to this tune, and I was about to
snap, when the phone rings while I'm watching TOH re-runs for excitement.
Wifey-pooh answers the phone, as she always does, since she's nice to the
unsolicited huckstering of all expenses paid vacations to sunny Sarajevo if
only we come to a seminar on home devices for underwater fire protection. I'm
summoned to the cordless, and it's the owner of the chest telling me to come
n' gits it the next day. I got about 1 hour of sleep that night.
It was a bit over a week ago that I took ownership of it. It was a very
emotional time for the owner. As I was jamming it with bubble-pack, to keep
the tools in place, he told me that everytime he opened the chest, the smell
of it reminded him of his childhood and his father. He only relunctantly
parted with it since he was fearful that his children, who had no appreciation
for the tools nor the trade, wouldn't take care of it. He wanted it to go to
someone who has that same emotion about tools that he, his father, and his
great uncle have/had. He later told me that he was looking for the right
person to sell it to for about a dozen years, and that he had a chance to
sell it for more than I offered. But fate stepped in the way and set a course
for he and I to meet years later.
I'm fortunate that he chose me since I must have convinced him of my sin-
cerity to keep it together and to use the tools. I know that he could sense
my passion for the stuff - I sometimes wear it on my sleave (though never
in this newsgroup). I reassured him that the chest was going to be well-loved
and that he could make the half-hour drive to my place to see and whiff it
anytime he wanted.
The final act was played out as I was loading it to take it away. He
wanted me to hold the wedding picture of his mother and father and stand
behind the chest so that he could take a picture of it. Sounds kinda
whacked, but these aren't just tools. They're the legacy of the man's
family. He needed the photo to link the past with the present, and the
present with the future.
I arrive with chest back at my cave, and a fellow rec.norm'er, who was
coming over for a visit, arrived right after me. He, my father, and I
carried the chest into the house, and plopped it down on my walnut work-
bench. I fumble at the lock to open it, and only one tool falls to the
bench, which is a relief since I thought many more would have come free
during the trip. Ah, bubblepack, is there nothing it can't do?
Like a proud father, showing off his new John Deere riding lawn mower,
I stand there as the crowd of two ooh's, aah's, and gasps at the marvel of
19th century toolchest efficiency that leaves Snap-On in the starting
blocks. After the viewing, the throng exits, content that they've gotten
their money's worth. I'm left alone and continue to absorb the pleasure
of my new toy while thinking about what the previous owners made with it.
A spiritual sense overtakes me as I too take in the sights, the smells,
and the feel of the tools. I began to think what I'll do with it once I go
to that yb-plane in the sky. My only hope is that I, too, can find someone
who'll worship it as much as C.A.Jewett, J.A.Crocker, B.Crocker, and
P.Leach do.
The end.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Leach
Just say I've ruined my perfect streak of finding diddly at yard sales.
etc.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3 "Death of a Workmate" - Dec 1st, 1994
From: Patrick Olguin <po...@ATC-1S.HAC.COM>
Subject: Your Biggest Boner
Sorry, this is not a cross posting from alt.sex.large_appendages :-).
It has to do with your biggest blooper/boner related to woodworking.
I made a wildy funny mistake while almost woodworking the other day.
I related it to a couple of rec.ww chums, and they suggested I post it
if I could stand the ridicule. So here goes.
I had some old 3/8" plywood that had been sitting outside in the weather...
well, what passes for weather down here in So Cal :-). Anyway, I decided that
my father-in-law could use the plywood for firewood, since it was ruined for
any other use. So, I dragged the two 4x8 sheets outside, plopped them
on my trusty Workmate, and began cutting. Well, it wasn't long before
the cheap steel blade in my Skil 77 started to go dull, and bind. So,
being the clever guy I am, I whipped out my new, 60 tooth, carbide tipped
blade. I unplugged the saw (I'm kinda attached to my fingers), and changed
blades. While changing blades, I adjusted the foot to full blade-depth to
make the change a little easier.... but then forgot to readjust.
With the new blade locked in place,
I plugged in the saw, clamped down the workpiece, and proceeded to
make the most effortless cut you ever saw: right through that wimpy 3/8
plywood, _and_ the sheet metal of my Workmate! That Skil 77 never even
slowed down. When I unclamped the workpiece, the two halves of the Workmate
flopped to the ground. My father-in-law started laughing so hard, I really
thought he was going to have a heart attack. Pat the mighty woodworker does
in his Workmate.
You know how a really nice carbide blade will make shavings, not sawdust?
Well, there were neat little wood _and_ sheet metal shavings where my fallen
Workmate lay. Oh well, I need to make a _real_ workbench anyway :-).
****************
So, your challenge is to one-up this story, and own up to your horrendous/
silly mistakes. Please, no dismemberment stories this time around =8-0.
Patrick
Just say To Err is human, to really screw up requires a 13 amp, worm-drive Skil
77.
etc.
and then the follow-up
Subject: Re: Your Biggest Boner
Okay, I'd like to try this big boner thing; sounds like fun.
Actually, I have two stories. They kind of relate to woodworking, I
guess, although marginally. Since I'm new to woodworking, I don't
(yet) have any good misuse-of-tools or forgot-my-fingers-were-there
stories, so forgive me my shoehorning of these into the category,
but I'll think you'll enjoy the stories, anyway.
