shop talk

Well I'm pretty excited, after far too many hours of stringing conduit, running wires and checking connections, I finally got my horizontal mill running properly yesterday. It's exciting because this will be the new dedicated tube mitering machine for the shop.

It actually ran fine when I got it, but I wanted to be able to do some automating with it in the future (I have big ambitions), so I wanted to be able to run it with pushbutton controls and a proper motor starter. As noted in my last entry, the aux. contact wasn't working properly, which meant the motor wouldn't stay running after you release the start button. So I took apart the aux contact to find that it was missing the actual contacts!

This starter was old stock, so a replacement aux contact was difficult to find. I did locate a couple, but they were more expensive than just buying a new starter! So I machined my own from some contacts from another contactor. I never imagined I'd be making internals to electrical controls in my shop, but it was actually pretty easy. After that was made, I installed it only to find out it still didn't work right. Took me a while to figure out what was happening, but eventually I realized the main contactor wasn't pulling my new aux contactor in far enough to make the switch trip. With a few more adjustments, it worked! I know this probably isn't very exciting for you folks, but to me, making something electrical that actually works is a big accomplishment (there's a reason I'm a Mechanical Engineer, not Electrical).


Then I got my rotary table and tube vise mounted up on the main table and aligned everything up. Here's how it looks. It's actually a pretty simple device, basically a cutting spindle with a rotary table and an axial feed, but this one has 2000lbs of steel to back it up! Mass your best friend when it comes to working metal, and the more rigid this set-up can be, the better the cut will end up.

With this arrangement, I think the set-up is about as rigid as it could possibly be. The only improvement I can think of would be to someday replace the vise with a very large 2J collet closer with collets to fit the tubing. But that would be a pile of work and I'd have to change collets with each different tube diameter I use. This way the vise fits all diameters.

The beauty of this arrangement is that once everything is aligned, I will be able to make very accurate miter lengths very quickly. You see the center of the rotary table is lined up with the centerline of the spindle. So I can set any angle I want on the rotary table and maintain the same centerline of my cut.

The master plan then is to have a movable stop located on the far right end of the aluminum bar you see in the picture. This stop have a scale on it to set the tube length to exactly where I want it, then I just put the tube in the vise and cut it. It's hard to describe, but it should work very well and save me a bunch of time. There is a slight length correction needed for different tube diameters (due to the centerline of the tube moving slightly in the vise) but I can account for that in my spreadsheet which I use to calculate the tube lenths.

The next step is to mount my DC motor on the mill for the axial power feed. Once that is up, I can add the limit switches and automate the whole cutting motion, all I will have to do it put the tube in the machine, set my angle and start the cutting cycle.

Incidentally, for other tool geeks, that's a 12" Pratt & Whitney rotary table on there. I picked that up from the same dealer as the mill, he just wanted to get rid of stuff! The spindle is a 40 taper, which I put a 1.5" diameter collet chuck into, which is what hold my cutters. I can change the cutter by simply loosening a nut up front. It works really well.

Aside from playing with machines, I did get some other work done the last few days, including a big chunck of the remaining work on the house. Monday Beth and I spent pretty much the whole day shellacing birch plywood to make out wood-wall treatment for the living room. Took 3 coats on each sheet and a bunch of sanding, but in the end, it came out great This is the north wall of the living room, the one wall without windows. The birch has a lot of pillowing effect to it, much like maple. We're pretty happy with it, now I just need to trim the edges and the top.

I also finished up the bathroom, all fixtures are in, I think I'm ready for the final plumbing inspection! We should be really close to the final electrical inspection as well. Once those are done and I finish a couple small touches I think I might be ready for the final building inspection too! Now that's exciting.

We ordered the carpet for the main room too this weekend, the installer is coming over today to measure things up. I'm not sure when he'll actually install it yet, but maybe I'll know that this afternoon. I think that just depends on if the carpet manufacturer has that exact color in stock or if it has to be ordered. Once that carpet goes down, this thing's gonna look like an honest-to-goodness room!

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new year

Yup, another year down, but man was it a busy one. Don't worry I won't recap the whole year here, just the last few days.

I've been trying to wrap up some of the finishing details on the house this week, and actually doing some bike work in the shop. On the house front, I finished up the bathroom fixtures, they're all in place and plumbed. I sure hope that's the last pedestal sink I ever have to plumb though. My inspector had warned me that they're a pain, but you never really realize how bad they are until you do one. All the plumbing lined have to hide in the pedestal, which is only open on the backside. That means you get to try and make all the connections without being able to see them, and with them inside a 5" diameter cylinder where you hands really weren't meant to go. Hooking up the supply lines weren't too bad, but the drain line was tough, it barely fit, which meant my hands don't fit! But after a couple hours I managed to get it.

I've got one crucial step left though before it can be fully functional. The main drain stack for the bathroom still has the plug in it for pressure testing. That means going up on the roof to cut off the cap them glue in a new mesh cover. And while I love snow, we just got about 6" this week, and it's wet and slippery, so trips up on the roof are out for a few days.

I finished up a few more odds and ends today as well. I put the last finishing cut on the breakfast bar countertop, which meant I could finally install that cabinet and counter permanently. While I was at it, I finally put the last mounting screws in the remaining kitchen countertops and screwed the dishwasher in place (I never quite got around to that back in March when we did the kitchen!).

To everyone who's been over to our garage since we installed the garage door, you've seen my high-tech garage door opener control system: Touching two bare wires together on the opener... Well, I finally fixed that today too, put in a real opener switch mounted to the wall and everything! I also put in a sensor that tells us if the door is open or closed when we're upstairs. I never even though about the fact that we have to go downstairs and through the shop just to know if the door is closed, it's kinda a big hassle when you're as lazy as me. So now we have a little indicator upstairs and a door control, so no more trips downstairs before going to bed!

Thursday I managed to get two repairs done in the shop for a couple of customers that had unique circumstances and needed these repairs done while they waited. One was a customer driving up from Rochester for a singlespeed conversion, the other was a guy leaving the country on bike tour in 5 days and he needed some canti bosses moved before he left.
I've been working on getting my new tube mitering machine up and running too. I got all the electrical controls mounted and wired up. After quite a few phone calls to my brother it does work, but I figured out that the auxiliary contactor isn't working right so it won't stay running. I think I just need to get a new one and everything will be running. The plus side is I finally really learned and understand how the starter and contactor system works. I spec these out at work fairly often but I hadn't actually wired one or known how the internals work.

well, it's about time to head out for some new years partying, so adios folks, talk at you next year!

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Holiday Edition

Man, what a week. The week before Christmas is always busy for me, but usually it's simply due to my procrastination of buying holiday gifts. Not so this year, got all the shopping done prior to this week, but yet here I am, going insane. Work got bad this week and I had to take a fast trip down to Little Rock AR with no notice. And traveling this time of year sucks. Really sucks.

Maybe I'll start there, with Little Rock since it's kind of a funny story. I wasn't going for any noble reasons, really just one of those required political statements to show them that I care...