Story #1: "The Stripper"
When I was seventeen I moved out of mom and dad's house, and
rented an apartment with a buddy. The apartment was the attic in a
house built in 1835 on Staten Island. The walls in my bedroom were
peeling-off wallpaper from the 30's or so, and it looked like hell,
so I scraped it off and slapped up plaster with my hands, a la
stucco or something. (Okay, I was seventeen, all right? It looked
good to me then.)
Then the door started to look bad in comparison, so I decided to
strip the many old coats of paint from the bedroom side of the door
and put on a varnish. I was a kid, but not *too* stupid, so I knew
to remove the door from the hinges and take it outdoors to apply the
chemical paint stripper. I carried this oldtime solid door (heavy!)
down three flights of stairs and propped it onto sawhorses in the
front yard. The stripping took about eight coats of stripper before
I was down to bare wood. Towards evening, hours and hours and a
gallon of Red Devil later, I was finally finished.
I left the door outside on the porch overnight, and the next
morning I carried it back up those six flights of stairs -- it's
double going up -- and set about hanging the door back on the
hinges. To my incredible horror, I immediately discovered that I
had stripped the paint from the wrong side of the door!
One of the guys living downstairs was a bona fide hippie carpenter
type -- mighta been Roy Underhill as a lad -- and he heard me
laughing and crying and came on up to see what the commotion was all
about. He ended up doing some bona fide hippie carpenter stuff with
the door jamb and the hinges and whatnot, and we hung the door
upside down and backwards so that I could still get the side I had
worked on to face the inside of my room. Alas, the doorknob was now
shoulder high, but seventeen year old hippies aren't slaves to
convention.
Story #2: "Careful, or You'll Poke an Eye Out"
In my early thirties I was still alive and still in college,
having taken a number of years off from school to become a veteran.
I was renting a house with some school friends. We had a fireplace,
and since I was the only non-lazy non-spazz in the place, it usually
fell to me to split the firewood. Since I really enjoyed splitting,
I didn't mind. The logs were stacked out on the front porch, which
was just one step up from the front walk leading out to the street.
One evening, it was evening, and I was splitting wood out on the
sidewalk directly off the porch. As I was taking my swings Dimitri
the Landlord, who lived a few houses up the street, happened to
stroll by. In the dark and from his slight distance, it was hard
for him to tell if I was splitting the wood down on the concrete
sidewalk (which was okay by him) or up on the porch (which wasn't).
So he called out, "Hey, Steve, you're not splitting those logs up on
the porch, are you?"
"No, Dimitri, I'm not," I replied, "I'm down on the sidewalk".
Being a native New Yorker, though, you can't just answer a question
matter of factly; you're sincerely required to ridicule the question
or better yet, the questioner. So I added snidely, "Hey, I have
brains." But I'm also half Italian, so it's illegal for my mouth to
speak alone; my hands won't allow it. They instead insist on
performing an ongoing manual translation of my speech.
(Gesticulatory supplementation is the street term for this back in
Little Italy.) So while my mouth was uttering the word "brains", my
left hand was compelled to point to my head, to show Dimitri that
that's where brains are. But my hand got so carried away in this
gesture that it forgot that at that very moment it was holding a
foot-long sliver of wood that I had just pulled away from the sides
of a log. The end of the sliver was pointy and sharp, and I stabbed
myself directly in the eye with it. The timing, of course, was
impeccable. I stabbed my eye precisely at the utterance of the word
"brains". As a result, it came out "brainsaaaaaaarrrrrgh."
Dimitri took me to University Hospital Emergency Room. No bad
damage, they said, just to the cornea, the eye's outer part, which
heals itself quite well, thank you. I learned from a nice nurse
there that three body parts will heal about three or four times
faster than any others: the tongue, the stomach lining, and the
cornea. (Don't ask why, 'tis just so.) After fixing me up, the
same nice nurse encouraged me not to poke my eye out with any more
sticks -- now why didn't *I* think of that? -- and wished me good
health and a good night. Unless I wanted to stick around, she
added, which I pretended not to hear.
I lived for a couple of days in total humiliation and an eye
patch and then I was as good as new. (Yo, Norm! Wear *these*!)
Nowadays I still see Dimitri around Seattle from time to time.
("With which eye, Steve?") Coincidentally, he's also a native New
Yorker, from the Bronx, so everytime we see each other he delights
in inquiring, "Hey Steve, how's your brainsaaaaaaarrrrrgh?"
Cripes, eye hate that.
-- Steve LaMantia
Seattle, WA
[... "Keep your remaining fingers well away from any spinning
blades. And remember, the most important safety rule of all
is to always cover your good eye with this, a safety
monacle."]
#4 Gay Woodworkers - Jan 24, 1995
From: Snick the Woodcarver
Subject: Gay Woodworkers
(editor's note: after a lot of flamage, Snick writes: )
I would think that being a gay woodworker brings its own unique set
of problems. Instead of boldy wading right into a project, the Gay
Woodworker must fuss and waiver about on design details, form, and
whether the beauty of the piece will openly hint at his sexual
orientation. When the GW finally starts the project, he must be
careful to use special jigs and fixtures to guide the cuts, because
his wrists are not strong. While sanding or planing, the beauty of
the wood often brings a tear to the GW's eye. He must be careful to
keep these tears off of the work, lest they raise the grain. He must
be careful about to whom he shows the finished project -- if they
comment on how "creative" he is, it could be a veiled insult.