For those who don't know, Little Rock is pretty much a hole. It's tiny, not very nice, and full of some rather unusual folks as far as I can tell. The plant I service is actually in College Station, which is far worse. This is true poverty, people living in shacks that are half fallen over with a dozen rusted out cars rotting in the yard (this one isn't hyperbole, that's sadly what you will literally see driving into the plant). In the winter months you usually pass a group of guys huddled around a 55 gallon drum with a fire burning inside, warming up their fingers, and their throats if you know what I mean (think drinking out of paper bags at 6 am). The three liquor stores I pass on my way in (I think those are the only stores I pass) all have 6" steel pipes filled with concrete all along the front side of the store, along with steel welded grating over the windows. Otherwise people drive their cars through the front of the store to get the booze (seriously).

Here's a short synopsis of my trip down to the plant, this seems pretty typical when I travel down there:

I fly into Memphis, with a connection to Little Rock from there (the Little Rock Airport isn't big enough to have direct flights, it's a 40 seater from Memphis to Little Rock). The connecting plane is late, as usual, so I opt to just drive to Little Rock. It's only about a 2 hour drive and really the flight takes about the same amount of time once you get through sitting on the runway for 20 minutes, etc... I'm about 50% on making that flight from Memphis to Little Rock, it seems to get cancelled a lot.

So I get a rental car, one way to Little Rock, and head out. It's all interstate to Little Rock, I-40 all the way, should be flowing free and smooth, or so I think.
About 20 miles in, traffic slows to a crawl for a few minutes, until I get to the source of the problem: a Honda Civic on the side of the road. Now if it were just a broke-down Civic I wouldn't think anything of it, but it was actually a Civic that was being towed. Now don't read that last line as if it was actually in the act of being towed. It had BEEN towed by the front bumper until the bumper came off! Yes, the bumper was laying there, along with the chains they were using to tow it. No sign of the actual tow vehicle, they were probably on their way to the Honda dealer to complain about how crappy that car was, the bumper just flew right off!

So traffic moves again after that, for about 50 miles. Then it slows up again, and I see a road construction sign. I'm in the left lane and there are semi trucks in the right lane, so I can't see much over there. There's a sign on the left shoulder though that says "left lane ends, merge right". Seems pretty simple, going to single lane, so I better get over to the right. Well, when I merge right, I notice there's a sign on the right shoulder at the exact same point that says " right lane ends merge left"! So some genius at the Arkansas hiway department couldn't decide which lane ended, so they marked both! as you might guess, they didn't actually both end (that would have been something!), the left land ended, but it completely screwed up traffic for a while.

Finally about 5 miles out of Little Rock, I seen something unusual on the side of the road (even more unusual than the previous things). There's a full size pick-up truck that appears to be on fire! I thought it was an engine fire, but the flames were really high. As I got closer, I realized it was the contents of the pickup bed that were on fire! looked like someone was moving, it was mostly cardboard boxes full of who knows what, all going up in a blaze of glory. Really, how does the contents of the bed of your truck start on fire? I could see an engine fire if something went wrong, but most people pickup beds don't spontaneously combust.

But I eventually made it to town, got my work done, then got the hell outta there. I'll write more about Little Rock some other day when I have more time.

On the the house. I finally have some pictures. I found the batteries for the camera and snapped off a few shots:


Here's how things look from the kitchen looking out to the new room. Note the cabinet at the end of the kitchen is finally in place along with the countertop on it.
The flooring is al new and runs out into the new room and the hallway. It's solid 3/4" maple. I love how it came out.

Try to ignore all the junk on the countertop, there's just clutter everywhere right now, but we're working on that.





Here's the hallway, you can get a glimpse of the wall color in the main room, and the hall.







And, here's the shower in the bathroom. It's about all I have done in there other than the floor, but it looks good. We love the wall color/floor combo. I'm hoping to finish this room up next.

And finally, here's a view outside the garage door now that we have a little snow. It sure is nice to have a flat driveway! The snows been great, I just wish I could have gotten out skiing on it more this week.

Well, that's about all for right now, I gotta run.

Have a great holiday season, whatever holiday you celebrate.

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holiday slacking

Well as you can tell I've been really slacking off with respect to writing here lately. It's the holidays and life is crazy, as I'm sure yours is too, so you understand. Thanks, I knew you would.

So much has happened since my last entry that I don't know where to start. I won't be starting with pictures of what I've been working on though since I just found the battery charger for the digital camera this morning. Hopefully that'll be up and running this afternoon and I can get some pictures up here.

So I'll try to fill you in using my literary photo album, and since a picture is worth a thousand words, you're in for a long, painful read!

Last week I wrapped up the end of the hardwood flooring install, and my knees have been rejoicing ever since. It looks fantastic and has lots of good character. Looks much better than the cheap laminate fake wood floor we had in the kitchen. We saved that though, and will probably use it in one of the less-used spare bedrooms in the future.

And with having the floor down, I was finally able to install the last kitchen cabinet and the final countertop in the kitchen (the peninsula cabinet and breakfast bar). It looks really nice, and it was so nice to finally install that. It's been sitting in our basement for the better part of 2005 just waiting for this moment.

Beth is almost done with the painting out in the new area, which is great. Once that's done, we can put all the electrical coverplates on and get the final electrical inspection.

The bathroom floor is also done, I installed a tile-like product in there called Adura. They're glue-down laminate tiles 16" x 16" but without grout between them, they butt up against each other and the seams nearly disappear. It's supposed to be really tough, so it should hold up well in the laundry room. The shower is also installed, I got that up last week, just have to do a little finish caulking around the doors.
I passed the last drainline pressure-test this week too, so I've got the greenlight to proceed with installing the bath fixtures and then get the final inspection on the plumbing. I really can't wait for that since our dining room is currently full of boxed plumbing fixtures (toilet, pedestal sink etc...). So we might even be able to see the floor in the dining room again soon!
The final tie-in joint on the drain line continues to plague me. The inspector didn't like the reducing fitting I used, said it had to be reinforced with a stainless mesh since I'm installing it above ground, then proceeded to inform me that he had never seen a pipe like the one I'm trying to connect to, so he didn't even know how I should do it. Big help there.
Well... The only fittings approved for above ground connections between cast-iron and PVC are straight couplings (4" to 4", 3" to 3" and so-on). Well, that means I have to chip out about 4 more inches of concrete around the pipe (in addition to the 2" I already chipped out) then somehow cut off the cast-iron pipe in an area where I can't get a chain cutter in and connect my PVC to that cut end. Piece of cake right??? I'll keep fighting with this one this week, hopefully get it done soon. Thankfully I have my grandfather's electric hammer, what a cool tool! It's literally a mini jack-hammer that runs off electricity instead of air. It's been really handy for chipping out the concrete.

I decided I needed a break from the usual home project work last weekend, so I tackled a side-project: optimizing storage space in the basement. I've had this idea for a while but never made the time to implement it.
The band rehearsal area in the basement has been slowly getting more and more crowded with non-band related stuff, so I had a great idea. I built a big drum-riser with storage for large items underneath it. I'm always sitting when I play my drums, so I had spare headroom, so I went up 14"! Wish I had a picture to put in here, but if you recall from paragraph 2, no pictures right now... It's so rock-n-roll. It's like playing in a seedy bar with a rickety old stage, but right in my own basement, plus it stores all kinds of crap under it completely out of site.
Between that, and my selling off of misc stuff from the basement, I was able to get rid of a large chunck of shelving and open up the band area quite a bit. Makes the whole basement feel bigger.

Thursday last week I managed to get out for my first ski of the season, went over to Como with a friend of mine after work. It was great due to the fresh 6" of snow we got last week. I can honestly say this year was the first time I've ever been able to go out on my first ski of the year and have good snow. I'm usually so excited to get out that I ski on the first 1/2" we get with grass and rocks sticking out everywhere. Well I've been so busy this year I wasn't able to get out on the bad snow, and fortunately we got some good snow early.
Went out again Sat to Lake Elmo, which was good classic, but the skating sucked. They don't really know how to groom well out there and most of the trails are classic only, so the skate lane tends to suffer. I'll stick to classic out there I think. Just need to get some classic ski's waxed up. I did set-up a wax bench in the basement though, thanks to all the new free-space I was able to make down there.

Alright, enough rambling for now, I'll write more when have some pictures to go with it.

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Friday

Thank God for the end of the week. I was gone half the week and it still seemed like the longest week I've had in a while.

I don't usually talk about my day job here, but it's hard not to today. We moved our offices for the second time in 2 months today, moved back into our permanent space. We were moved out for the purposes of remodeling the wing of the building, new carpet, paint and furniture. Seemed like a worthwhile effort, 2 weeks of living out of boxes in a temporary area, then move back to all new digs.

Yeah right. One week into the temporary living, we were informed it would be at least 4 more weeks because the found asbestos tile in the old area. I want to know what genius didn't figure out that there was a good shot at the original tile being asbestos in an 80 year old building! So we hang out in the temporary area for more weeks, and finally moved back today. Should have stayed in the temporary area, it was better. We're now forced into half the area we occupied prior to the move. Our new furniture has about half the storage space that we had before, and we now don't have any real dividers between our cubes. In short, it sucks.

But what can you do...

I'll tell ya what, you can go out to the Kenwood Cash-sandwich tonight. A re-inactment of the now famed Jackass sandwich of several years ago where a group of gentlemen started at early happy hour at Lyles, then rode to Jackass the movie, then back to Lyles afterwards for late happy hour. Throw in some derbies and bicycle throwing in the middle and you got an event.
Tonight should be just what I need.

Well, more hardwood flooring tonight, maybe work on the bathroom this weekend if I get the hardwood in. Soon we'll have some use-able space again.

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Blog, blog, bloggity blog.

Man, so much to write about. So little time. Unfortunately, I have a bandage on the tip of my left index finger from a bone-headed move while laying flooring, so typing is a little slow right now, so I'll keep it brief.

Had a quick jaunt out to sunny CA this week for work. What a shock getting back out to my car though today. It was 70 and sunny when I left, and about 12 degrees when I got to the car. Shoulda packed a bigger jacket! It was a pretty normal trip, too much to do, too many people around and too much traffic. Man I really can't imagine living out there. Maybe it's just the part of town I go to, but it seems like endless sprawl (way worse than Minneapolis). I don't mind the crowdedness so much as the lifestyle. NY is crowded and I don't mind that, but the people there seem more real, more down to earth than LA. Whatever it is, I'm always glad to leave. I think I'll stick to the midwest for now.

As the title of this post somewhat infers, I want to touch on the theory of a blog, once again.... It seems every time I write anything with any passion at all, it gets lots of good comments and a few maybe deserved bad ones. This is a Blog folks, that's short for "web-log" i.e. a log or record of things I do or come across which I care to pass along. This is not a newspaper, and to prove that I'll reference what has become my favorite quote of all time referring to my writing:
it is " a long-winded tirade lacking a clear point" and " his lack of structure and hyperbole"


My tirad-ness (is that a word?) and bad hyperbole are exactly what makes this blog a blog and not a New York Times Editorial (that and my really bad grammar, spelling, punctuation and all those other things I never grasped in English class). It's one of those ironies in life that I get the most off-list positive comments from people to my rants, and I also get the most flack, but I guess that's the nature of holding personal opinions. So to be brief, my last rant was not a personal attack directed at anyone other than Chris Hawkey, and any other idiot who consciously chooses to try and run cyclists off the road. Period.

I've debated just not writing about anything other than the mundane work of building bikes. But that seems boring, so I guess I'll continue to write about whatever crosses my tiny mind. Really there's only so much I can say about cutting steel tubing and brazing lugs. So if you don't see eye to eye with me all the time, please just accept that we're different people. That's a good thing, otherwise we'd all be Bob Brown clones running around building bikes and complaining about the world, then I'd be out of a job.

Maybe it's all my own fault that people sometimes get upset. I've always assumed that there are about 4 of you out there that actually read my ramblings, and I often write it that way. I'm continually shocked at how many people actually check this site and read the entries. Do you all have that little to do at work? anyways, I'm glad you're here. I'll try me best to keep you entertained.

I've got a wood floor to install, so that's it for today. I'm hoping to make it out skiing this week before the snow is gone again, so see you out on the trails!

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2 in 1

Two posts in one day, how lucky are you readers!

this one is quick, but very important. There is a final meeting of the Minneapolis Park Board committee on determining the fate of the mountain biking experiment in Wirth park. If you like to ride there please try to go, more bodies = more support.

Here are the details:

Wednesday December 7, 2005
Minneapolis Park and Rec HQ's 5 - 7 PM
Board Room Suite 255
2117 West River Road, Minneapolis

Regretably I have a work commitment that night, so I can't make it, please someone take my place, or better yet, 10 people take my place!

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Rantopia

I was all set to write a nice polite update about all the hard work I've done the last few days, then I went and read the KW discussion board...

Thorny was kind enough to share a story of what was said over the airwaves on KFAN radio last week. As you can imagine, most people I know wouldn't have anything to do with KFAN, we have brains. However lots of redneck idiots in this town do listen to the Clear-Channel spew, I know, I work with a bunch of them.

Apparently Chris Hawkey (the morning idiot) last week told a tale about how he intentionally tried to run a cyclist off the road on his commute in simply because he though it was stupid that anyone would ride a bike in the winter. How can someone still be legally allowed to drive after doing something like that, then bragging about it on the radio? How can Clear Channel still be employing this idiot? (well, that's rhetorical, I think being an idiot is a prereq. to working at KFAN).

In MN it is illegal to drive a motor vehicle within 3' of a cyclist on a public roadway (even if there's no shoulder), so no matter what, he deliberately broke the law. He admitted on the radio that he did it to teach the cyclist a lesson, that seems more like assault to me, or attempted vehicular manslaughter, but I'm certainly no lawyer, and I'm sure I'm just dreaming here, but if I were that particular cyclist, I'd be down at the police pressing charges against this asshole, any charge I could.

This is Minneapolis, the city with the highest percentage of bicycle commuters in the US. There also happens to be a real winter here, with snow and everything (if we're lucky). If you put those two things together, that means there will be many people riding bikes in the snow, on your roadways. Mr. Hawkey, get used to it or leave. We've got just as much right to be there as you do.

Then, as if having these local idiots around wasn't bad enough, I was emailed a story about a cyclist in Colorado who was hit and killed by a teenager who was attempting to send a text message while driving. That's so sad you'd think I was making it up, but unfortunately I'm not. The kid is a minor, so they won't release his identity, and get this, he's being charged with Careless Driving Causing Death, which carries a maximum one year sentence. So this 17 year old was so stupid that he took the life of another person, yet he'll get off with only serving one year. Way to teach him a lesson. I sincerely hope he's riddled with guilt the rest of his life for what he did.