(Incidentally, you can differentiate between a GW and a SW by how
they refer to "patterns" or "plans". It's a secret signal.)
---
/Snick
#5 BIG hand plane in my mailbox - the original shill-o-gram
From: Patrick Olguin <po...@ATC-1S.HAC.COM>
Organization: Guardian ATC - Hughes Aircraft Company
Subject: BIG hand plane in my mailbox
I got something in the mail yesterday. It's big, it's heavy, and cuts wood.
The return address said it was from some guy named Leach in Massachusetts.
Maybe you've heard of him? He occasionally deals in old tools. The box I
received was slightly smaller than a refrigerator, and contained a Stanley
#8 jointer plane.
To the uninitiated (like me), a Stanley #8 is quite a sight. I didn't
measure, but it took up most of the kitchen table.
My wife, upon seeing it said, "Well, go out and make some shavings....".
"Ok", I said. "Let me put on my work clothes". So, repleat in my swimming
trunks, and Nike swim sandals (this _is_ California after all) I went out to
the shop with my large hunk of iron and rosewood in tow.
Once in the workshop, something strange came over me....
I sighted down the sole of the mighty plane... slowly adjusting
the worn, knurled brass knob. It's smooth action reacted pleasurably to
my smallest movement. When I saw the pencil-thin outline appear above the
surface of the sole, I was ready to go. My palms were sweaty.... I trembled
with anticipation. I had never seen a plane this size, much less held one,
or tried to _use_ one.
I placed one foot on the flimsy step of my cheapo Workmate... the plastic
benchs dogs firmly in place. I placed the sole of my new wood warrior on
the piece of virgin hard maple (this sounds like a Penthouse Forum letter).
....I plunged forward with slow, yet inexorable force. The planes blade
touched the wood. Goooooouuuuuuuuuuuge! Hmmmm. I turned the plane over.
Gosh, the blade looked a little funny. I raised the cap lever. I removed
the iron/cap assembly. Oh! Patrick covered the blade with the cap for
shipping. Tee Hee. GOH was looking down at me, laughing.... with me, of course.
I exposed the blade about 3/64" from the cap. I readjusted. I re-trembled.
I crouched, I leaned, I even angled the plane a little bit, just like in
the movies, I shot..... The crowd hushed. A clean shaving of
maple lifted up from the wood, curling neatly in front of the cap. The large
plane, in the hands of the rank amatuer glided off the end of the workpiece,
like a majestic vintage warplane removed from mothballs and recommissioned
into service. It did a victory roll as it swooped past the beltsander and
circled around for another pass. Like a P-47 Thunderbolt, mercilessly
strafing the beaches at Normandy, did the Stanley #8 remove shaving after
shaving from the workpiece. Knots were not a problem. It laughed at curly
grain, scoffed at wind, cup, bow and warp. This was a tool with which to
be reckoned.
I put it away, the iron still warm in my hands. As I closed up the shop,
I looked back with anticipation at the stacks of cherry, curly maple, flame
birch, birdseye maple, curly oak, mahogany and walnut. "You're next!", I cried,
and strolled triumphantly out into the cool October night.
Another satisfied customer,
Patrick O.
---
############################################################################
# There's an old Spanish saying: Musica pagada no son.
# It has nothing to do with this message, but it _is_ an old Spanish saying.
############################################################################
#6 "The becoming of a neanderthal" Nov 2nd, 1994
From: Patrick Leach <le...@BEDFORD.PROGRESS.COM>
Subject: Re: workshop
Dee Purchase <d...@BOI.HP.COM> writes:
>I have come across an old barn, a really well-made 2x6 framed structure with
>ship-lap siding, approximately 40' x 40' that I want to disassemble, then
>reassemble at my place. I intend to use it as a woodworking shop. Does
>anyone out there have any recommendations as to how to reassemble a structure
>so it will at least partially resemble the original?
I've never dismantled stick-framed structures - seems too much a pain in
the arse, if you ask me - but I have done a timber-framed building. Maybe
some of what I spew may help you, but I doubt it. Just make sure your shots
are current, and think things out ahead of time before you do them. You can
save yourself some injury and trouble.
Mine was/is an actual house, built ca. 1810. It's a typical hip-roof,
central hall Federal, with 9 rooms, 8 fireplaces (2 chimneys - one each to
either side of the ridge pole). The house was built by a local prominent
merchant who later went on to build several thriving mills in the town in
which he built the house. Thus, the house is an above average example of
the typical house for the common Joe of the time.
The church, located next door to the house, acquired it during the 1960's
to use as a Sunday school. Had they not done so, the house would have been
left in the condition it was when it was first built. The church did some
really groovy modernization by chopping chair-rails and door frames out so
they could install cheesy panelling and hollow-core doors. They also put
in a dropped ceiling. The house also had that fun-to-snort asbestos siding
that was fashionable during the 20's and 30's. Oil prices got too high for
the church to keep the building so they wanted it gone for a parking lot.
I put a bid of 1k for it and got it.
Just my brother and I did the dismantling, save for a few times when we
needed help. The first order of business for us was to de-modernize it. We
ripped out all the panelling, hollow-core doors, and dropped ceilings. Then
it was up to the attic to start knocking down the plaster. We started at the
top and worked our way down. If you've never experienced the joy of knocking
out plaster and laths, be sure to try it sometime - you'll love it! Just
keep telling youself that you're a home wrecker and that it's fun to be
covered head to toe in plaster.
With the walls opened up, the next to go was all the pipes and wires. This
was neat to see - the wiring was knob and tubing with the insulation on the
wires falling off. Of course the pipes had asbestos insulation on them. As
we were doing the insides, I had a local crazy guy carefully remove the
asbestos siding so that he could use it on his house.
All the woodwork had to be popped off and numbered. This was very difficult
since 2.5' wide by 16' long wainscotting nailed directly to studs is tough to
remove without splitting it. Some of the remaining delicate moldings also gave
us fits, but we managed. Each piece of woodwork was marked by floor and room,
in a clockwise fashion starting from the cornerpost (each room, except one
has a cornerpost).
After that, all the interior studs, strapping (for the laths), door-frames,
etc. were removed. They were marked in the same manner as the woodwork was.
Next project was the chimneys. This seemed to take forever. Brick after
brick, from the roof to the basement (this house had a full basement the full
area of the house). There must have been 20,000 of them, all of which had to
be popped from the mortar without breaking them (many did break), cleaned,
then hauled. Dimensions of the the fireplace openings had to be logged before
their bricks could be removed. To this very day, I sometimes still dream about
lugging bricks! And the nightmare isn't over since I get to re-build these
chimneys.
With the bricks fresh in my head, it was next time to take on the roof. We
stripped it of the shingles first, of course. Then we spray painted the deck-
ing by color and side (a hip roof is sorta like a 4-sided pyramid). Some of
the decking was in tough shape, but it was all numbered. There were two layers
of decking, which was something unusual. The first layer was the typical 1"
board, but below that was some very wide (20") and very thin (1/2") decking.
The two were arranged so that the seams on each layer didn't overlap.
We had to remove all the trim from the cornice. This was another fun ad-
venture for me since I hate being up on ladders. I don't mind roofs, but
ladders give my knees the shakes. All the trim had to be numbered for re-
assembly. This is where I made the decision to reference the front right
corner post as my starting point for all numbering. All of the frame and
exterior trim were numbered from that post in a clockwise fashion.
We finally were now able to remove the first part of the frame. If you've
never seen a hip roof framed, it's an amazing bit of work. There are two
king posts that each carry 5 principle rafters - two front and back, two
from the corners, and one from the side. They all join at the top of the
king post in an unbelievable thing of joinery beauty. Nothing but moon
gravity, and their force against each other, holds them in place. Each
principle rafter had a small post at its midpoint to transfer weight down
to the girt directly below it.
Coming off the corner rafters, are several common rafters that grow smaller
in dimension as they get closer to the corners. Between the king posts is the
ridge pole. This house had no purlins, except the two that spanned the rafters
that run front and back. The builders probably didn't feel the need for them
since they used the two layers of decking. Whatever the reason, they weren't
needed since the roof didn't sag.
The principle rafter bottoms were tenoned and pinned into the girts that
carried them. We took a 1" metal rod to knock the pins out. After that, the
rafters lifted right out (the principle rafters were heavy suckers). We
lowered them to the floor below, then took them down to the ground. The common
rafters were also tenoned into the girts, but they weren't pinned. All of
the rafters were spray painted with a number starting at 1 and then proceeding
clockwise.
When we got them all down, and started to load them for removal, I noticed
some crudely painted numbers at each rafter's bottom. All the numbers were in-
cremented by one, with the first number naturally starting at 1. It then
dawned on me that these numbers were the original assembly numbers that the
framers had painted before they raised the frame. Wondering if my numbers
matched theirs, I looked at a random rafter to see what number I had painted
on - mine matched. I then checked a few more. They matched. Sorta excited, I
searched for my rafter #1, and found that it, too, was marked #1 by the old
paint. I thought it kinda cool that I guessed the exact numbering sequence
for the roof frame. I also numbered the studs and post in the exact sequence,
all by coincidence.
We then set about to removing the girts. These are the beams that span the
plates, from front to back, and then from the sides. They not only carry the
rafters, but give the house rigidity by tieing the walls together. Each was
a massive beam - a 10x10 - of varying length. Where they sit atop the plates,
they are joined to them by a clever dovetail joint so that they actually draw
the walls inward when they are seated. Nothing but moon gravity held them over
the plates. The shorter girts had their inner ends tenoned and pinned to the
two main girts.
All that remained now was the flooring, the joists, the exterior walls, and
the framing for the four walls. We removed all the clapboards off the walls
before we did anything else. The clapboards were the original ones, made of
eastern white pine. They were milled, and very long - some around 16'. Where
they butted against another, they were scarfed to overlap each other by about
2-3". This was to prevent water from seeping in. The clapboards were in very
good condition, which ought to dispell the notion that white pine is n.g. for
clapboard - these babies were out there taking a beating for 100+ years.
We next removed the second floor windows and the sheathing from the roof
line to the just above the second floor line. Here, too, each piece was num-
bered by side. I didn't need to take the time to number it, nor the roof
decking, since I didn't re-use it when I reassembled the house. I still have
a bunch of it, if anyone in the New England area needs some weathered "barn
board".
One of the hardest parts of the operation was next - removing the four
plates. The plates are the equivalent of the sills, but they are up in the
air some 20'. All of them are 8x8's. The front and back ones are 40' long
and 4 posts, and roughly 25 studs tenoned into them. To compound matters,
the side plates, each 36'long, had their ends tenoned into the ends of the
40' plates, to say nothing of the post and studs tenoned into them.