There is simply no accountability for driving these days. Period. Watch out.

Well, after that I don't even feel like writing about the weekend. I spent too much time working on flooring and it's not done. enough said.

We got some fresh snow though, which is exciting (not just because it means it's open season to run cyclists off the road either!) for skiing. I hear there was some decent skiing at Wirth this weekend, I wouldn't know I was inside all weekend. Maybe next weekend I can get out for a ski. More than likely this will be the first winter with real snow in years simply because I have too much work to do on my house to go out and ski...

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Finally, a posting...

Well it's been a while since I posted again. I've just been too busy to even think about writing here.

I was really hoping to kick butt this weekend on working on the house, I feel like it was more the other way around, the house kicked my butt. I took Wednesday off to work on the yard before the impending snow of Thursday. I spent the day moving dirt, lots of dirt. I shoveled and raked about 10 yards of it around until I was satisfied with the grade of the yard. Then it snowed.

Got about 3-4" of it here, but it melted off about 2 days later, so no real big deal. However our prospects for laying sod this fall vanished with that cold snap. So now were stuck with a yard full of black dirt for the winter. We got another warm spell yesterday, so I took the afternoon off and spread straw over the dirt to prevent erosion, and then installed a silt fence along the road. That may sound easy enough, but lemme tell ya, digging a trench and pounding in silt fencing in the rain at night in a complete mud bog isn't much fun. The dirt was completely saturated from the snowmelt, so with every step I sunk in about 6". yuk.

Hopefully the dirt will stay in our yard now though once spring comes and we get real snow melt. We'll definelty have some re-grading to do though as the dirt will undoubtedly slump down to the bottom of the hill.

Thursday was turkey day, and my Brother's in-laws were kind enough to invite us over for dinner. That was great, Mike (Katherine's Dad) is one heck of a chef. Thanks for the invite Tharps! At that point our kitchen was still covered in plastic since we were still painting the ceiling, so cooking was out for us.

Friday was the first time I can remember spending the entire day shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. Sadly enough that was not our plan, I had hoped to starting laying the subflooring. But we needed some supplies and once we had shot the whole morning/early afternoon getting the sink base cabinet and light fixtures for the bathroom, we decided to just get the flooring, paint and a few other items and kill the rest of the day shopping. It sucked. I hate shopping, always have. I used to not mind shopping for home improvement stuff, but this year has pretty much jaded me to that too.

Saturday I finally got to do some work, but we didn't really get into our stride until the afternoon. Beth worked on painting while I worked on subflooring. By Sunday, I had all 18 sheets of subfloor installed. That part actually went far better than I expected, the hardest part was carrying each sheet upstairs once I cut it in the garage. After that was down I started on the bathroom, installing what I could before the flooring goes in.

Here's the laundry sink base installed, with the sink just sitting on top. The washer water connections are inside the sink base, so I had to do some plumbing once I got the base installed. Just have to cut the countertop to length and install the sink in it, then this part will be good to go.


As I mentioned, I installed the light fixtures too. Those don't lend themselves to good photos with the lights on, guess I should have just taken the picture with the light off... As with most of this project, nothing went smooth. I check the electrical prior to wiring up the ceiling light to make sure the wires weren't live. To my surprise, they were, and the switch didn't work. Well, after about 2 hours of bangin' my head against the wall trying to find the problem I finally used a different tester and it worked fine. Turns out my meter had broken and was giving false readings. sigh. Then the exhaust fan wouldn't work. This one wasn't a bad meter, it was a bad motor in the fan. That really pissed me off since I know it worked before the sheet rock was installed, I tested it. I had to go back up in the attic and remove it, bench tested it and sure enough, the motor was bad. Back to Menards for a new one, then back up in the attic to re-install it. again, sigh....

The one light that worked with no glitches was the hall light. Looks nice too. This one is a fine Ikea product. I find it amazing that they can offer products even cheaper than the cheap crap at Menards, and amazingly enough it's actually slightly (just slightly) better construction. I mean really, all this stuff at every home-improvement store is made-in-China-crap, but Ikea's crap is slightly less crappy (how many times can you say crap in one sentence?). You can see some of Beth's paint work too, the hall is a nice taupe (I have no idea if I'm spelling that right) color, the bath is a blue-violet-gray kinda thing that looks swell, and the main room will be a rusty-dark-orangish color.

You can tell a woman now lives in the house which I once lived in alone. There are colors on the walls. If you've ever been in our house, you might find it humorous that the old part is basically all beige, and the new part is basically all colors. Guess it's that venus-mars thing, but I don't mind, the colors are definitely more interesting. I was just too cheap and lazy to repaint the all-beige color scheme the house had when I bought it. Slowly but surly the old part of the house is getting more colors too.

And finally, here's the main room. Hasn't been painted yet, but I'm sure it's next up. The color swatch on the wall is the main suspect in hunt for colors. The ceiling is finally painted to a respectable finish after three tries (don't ask, it just didn't work out). The recessed lighting looks good, and the subfloor is all down in here. We actually just ordered the hardwood that will extend from the kitchen into part of this room last night. We'll probably be getting the carpet on order as soon as the painting is done (and once we figure out how to pay for it!). I'm pretty excited at how much it is coming together, but to be honest, I had hoped to have all the flooring in by now and the bathroom put together. Oh well, I guess schedules exist to be missed (at least in my case).

I'll try to get a picture of the finished retaining wall if I'm ever home during daylight hours and not swamped with work (doubtful).

Not much shop progress to report. I've got a handful of frames ready for painting, so I guess I better get a paint set-up together soon so I can spray again. I did get my phase converter wired up for the horizontal mill, so the motor works now. But I'm waiting for the drive belt to come before I can try it out. Did some other machining work on the vertical mill, it's great. A world of difference from the table-top in terms of stability. I do still miss the geared head on my old one, as speed changes were quicker, but I'll live.

I guess I did slip in a couple of quick repairs on stuff, and I'm putting the finishing touches on that nature bike, but that's about it. No riding whatso ever, that sucks, but the weather hasn't been great for that either. The good news is, I'm starting to see the light at the end of the remodeling project. Once the interior is livable, I shouldn't have to work on this every night and every weekend, I might even have a life again. Maybe.

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The next day...

Alright, I think I have this new blog thing working out now. I did a little more formatting this morning and it seems good enough to run with it.

This weekend we were out east. I had to travel for work last week, so I finally convinced Beth to come out to New York for the weekend (she had never been there). She had been quite resistant at first, as she had lots of pre-concieved notions of what it would be like, but I think once she got there she had a good time.

And she got to meet the one and only Large Fella on a bike, and his family, what more could you ask for! We spent Friday night at the Cutshall residence, staying up waaaaay too late chatting. And Scott, I did actually enjoy the food, that cold stuff you got was something new to me, and I loved it. The chicken was all good, the only thing I was unsure of was whatever that deep-fried thing was (the stuff Chloe loves).

We were hoping to see the Ryan Adams / Willie Nelson concert Thursday night, but ended up just seeing the Willie part thanks to the shopping season traffic heading into Manhattan. We arrived just in time to hear Ryan's last song as we were making out way to the auditorium. bummer. Willie was good to see, but we really were there for Ryan. The Willie freaks in attendance were annoying as hell. The guy next to me began our conversation with " your timing couldn't be better" as we sat down just as the roadies packed up Ryan's gear. He couldn't understand that we really came for the opener, Willie was a sideshow. The couple in front of us refused to sit still and must have found every possible way to block our view. Oh well, Willie was good, and impressive for a 72 year old performer.