It was very difficult for us to get our center of gravity under them to
lift the 40' plates up and out to free them. So, we threw in the towel and
got some help from my father and two other guys. I don't know how we did it,
but we managed to get them off. As my brother was carrying one of them, he
stepped into an air vent hole in the floor that we forgot to cover up before
hand. He damn near broke his leg.
After this, it was pretty much down hill. All the second floor studs were
numbered and then popped out of their tenons (they were nailed to the frame).
All that stuck up beyond the second floor were the 10 posts and their braces
the the second floor framing.
We popped the flooring, and removed the joists, which also weren't nailed.
The rest of the sheathing was removed, down to the sill. We numbered the rest
of the frame, and then went about knocking the pins out of the second floor
bracing of the posts.
We started at one corner post to let it free from the framing. It's sorta
tough to control a 20' 8x8 piece of chestnut when it's vertical so that it
doesn't freefall. These are stupid things that you just don't think about
until you're ready to do them. We tied a line at the top, cleated off the
bottom, and then slowed its wanting to go horizontal. Gloves are mandatory
here.
The girts that spanned the corner post to the center posts were tenoned and
pinned into the posts. They also had the studs tenoned into them. These were
very managable since they are only about 16'L and 8x10. Four of the girts had
summer beams, each 10x10, tenoned and pinned into them. These were a bit more
difficult to free, but we rigged up some jacks to hold the summer beams up as
we removed the girts.
The last thing to go was the entrance. We left that framed and intact. We
freed it from the flanking posts, lashed some rope around it, and let it down
carfully. I threw it on the back of a pickup truck and did my impersonation
of a Wide Load while transporting it.
The first floor frame was not salvagable. The heating system for the house
was an old boiler, which had introduced a lot of dryrot into the frame. I
probably could have managed to get something useful out it, but I decided
that it would be best to reframe the first floor, and have a good starting
point so that the rest of the house can last another 175 years.
Every vertical member of the frame, except the king posts, is made of
American chestnut, and was milled. Every horizontal piece of the frame is
made of Eastern white pine and is hewn. The only portion of the frame proper
that had any nails in it are the ends of the studs where they intersect the
bracing. The nails used were roseheads, which I saved each and every one. It's
interesting to note that cut nails were used to hold the sheating to the frame,
but roseheads were used in the frame. I don't have any idea about why this was
the case. Perhaps the framers only had roseheads, and another crew - the one
to sheath it - had cut nails.
All of the wooden pins are chestnut. Some of them popped out quite easily,
but others offered a lot of resistance. A few of the beams had some chalk
figures on them, which was not too readable. I suspect that these figures
were used for some cypherin' by the hewers or the framers for figuring their
pay or something like that.
We did this all during one summer. It took us one summer to re-frame it, and
then me, alone, a few months to re-sheath it. It's surprisingly easy to dis-
mantle an old post and beam structure. I'd love someday to do dismantle a
church, after having climbed around a few of their frames. Once you've done
it, it's forever in your blood. You'll never look at 2xWhatever construction
again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Leach
Just say And that's how I became a neanderthal.
etc.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
#7 ActionNorm
Tom Bruce writes:
Seen the ads for _This Old House Magazine_? Wondering where it
will all end? Well, the fun's not over, pals and gals, 'cuz
now we have
NORM ABRAM ACTION FIGURES!
No reason for the tools to stop hummin' and the fun to stop
comin' when they roll those closing credits! Now you and all
your little "apprentices" can have hours of fun with your very
own ActionNorm(TM)!
Basic ActionNorm(TM) Figure comes with flannel shirt, blue jeans,
OSHA-approved MiniWorkBoots (TM), working tape measure,
glasses, goofy grin, and detachable arms, hands, and fingers.
Think of the fun you and your kids can have patching up ol'
Norm when he does a "boo-boo" on the table saw -- you can learn
safe shop practice and microsurgery all at the same time!
ActionNorm(TM) PowahPak Tools include battery-powered Belt
Sandah(TM), BisKitJoinah(TM) and AihStaplah(TM) among many
others. These cost as much as the full-sized tools Norm uses
on TV, and they wear out just as fast too!
ActionNorm(TM) WorkPak includes ToolBelt, plans for a miniature
blanket chest, Lumbroid(TM) Action Building Material, folding
edible Extend-O-Rule, made-to-scale 1" wire brads, and
Tourn-O-Kit RepairPak for when Norm does a "boo-boo" on the
table saw.
ActionNorm(TM) Endorse-o-Pak includes signed agreements with most
major tool manufacturers, a toolbox full of real cash, and a
Talking Mouthpiece(TM) lawyer figurine which utters 12
baffling but authoritative phrases!
BUT WAIT....THERE'S MORE!
Ever wonder whose Delta Norm's checkin' out when he's not in
the shop? Well, she's here, she's from Revere, and her name's
DoveTail Donna(TM)!
DoveTail Donna comes with Save The Rainforests T-Shirt,
designer jeans, OSHA-approved patent leather WorkBooties(TM),
and fully equipped DoveTail Donna(TM) ToolBelt (choice of earth
tones or teal/purple/black). Optional accessories include
chuck-key-lanyard hair band, emery boards (80, 150, 220, and
340 grit), and full line of Bartley's Gel System Cosmetics.
Optional outfits include NurseDonna(TM) outfit with
Tourn-o-Kit and Press-o-Bandages -- that's right, DoveTail Donna's a
real RN, so that when ActionNorm does a "boo-boo" on the table
saw, she's right there to help! Remember, kids, ActionNorm(TM)
gets it done twice as fast when Donna's holding the other end of his
workpiece!
AND IF YOU ACT NOW, WE'LL THROW IN A FREE BOOK!
Ever wonder why Norm's projects go together first time, every
time? It's because he knows what every professional craftsman
knows: those "swear words" are really _secret mantras_ which
can improve your projects and and make them look just like they
were done by the pros! Now, in _Talk Like a Tradesman with Norm
Abram_ YOU can learn to cuss just like real craftsmen
do! Norm lets you in on the "trade secrets" that were "too
much" for _This Old House_ and _New Yankee Workshop_:
-- "Sonofabitchin' bahstahd!" -- the way to drive big nails
straight _every time_!
-- Get those joints tight, tight, tight with "mizzable
cahksuckah"!
-- "the hahse ya rode in on" -- handling problem personalities
at the Home Center and on the jobsite!
We'll throw this valuable book in FREE with your purchase of
ActionNorm and DoveTail Donna -- or you can take it as your
FREE GIFT for joining the Norm Abram Woodworkah's Book Club!
Other titles include:
--"Make Things Which Have Geese On Them with DoveTail Donna"
--"Martha Stewart's Guide to Heavy Earthmoving Equipment"
--"Clip Your Own Poodle and Save A Bundle with Bob Vila".
Operators standing by....
#8 Clamping with St. James
More travails...
I finally received my K-Body clamps that I ordered at the Anaheim
show. Too impatient to wait to play with 'em at home, I opened them up
while they were in the back of the truck, just to try them out. I didn't
have anything to clamp, so I decided to try it out on my fingers. I
slid the jaws up to make contact, then started to tighten. It took
a little more umph than I anticipated to get some pressure on my
fingers, but it snugged-up nicely. I loosened it, then put everything
away before someone could see me and haul me off to a padded cell.
I got one of the diaper wipes (those things are handy around a truck),
and was cleaning my hands from the dust/dirt of the packaging, when
I tried to clean under my wedding ring. I had smashed it to a rather
flat oval (or was it an ellipse?) that was now squeezing my finger.
It was stuck tight. Oops. You know, sometimes, I think I'm
one of The Three Stooges, reincarnated. Didn't one of 'em die right
before 1960? Hmmmmm. Anyway, I managed to tap it back into somewhat
round shape, using my aluminum baseball bat as a hammer (I always carry
my baseball equipment around, just in case they go on strike again) and the
rear bumper as an anvil. Good thing, too. My finger was beginning to
swell up.
Just another day with me and woodworking tools.
O'Deen
Just say No wonder my SO won't let me near a table saw.
...and then Tom writes
Reading O'Deen's story of the K-Clamps struck a familiar chord,
and I rushed to my bookshelves and fetched out my copy of the
St. James Krenov classic, _The Humility of the Cabinetmaker_.
Imagine my surprise to find a similar story on p. 43,
reproduced here with an appropriate nod to copyright:
In those early days I didn't have much of a shop, really, just
myself and a few fine tools, and a Black-and-Decker Workmate.
A Workmate just like the one anyone could buy at the home
center, but you see I had modified it in a special way. A
customer of mine, a fine man of the Jibaro Indian tribe, came
to the shop one day and was astonished to see it. "But you have
sawed it in half!", he said, and of course I had, you see,
because that was what I could afford, and because it brought me
closer to the work. Closer in that way which is known only to
the impractical amateur who must work around a problem, away
from the 'let's-get-it-done-without-breaking-our-backs' that is
too much a part of the craft scene today.
And yet, even living on a shoestring as I was then, I could
imagine better things. Clamps, perhaps, to hold down a finely
shaped panel of Andaman padouk as I carefully fitted knife
hinges with my sharp chisels. And so I resolved to buy some
from a man I knew, a clamp dealer in a little shop in Anaheim.
"Krenov," he'd ask, "what have you come to pawn this time?".
And I would laugh with him, even though I knew him to be a
receiver of stolen property. And one day I did say, "Well, I
think I'd like to buy some clamps". And he obligingly sold me
some.
There I was with my dog sled, outside the little shop, with
my fine new clamps. And I had nothing to clamp; the work, of
course, was all in the shop at home. This is a dangerous time
for the amateur, a time when he is "all dressed up with no place
to go", when he is eager for the result and likely to try
anything. And so it was for me then, and I thought I would try
to clamp my fingers together. It was a glorious experience,
and the pain was incredible.
In that moment I was reminded of a ritual of my school days, a
rite of passage for apprentices. As a graduation exercise we
would make a finely-crafted piece of furniture, a chest of
drawers or an elaborate writing desk from pearwood perhaps. Day
and night we would work, and of course on the night before
judging there was great fear. Would the drawers slide out just
so? Had the weather changed? Would a lid squeak, or a leg fall
off? Many a sleepless night was spent trimming this and
shaving that until things were just right. And after that
would come the judging, which was never so bad as we had
feared. But then came the real test. A man named Arthur, a
silent man who worked in the shop and supervised students like
us, would lead the new journeymen outside where he had set up
an electrical contraption made from a tractor battery and
magneto. And each of us would urinate on it in turn. For many
this was a worse experience than the judging, yet they would
bear it stoically, for you see Arthur had gone first to show
them the way. I do not know what he may have felt at that
moment, a little smile playing on his face as he drenched the
magneto. I would have been very proud, myself. Arthur has
been in prison for many years now, but I imagine that he still
thinks back on those moments with a quiet pride, thinking of
the role he played in shaping a generation of craftsmen.