Got back to town Sunday, just in time to spend the day painting the ceiling of the new space. Primed just about everything, and last night we put the second coat on the ceilings. It's starting to look like a real room out there. I'll try to get some pictures today.

I also spent the last two afternoons modifying the steps I had made out on the retaining wall. I figured out a better way to shape the exposed ends, so I rebuilt the main set. Unfortunately the modification invoves adding a split block each end, so I spent quite a few hours this week already splitting concrete blocks with a hammer and chisel. Talk about feeling like Fred Flintstone, try sitting in your front yard beating on chunks-o-concrete with a big hammer. But they're nearly done now and looking fantastic, sometimes it's good to be anal.

I'm off for the rest of the week, staying home to work on the house over the holiday. With a little luck, I hope to get in some flooring and start making the bathroom into a bathroom.

Somewhere amid hauling waaaay too much concrete block with it, my trailer started making some pretty bad noises lately. So since I only spent the last two nights working on retaining wall and painting the interior, I decided to sneak in repacking the bearings on the trailer last night too. By then I was on a roll so I also wired up the new front lights outside the garage and installed the lights inside the garage. Whew, it's been a busy week and it's only Wednesday morning!

Well, I've got lots to do, so I better get crackin'

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Welcome to the new Bob Brown Cycles Blog. Let's hope this one works out better than the last one.

I decided to move over to blogger after Fortune City decided to shut down it's blog service. I'm really not that upset since their software was pretty bad and they tended to fill my blog with ads. Hopefully the registration function will now work for you all as well. It seemed that about 5% of the people who tried to register with my old blog (to leave comments and be notified of new postings) actually were successful.

If you tried to register on the old one but didn't have any luck, I urge you to try it here, I think you'll have better results. I'm going to leave this pretty open, so anyone will be able to leave comments. I will be moderating though should any spam type stuff show up. If that doesn't work out, then I'll switch it over to only registered members being able to comment. Once nice thing, comments should show up right on the main page with the blog entry, no more clicking hyperlinks to see comments.

Blogger doesn't seem to have the photo album features that Fortune city had, but I didn't use that too much. I'll stick to posting pictures right on the blog rather than in an album. Not too much of a loss there.

Unfortunately due to Fortune City's sucky-ness, their software doesn't export the date from my old blog in a very user friendly format. Basicaly it's un-importable into any other blog software. However all is not lost. I've taken the HTML coding from the old blog entries and imported them into large postings here as an archive. So You will see in the recent postings link on the lower right that there are postings titled "August 2005 archive" and such. That post contains all the postings from the entire month of August. Most of the pictures survived, but not all. It's a little bit of an akward archive, but it's much better than nothing.

Well, I think I'll just start off with that. If you had a shortcut to the old blog, I recommend updating it to this address, as the old service will be shut off at the end of November.

So once again, welcome,

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October/Nov 2005 archive

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Thu, 06 Oct 2005 10:15:00 -0400
Thu, 06 Oct 2005 10:15:00 -0400
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What a whirlwind it’s been lately.  I’ve been traveling again the last few weeks between having fun and work.  Basically right after I got in town from California last week, we had to leave to head down to Red-Wing for a wedding, then the day I got back from there, I jumped back on a plane out east. 

 

Before I bore you to tears with my whining about travel, I’ll whine about something else: this whole wedding thing.  When I was younger, I used to hate weddings, I mean really hate weddings.  I’d avoid them like the plague, most likely due to my hatred of dancing (seriously, I can’t stand having to dance, ask anyone who’s gone to a wedding with me!).  I don’t even know if hatred is the right word, maybe ineptitude ( I thought I was making that word up, but amazingly enough my spell checker says it’s a real word!) at it.  You’d think being a drummer and being really quite well coordinated, not clumsy type of guy that it would just come naturally.  Keeping the beat of a song comes naturally, getting up in front of a big group of people and acting like I’m having some sort of full-body muscle contraction to the beat of a song (although that can be how it looks) doesn’t.  It’s not like I haven’t tried, I’ve been through dance lessons 3 different times, at three different top-notch studios.  I’m the guy that makes the dance instructors bald, they don’t have any hair left after they tear it all out trying to teach me.  Anyways, the main means for passing time at a wedding is usually dancing, hence my dislike of weddings…

 

Complete side note:  The best thing from a wedding attending standpoint that’s happened to me has been meeting Jeff Greenwood.  He’s amazing in that he not only knows just about everyone I know, but he loves to dance with anyone.  So as long as I know Jeff’s going to the wedding, I can at least count on him taking some heat off me by dancing with my wife for a few songs. He should get some kind of Nobel prize that, really.

 

 Where was I?  Oh yeah, weddings…  So we went to the wedding of Beth’s old housemate Doug this weekend (I feel I must put in a comment here that I don’t hate marriage, or the wonderful things we’re celebrating at a wedding, it’s really just the dancing!).  It was a spectacular wedding, about as good as they get.  We drove down Friday afternoon for the actual ceremony, which took place on a small farm outside of town.  It was a nice small ceremony, about 30 people I’d guess, and the evening was absolutely perfect.  Everything went off without a hitch (well, except for them getting hitched, I guess that’s a bad expression to use for a wedding…) and we all headed over to the St. James hotel in Red Wing for a fantastic dinner.  After dinner we basically drank and chatted all night until the bar kicked us out (which was a good thing based off how some of the group was looking).  We were all set at tables of six people (three couples), and we were randomly placed with two other wonderful couples.  After some conversation, we discovered we all knew mutual friends through absolutely unique connections, proving once again how small the world really is.  One couple knew quite a few folks I knew through a running group she trains with.  We all instantly hit it off, and I think Beth and I came away with a few new friends. 

 

The next day (Saturday) was the real “reception”.  The gathering of the many, many people Doug and Christy knew and wanted to share their marriage with.  They held it at a city park in Red-Wing, right on the river.  No formalities, shorts and t-shirts were the attire, catering by Famous Dave’s and great music all day long.  One of the highlights was finding out that Doug happened to know Dave Boquist (Guitarist for Sunvolt and Uncle Tupelo) and that Dave was playing along with another friend of his and his son. 

 

So between them, and Doug’s friend JR who flew in from California we had incredible music pretty much the whole day (and no dancing!  Woo-hoo).  The weather was as perfect as you could ask for, sunny and 80 pretty much all day.  A good time was had by all. 

 

We came back Saturday night, then celebrated our one year wedding anniversary on Sunday.  We celebrated in pretty much the only way we seem to know how these days, by working on our house…  Yup, that’s the kind of natural born romantic I am.  Well not really, but we had some stuff that we absolutely had to get done before I left town again that night so that Pat could pour concrete this week.  So while Beth did some painting, I tamped the dirt in my garage down and layed the insulation and re-mesh down.  Once that was in place, we layed the pex tubing for the radiant heat in and tied it to the re-mesh.  We worked at a mad pace trying to get it all done, I soldered up an air header to pressure test it and had to leave for the airport before I could get it hooked up.  Beth finished up the rest while I was out of town though, and I think we’ll be able to get some concrete down this week if the endless rain ever lets up.  Yes, once again it’s been raining since I left, and it’s washing all kinds of dirt back into the garage, this time on top of my insulation though.  What can you do…

 

Well that’s about it for now. 