But there I was in the streets of Anaheim, clamps on my
fingers, with no choice but to take them off. And when I did,
I noticed that my wedding ring had been clamped to my finger.
For those of us who wish to remain in close harmony with our
work, this is a problem. Which shape is best for the ring? Is
it the one which is most comfortable on our fingers? The one
which harmonizes best with the delicate shadings of our veins
as the circulation gradually fails? Something rounder, or more
like an oval? If we are to compose our work, if we are to see
things as they really are, these small issues become of the
utmost importance.....
#9 Band saw as trapeze artist
Stewart writes:
Thought I would share this story with you guys, as I haven't had the
time hitherto.
Over Labor day weekend, I was down in Anaheim staying with my wife's
parents. While there, I stopped in at California Woodworking
Machinery, which I usually do when I'm in those parts. It's a
machinery dealer - particularly old machines. It's kind of a cool
place. They have five rooms. The front room is very tidy and has new
Jet, Delta, and Powermatic stuff. The second room is fairly tidy, and
has reconditioned old machinery, and new SCMI industrial stuff. After
that, you're on your own - the back rooms have the machines that
haven't been reconditioned yet. They're all jammed together - "is
that an old Unisaw back there - let me just climb over this seven foot
high moulding machine to see". Half of the machinery, I can't even
tell what its for, or where you were supposed to put wood into it.
They had a jointer there that was 24" wide, and it had a power feeder
that looked like a converted Ditchwitch. The front table would lower
2 1/2" below the outfeed table. I've been thinking about it ever
since, and I can't think of any application in which it would be
useful to joint 2 1/2" off of something.
Anyway, in the second room, was a bandsaw. Actually there were a
number of bandsaws, but most of them were 36" Olivers that stood 9'
high. I knew they would look silly in my shop. But there was this
one 20" Davis and Wells bandsaw. Age was somewhat uncertain - the
owner claimed it was from the fifties, but I didn't get the feeling he
really knew. It was certainly not later than that. The thing was
massive - it had a cast frame somewhat like a Delta 14", but much
bigger, and the casting continued all the way down into the floor
stand. It looked a great deal like the 18" bandsaw which Krenov has
pictures of in his book, only it was even bigger than that -
especially the table which was 24" square. There was 13 1/2" resaw
capacity under the guides. The weight of it was uncertain - they
dealer said 600lb, but I'm pretty sure it's more than that. My model
66 is around 600lb and this thing was heavier. It's definitely in the
"they don't make 'em like they used to" category. The pulleys are
huge, there isn't a single piece of sheet metal on it - everything is
a casting, even the wheel housings and the blade guard. They had
removed the rust, balanced the wheels etc. I had them run the saw,
and it ran very nicely.
Asking price was $1850. It had a very old motor which was huge and
had a cast iron casing. It was three phase, but only developed 1hp -
not very much for a saw of this size, it seemed to me.
Well. I had been planning on buying an LT 18 in a few months time.
So later that afternoon, my wife and I headed out to Laguna Beach to
see the LT 18s in their native habitat. It's a nice saw, but the
whole time we were looking at it, we just couldn't get the image of
this cast iron behemoth out of our minds. The LT 18 has a lot of nice
features (dust collection, wheel brushes, rip fence, rack and pinion
guide adjustment). But the steel case just seemed flimsy compared to
the Davis and Wells. I also wasn't too keen on the drive-train. It's
supposedly a 3hp motor, but the motor has a single pulley on it which
is about 2" in diameter - something doesn't quite figure there. At
least so it seems to me.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I ended up buying the Davis and
Wells. There was much bargaining; I left and went back several hours
later; I negotiated on the phone with Mike the owner several times.
Asking price was $1850. I initially offered $1100. I paid $1450. So
I don't know if I did good or not. Clearly I did well not to pay the
asking price, but maybe he only had $500 in the saw and was laughing
at me the whole time. For comparison, Tool Crib will supply a new
Delta 20" bandsaw for $2400, and Wilke has a 21" Bridgewood for $2100.
Those saws have a lot more features, but a lot less cast iron and
romance. By the time I have put a new motor, starter and Carter
guides on my saw, I will be into it for almost the cost of a new
Bridgewood of comparable size. It could be a mistake - I don't really
know what I'm doing buying used machinery, and I dread that there will
be some awful expensive problem to deal with. I'm confident the
castings are uncracked, but I worry about the bearings ... On the
other hand, new machinery isn't all it's supposed to be sometimes too
(When my model 66 came, the miter slots on the table were mismachined
and I had to take the table back for a replacement). And it's just so
gorgeous ...
The bandsaw deal was closed late Friday afternoon. The dealer agreed
to ship it up to Davis on Tuesday, since they were closed Monday for
Labor day. They said it would take about three or four days to get
there. I arranged for the shipping company to call me before delivery
so I could make arrangements to unload it. Late Tuesday afternoon, I
called the dealer and comfirmed that the shipping company had picked
it up, and the dealer gave me the phone number of the shippers. After
that, we drove back up to Davis ourselves, arriving in the small hours
of Wednesday morning (it's a 7 hour drive from Anaheim).