 

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Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:52:00 -0400
Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:52:00 -0400
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Thank God we put up gutters and laid down plastic to do some stormwater control before I left town Sunday.  I didn't realize until I got home that we got 5" of rain here Tuesday night!  This one trumps all the measly 2"+ storms we've been having this year.  This was the largest rain I've seen since moving back to MN. 

Amazingly enough, all the water controls seemed to have worked great.  We had almost no water in the garage and only a small amount of dirt fill. I can only imagine what kind of hurt I'd be feeling right now if we hadn't got the gutters and plastic up!

Hopefully we're almost done worrying about this as Pat is planning on pouring the garage floor at noon today.  And once that's in we can get the driveway guy out here to pour that, then get the retaining wall in place and be done worrying about erosion and run-off in the yard. 

Had another first this morning, I had to scrape the windows on the Miata.  Since we don't have a garage, all the cars are living in the street, and I've never had the miata out in weather as cold as it was this morning.  Not that 32 degrees is really that cold, but it's cold for Oct 7th!  Heck, it took two tried to turn it over this morning (it's really a summer car, the battery is tiny). 

Another first, and the one I'm the most excited about is the arrival of the first batch of Bob Brown Cycles / Kenwood Racing waterbottles.   I've been wanting to make something like this up for a while, but it all takes $$$$.  But just in time for the 'cross season, they arrived.  I don't have a picture right now, but here's the artwork on each side of the bottles (don't worry, they look much better than the bad resolution that Jpgs seem to take on this blog site):

         

 

I've got 2 sizes and 2 colors in each size, all super-schweet! let me know if you want any, I'll try to get the up on the web-site sometime soon.  I'm actually working on a new page with items for sale on my web-site.  So keep checking back.

This weekend should entail lots of bike work.  I'm hoping to get most of a frame built this weekend, and still find time to do the 'cross race at Lake Rebecca sunday.  I may be dreaming though...

 

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Mon, 10 Oct 2005 10:48:00 -0400
Mon, 10 Oct 2005 10:48:00 -0400
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Before the real ranting begins, some good stuff happened this weekend.  Pat finished up the concrete in the garage, and hauled off the last of the excess dirt from our yard.  In fact, he regraded the front yard and it actually looks like  front yard again! 

Saturday he hauled off 12 truckloads of dirt, which brought the grand total to 41 truckloads which were hauled off during this project, those are 16 cubic yard trucks, but they weren't totally full, so figure about 12-14 yards per truck, that's over 500 cubic yards of dirt!  I'm glad I didn't take the advice of a few friends and just rent a bobcat and a trailer for a weekend!  I'd still be digging.

I also got in some good shop time this weekend. Got the main triangle of the next frame all brazed up and I'm working on the rear.  No pictures yet, but soon. 

Sunday I did my first cx race for the year.  It was a perfect day, sunny and about 55 at the start.  I knew going in that I wasn't in racing shape, but man did I discover that even more during the race.  I decided to do the B race since I'm so out of shape, but I soon learned there may be some benefit to just sucking it up and doing the A race. 

Rant on.

The B race was huge, 62 people in it, racing on a course that was big enough for about 30.  Apparently 'cross really took off this year, the field has gotten huge, which seems like a good thing, but it's really starting to resemble a sport mtb race: a heard of people who have no idea what they're doing, but all confident that they're going to win the race on the first lap.  The start sucked, just people everywhere.  It seemed like things were improving in the first narrow section until we got to the first dismount.  It became very obvious I was surrounded by people who had no idea how to properly dismount and remount in a crowd, it was a wreck, not even close to fun. 

Within about 200' of the remount, something happened, I'm not sure what, either I hit something really hard, or someone hit my back wheel, causing it to come out of the dropouts.  No crash, but I had to stop and fix it, which took about a minute, and promptly put me in dead last place on the first lap.  Oh well, what can you do but hit it and hit it hard.  I hammered the rest of the laps as hard as I could, with way too much adrenalin from my anger at being last.  I thought maybe I was hitting it a little too hard when I felt the cramps starting in my quads, but luckily it was the bell lap, so I knew I just had to make it around one more time.  I thought I could hold'em off, but no such luck, at the last remount my left quad cramped pretty hard.  Thankfully it was all downhill to the finish and I was able to coast in. 

I ride singlespeed in these races, which seems to be pretty rare now.  Never used to be a disadvantage, but if the courses are going to be a crappy as this one was, I don't know...  I'd like to publicly state to that these are supposed to be cyclocross races, not road races run on grass.  There were a grand total of 2 individual barriers on this entire course, both simply put at the bottom of a gradual hill, which most people were able to ride up.  That's lame.  I mean LAME!!!

The new USCF rules pretty well killed the sport of 'cross last year by specifying all the limitations on course design, but this weekend's course took that to a whole new low by getting rid of basically all the barriers.  It was literally a road race with some grass and gravel thrown in. 

here's hoping next weeks course is better... at least I know the last race of the year will be good.

Speaking of crappy things, I tried to use my printer at home again this weekend.  It sucks.  It's an Epson, and it really sucks.  It's not that it prints poorly or anything, but Epson apparently has decided it has too much market share, so they're going to try and reduce that by pissing off customers. 

The damn thing takes 4 ink cartridges, when I bought it, the idiot sales guy claimed this was a "feature".  Well they put a chip in each cartridge that knows the date the cartridge is installed and it has a pre-programmed life in it.  So even if you never print anything with cyan in it, in like 90 days your printer will tell you it's out of cyan in and it will not allow you to print ANYTHING until you replace said cartridge.  Well, if you print a lot of only black ink, you're forced to buy not only a new black ink cartridge when it runs out, but you'll have to buy 3 new color cartridges at the same time or the printer will refuse to print anything.  Did I mention the cartridges are like $17 a pop?  This is absolutely nothing other than a scam.  A quick google search even showed that there was a whole host of consumer action lawsuits against Epson for this practice.  Bastards. 

I know I for one will never buy another Epson product as long as I live, infact I went out yesterday and bought an HP printer since I didn't feel like spending $75 in ink to make my damn Epson work (incidentally the printer cost less than that to buy). 

I hate scams...

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Oh boy - here we go again... ;) The business about the "smart" printer carts is totally insane bogus. When you were describing it I was thinking "Boy, that would be nice to only have to replace the one ink you're out of at a time." But, $75 four times per year? Insane.
nathan
Tue, 11 Oct 2005 15:22:00 -0400



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Wed, 12 Oct 2005 10:14:00 -0400
Wed, 12 Oct 2005 10:14:00 -0400
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Well, Monday night was the end of a short era.  Pat finished up the last of the final touches, packed up his stuff and moved on.  It's actually kind of odd not having him around.  He's been coming over every night after work for so long, we just kind of got used to him. 

Sad to see him go 'cause he's a nice guy, but we're really happy to have the work done.  Now we have to focus on the work we have to do.  Next step is finding someone good to do the drywall taping and mudding (anyone got a good recommendation in St. Paul?).  I need to get the garage door up, Beth's hitting the exterior painting with both barrels this weekend.  Next week we'll get a driveway, then we have to do the retaining wall after that.  We're both hoping our budget holds up enough to be able to hire out the wall. 