So I was planning on calling the trucking company to find out when
they would deliver - I was hoping that a friend of a friend could be
pursuaded to help out with his fork lift. But no! Wednesday morning
about 9am, I'm woken up by a loud truck engine at the front of my
house. Peering blearily through the bedroom window ... Oh Shit!
There's my bandsaw sitting on a truck outside the front of my house.
For $85, the shippers have delivered 800-900lb of cast iron to my door
in a time that FedEx would be hard-pressed to match. And they haven't
called me, and I haven't made any arrangements yet.
So I go out to the truck and greet the trucker. And there's my
bandsaw - nearly half a ton of cast iron, seven foot high, sitting
five foot off the ground. Do they have a hydraulic tailgate? - no.
Pallet jack? - no. How am I going to get this thing down? "I don't
know, but I've got a broken wrist, so you're on your own." As
evidence, he produces his hand - sure enough it's all strapped up.
(Though I do wonder if he keeps the strapping in the glove compartment
just for occasions like this).
Well, I was seriously unprepared for this before breakfast. Luckily,
I live in a Cohousing community and so I headed round all my
neighbours and found all the adult males that weren't at work for one
reason or another. These numbered four, including me. So we all
stood around and they gave me a hard time about what a huge heavy band
saw I had to buy while we thought about getting it down. The problem
with it was that it was so heavy and so top heavy as well. We
discussed sliding it down some lumber, but we felt that lumber that
was long enough that the saw would not topple over would not be strong
enough to hold the weight. The four of us could just barely lift it,
so we didn't feel good about losing control of it during the
operation. We had just come up with a scheme to use a pickup truck -
slide it down 2x6s into the pickup bed, drive the pickup a few feet
away, and then slide it from there to the ground - when the trucker
came up with a better idea.
So this is what we did. He backed his truck up onto our front lawn
(with my wife going hairless that he's about to crush plants - but he
was very careful. He said that one thing he'd learned in years of
making residential deliveries was never to piss the wife off.) He
backed it diagonally across the lawn, all the way until the tail was
6" from our house. That left the bandsaw directly under the street
tree which grows towards the front of the lawn. Then we wrapped nylon
strapping around the main casting of the bandsaw, and around a
convenient branch of the tree. The trucker had a come-along, and I
had a couple of karabinas, and with those we winched the bandsaw up
off the bed of the truck by a few inches. Then he drove the truck off
of our lawn (to my wife's relief).
Up to this point, I was completely focussed on the details of the
operation. However, as he drove the truck out from under the saw, I
started to realise that this was a seriously surreal situation.
There's my bandsaw behemoth, dangling in a tree, 5' off the ground,
listing 10 degrees to the left and swinging gently in the breeze. A
bluejay landed on the top of it briefly, and then flew off again.
Some passers-by came over and asked what on earth we were doing. My
neighbour Perry explained that we were trying to trim the tree
branches, and so we had winched the saw up there but we were having a
hard time getting it to cut the branch. I got my camera and took a
couple of pictures. When I get around to having them developed, I
might scan them in for my Web pages.
Anyway, we then winched it down to the ground and it sat on the front
lawn for the day (I figured any thief would need a fork lift and I'd
probably notice that). By evening, I gathered a crew of ten
neighbours and we carried the saw into my garage-shop on its side. It
was unharmed, and there it sits now - wonderful and huge in the
corner, but so far useless until Baldor delivers its new motor.
But it sure makes a hell of a conversation piece.
Stuart.
#10 The O'Deen FAQ - June 22, 1995
Several people have recently asked this question.
I've posted this story before, so if you've read it, can
you say delete?
It has to do with the pronunciation of Olguin. Olguin is a Spanish
surname (thus my familiar "Old Spanish saying .sig", something I
don't use much, in favor of blatantly ripping off Patrick Leach's
"Just say", although I do leave off the "etc." at the end).
Olguin is pronounced Ohl-gheen (with a hard "g", accent on the 2nd syllable).
Why do I bother you with this drivel? Well, many moons ago, I was returning
a call to a fellow computer doink, whose offices are in Atlanta. The
following ensued:
Me: (dialing on touch-tone phone) doo-dee-doo-dee-doo-doo-dee
Atlanta: Brrrrrrrrrrriiinnggggg!
Atlanta: (Spoken in the sweetest Southern drawl imaginable)
Good moanin', Tailtake, meh ah help yew? (Good morning, Teltech...).
Me: Hello, this is Patrick Olguin calling, may I speak to Mr. Williams?
Atlanta: Patrick who?!!?
Me: Olguin.
Atlanta: O'What??
Me: Olguin (saying it: Ohhl-Gheeeen)
Atlanta: Did you say O'Deen!??
Me: (Sigh...) Yes, O'Deen.
Atlanta: One moment Mr. O'Deen, Ah'll fowerd yor cawl.
I related this to a couple net.friends, they started using it, and
now it's stuck. At first I didn't think it would last, (sort of like how
the original term: Neanderthal, was meant as derogatory, but is now
worn as a badge of honor), but seeing as how I'm mostly Irish, despite
having a Spanish surname (and knowing enough Spanish to get into trouble),
I use it with pride.
So there you have it.
Patrick Olguin
----------------
Merry Christmas everyone, even you, JZ. :^)
O'Deen
Just say My fingers are tired... never could figger out this drag/drop thing.