It's been really hard to hire out a lot of this stuff at the end.  You see, I actually really enjoy working on my house, and I'd like to do as much of this as possible (except sanding drywall, I hate that!), but the simple reality is I don't have the time.  I was extraordinarily busy before we started all this, now it's out of control and I just want to go back to being extraordinarily busy!  So I'm hiring out as much of the time intensive work that I can. After all, I have bikes that need building.

I have been sneaking in progress on the nature bike this week.  The main triangle is all brazed up, and after much fine tuning of angles and tweaking of points, I'm quite happy with the results.  I've been so busy working that I haven't taken any time to shoot photos yet though, so nothing to see, but soon...  I have the chainstays all set to go, those are a big job all by themselves on wide-tired touring frames like this.  I have to make my own s-bend chainstays to fit the huge tires the customer wants and still get the chainrings to clear the stay.  Fortunately it's a heavy touring bike, so the chainstays are very thick walled, that makes bending a bit easier. 

Ok, so I promise pictures of the house and some framework soon.

 

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Mon, 17 Oct 2005 10:32:00 -0400
Mon, 17 Oct 2005 10:32:00 -0400
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I thought for a change I'd talk about bike stuff this today.  This past weekend was just incredible weather-wise, so I was excited about racing Sunday.  I was also a little down about how bad the previous week's race was, both in layout and in my performance, so I wanted to prove to myself I can still ride 'cross.

If you'll recall, I basically went in to last week's race completely unprepared.  Hadn't really ridden much in the previous month, and I really paid for it during the race.  Well, I got back on the training this week (and hope to keep it up for a few more!) and rode just about every day.  I changed my focus from practicing dismounts to just riding hard and running hard.  My dismounts and remounts are not even close to my weakest link, it's my leg strength and lower back that always seem to give out first.  So I ran lots of hill repeats and tried to get in a couple harder rides without all the dismounts. 

It seemed to help Sunday.  I went out hot, maybe a little too hot.  Thorny led the pack out in the start and I somehow ended up about 5 people back from him (not sure how that happens riding a singlespeed in a race with a long flat start).  Thorny led for a while, longer than I expected, and dropped back a couple places.  After a few laps I caught him and he grabbed onto my wheel, I could tell we were both starting to hurt.  We rode that way for like 3 laps in 9th & 10th places.  I was feeling ok when he came around to take the pull, but right after he came around, I botched up a barrier (didn't get my foot out fast enough) and he lost me.  Being the good guy he is, he waited up a bit, but I knew I'd only be slowing him down at this point, so I told him to go on (not sure if he ever heard me though).  I kept him in site for the next few laps, and basically I rode the mid portion of the race along.  I was about 40' off the back of the lead pack and Thorny, but there was nobody behind me, so I just focused on trying to keep the leaders in sight. 

With 2 laps to go I really started to pop.  My back was cramping and I could feel my quads on the verge, but thankfully the lap counter let me know I was almost done, which makes it much easier to push through the pain.  Last lap, I could see a group of four closing in on me, one of which was Fride.  I really didn't want him to catch me, so I gave it all I had, amazingly the cramps seemed to subside in the last half lap.  I finished just in front of Fride and probably about 30 seconds back from Thorny.  All in all a good race. 

One low point, about halfway through the race, I took a GU in the straight section before the feed zone, knowing I'd get a water handup to wash down the GU (for those that have had them, you know you really NEED water after eating one).  Well, I was coming in fast behind a slower rider into the feed zone.  I was going to pass him, but then saw Beth was on the right and I'd have to cut him off really bad to get over to her for my handup.  So I slowed down and tucking in behind him.  Beth had my hand-up ready to go, reaching out with the bottle, and this guy tried to grab it!  I panicked, and screamed at him that it was MY handup, not his.  I think I scared the crap out of him, and about 20 feet later down the course I felt really bad.  There was no need for me to yell at him like that, but when I turned around to apologize, he wasn't behind me.  I have no idea where he went.  So whomever you are, please accept my apologies.  Poor form on my part.

One note on the course, after all my complaining last week.  This week was a whole different story, the course was awesome.  6 barriers and it was a short lap, so there was essentially nowhere to recover.  The only long flat section was full of rocks and roots, so it wasn't very restful.  Well designed if you ask me, it required some 'cross skills to do it fast.

Backing up a day, Saturday was another really nice weather day.  Beth took advantage of that and had a few folks come over to help her paint the outside of the house.  They made good progress, but didn't quite finish up.  Hopefully the weather will hold this week and we can wrap most of that up.  While they were outside, I was inside with my Dad.  We took out the last wall that needed to be demoed, then I patched in the drywall and made a new section of ceiling.  Dad put in a new box for a light and a switch for it. 

I hired a guy to hang my garage door for me, as I'm running pretty short on time these days.  I think this may have been my biggest mistake so far.  He sent his bother to install it, which seemed alright until I found out he hadn't installed this type of door before.  He put it up pretty quick, but it didn't fit right and wouldn't clear my opener.  I had bought the low-headroom track kit for it because I knew if wouldn't clear the opener otherwise, but this guy insisted that he didn't need that low-headroom kit.  So he came back yesterday and made some changes so it would clear the track.  I got home and tested it, and while it did just barely clear the track, the door hit the limit switch on the opener, so no-go.  I think he'll be back again today, which will be his 3rd or 4th trip out to re-do it.  Thank God I didn't pay him anything in advance.  I really should have just installed it myself...

Ok, as promised, here are a few pictures of the nature lugs all brazed up too.  I'm closing in on this one.

Once again, I'm already starting to dread the paintjob!  It's going to tough masking all these guys, but it's gonna be one heck of a looker when it's done. 

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Glad to hear you're getting in some riding... this is the time of year for it for sure. Hmmmm, those pics sure do look nice!! ;-) -Me
large fella
Mon, 17 Oct 2005 13:10:00 -0400

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Those pics sure do look nice! 'Specially that froggy! :)
nathan
Tue, 18 Oct 2005 17:12:00 -0400



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Tue, 18 Oct 2005 15:16:00 -0400
Tue, 18 Oct 2005 15:16:00 -0400
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It's been tough to actually get pictures of the house lately, it's pitch black when I leave for work in the morning, and I usually work until it's dark at night and don't think about taking pictures until it's too late. 

But....  I finally shot some today. 

here's how things are looking outside:

We took advantage of the warm weather last night and painted until dark.  It's getting close now, just have to prime and paint that fascia board on the front side, then finish up the trim.  We should probably get the gutters ordered up too so I can get those up before spring.

Here's our new front deck:

We decided to go this route instead of a concrete step.  It's much easier for getting stuff into and out of the door, and it's a nice look.  Probably have to wait until next year to stain it since we've got plenty to do before the snow flies already, and the green treated wood will be fine until we get to it.

The big excitement is the driveway, it's half in:

Now this is real progress.  I suspect he'll pour the other side tomorrow.  He needs to let this set-up so he can remove the center form before pouring the other half.  This one should be less likely to crack since he's pouring it in many more sections than my old one (which was full of cracks).  And of course the best part is, this one is almost flat! 

As you can see from the picture, we have some serious retaining wall work to do yet.  The first bid we got on that was sky high, so we're looking at all our options right now.  I'm still getting a couple more bids, which I suspect will be lower, but there's a chance I may revert to the original plan of doing it myself. 

We've had 2 drywall contractors out to give us bids on taping and mudding the drywall, and those seem to be pretty much in line with what I'd expect to pay.  I hope to have that done in the next week or so.  That should mark the end of the really messy work inside. 

At this point I think we just need to focus on outdoor work.  This warm weather can't hold out much longer.  So I want to get that retaining wall up and a sidewalk and stairs in as soon as possible.  And I need to install the new front door before too long or that will be a cold job as well!

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Mon, 24 Oct 2005 10:27:00 -0400
Mon, 24 Oct 2005 10:27:00 -0400
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So it's been what, a couple weeks since I got this nice new big door into my shop?  As luck would have it, I already found a way to take advantage of it.  I came across a knee mill that I really want, but I need to make some room in the shop first, so if anyone reading this needs a mill, I need to sell my old one:

http://www.bobbrowncycles.com/sale.htm

I thought I had it sold this weekend, but the guy hasn't called back, and since he said he wanted to pick it up this past weekend, that seems like a good sign that he's out. 

On to better topics.  I attempted to race my CX bike this weekend.  Didn't go so well, don't worry no broken bones or anything like that, really just stupidity on my part.  I headed up to Ham Lake Saturday for the race and completely forgot how long it takes to get up there.  I got there about 10 minutes before the start of the B race, so I decided to just do the A race (I had been on the fence about moving back up, but this made the decision easy).  I had an hour to warm up and spectate at the B race, so I did.  I was finishing up my warm-up and rode to the start expecting to find my place at the back of the pack, but instead found no pack.  Somehow I missed the start.  Thorny told me they went off like a minute before I got there, I just figured he was pullin' my leg as usual.  Nope, I missed it.  So I went up and told the officials I'd just jump in behind the pack when they came around, so mark me as down one lap on the field.  No problem I figured, it wasn't like I was going to be competitive with this group anyways, what's one less lap? 

So I jumped in after everyone came through, went down the long straight road section, took the first sharp turn into the barriers and felt my rear tire slide out from under me and promptly plowed right through the first barrier.  Nice move...   I got up and fixed the barrier, but found that I had torn the bead out of my back tire. Never had that happen before, I mean the Kevlar was hanging out, and the tire was almost brand new!  Turns out Thorny had done the same thing to the same tire last year, guess I won't be buying those again. 

Of course I was at the farthest point out on the course and my rear wheel is completely flat, so I start the walk back.  I think they did three laps in the time it took me to walk back.  Wasn't hardly worth riding anymore, so I packed it up.  What a waste of my time even heading out there.  I rode a nice warm-up, then about 1/3 of one lap and that's it.

The good news was I felt pretty fresh when I got home, so I dug out the footing for the retaining wall on half the driveway. 

Sunday I was thinking about doing the Powderhorn CX race but ended up working all day digging the rest of the retaining wall trench, or at least most of it.  I didn't quite finish it up because we hit a big area of clay filled with rock.  I spent 2 hours digging about 5' of trench in this stuff.  Guess I'm going to have to hit it with a pick-axe tonight to finish it up.  That is, if my back holds up, yesterday worked it over pretty bad.

The good news is Pat will be back on site for a little bit. He's going to be helping me put in the retaining wall.  I'm trying to do as much myself as possible since we're rapidly running out of money, but I just don't have the time to do it all.  So this works well, he'll get the materials and help me out on an hourly rate basis.  Have I told you how highly I recommend Pat? 

The really big news over the weekend is that we actually parked our cars in the garage!  This is a huge deal for us, after 3 months of partially blocking the street.  I need to finish up the garage door seal and wiring, but it works for now and we're inside!

bbbb

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Are you pouring a wall or are you using interlocking blocks?
Billy
Mon, 24 Oct 2005 20:24:00 -0400

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Chester said my frame is on the way, and he thinks I'll be stoked. We'll have to wait and see.
Billy
Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:09:00 -0500



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Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:57:00 -0500
Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:57:00 -0500
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bobbrowncycles

That title basically summarizes the last few weeks of my life.  I feel like I've done nothing but dig and haul dirt for the last 2 weeks since I've been working on this retaining wall.  I estimate I've now dug and wheelbarrow-ed away about 15 yards of sand, then refilled the trench for 3 yards of class V material, then a couple more inches of sand on that.  Top it off with running a power compactor over it Saturday and you've got one nice recipe for a sore back.

So I thought I'd take a break from all that work Friday and just move some really heavy machinery instead! 

I sold my mill to a nice guy who I think is going to get really good use out of it.  I'm happy that he bought it, and he's happy to have it, good deal all around.  And of course that means I was able to finally get the real knee mill I've always wanted.

I had run across this mill a couple weeks ago by accident.  I wasn't really looking for one, but this one caught my eye.  It's a Millrite unit from the early 70's (which is pretty darn new by machine tool standards).  It's a really nice size for my shop, that was the main feature, it's about 75% of a full size Bridgeport J-head in terms of size.  It was also in impeccable condition and had power table feed and power quill feed, a nice upgrade from what I had.  After I saw it initially, I decided to do some research and see what i could learn about that machine, and see what was locally available in similar machines to see if the price was fair.  In that process, I can across Harvey Machinery, a local used machine tool dealer who was retiring and going out of business.  He had a huge inventory and had prices marked about 1/3 of retail.  He didn't have any good comparable vertical mills, but he had a couple Nichols horizontals, including one forlorn machine in the corner which had been scavenged for parts.  I'd been looking for something like this too, for my tube mitering machine.  It wasn't complete as a mill, but it had all the components I would need, so I asked about it.  I was buying a few other things from him as well, so he basically gave me the thing in a package deal with everything else I bought. 

So now I have two mills to move...  So Friday I hitched up my Dad's trailer and made the rounds to the dealers.  I ended up moving 2 mills, a reasonably large drill press, and a really heavy rotary table.  Then I had to move my old mill out to make room for the new ones....

Thank God for engine lifts.  I have a 2 ton'er, which works wonders in equipment like this.  I got the old one out, it's pretty light (only 700 lbs).  Then started moving the Millrite in.  Naturally, it's bigger than the old one, so I decided it needed to go in a corner.  That meant I had to move my jig as well (which is about 300 lbs).  So I moved that, re-attached it to the wall, then placed the mill.  Did a little more re-arranging of other stuff too, and I think I'm going to end up with a more-open feeling shop despite the bigger machines. 

So here's the Millrite:

Like I said, it' s a really nice machine.  Most of these had B & S #9 tapers, but this one came with an R-8 (which is a huge bonus).  The table is full-size, 36" wide, the ways are perfect and it has very little backlash.  As with all things this big, it's a 3 phase motor, so I'll have to deal with that, but a phase converter isn't too bad.  Or I may replace the motor with a singlephase unit, it's a good design which makes that pretty easy. 

Here's the Nichols:

This one is neat.  It's more machine than I needed for tube cutting, but the price was right and it'll be really stable.  Again, 3 phase motor, but this one is even easier to swap out for a singlephase. I'll probably be removing most of the control panel as I don't need most of that, as well as the air cylinder for the head adjustment.  Anyone need some Nichols parts let me know I got a box of spare parts too!  This one is surprisingly heavy for it's size, about 2000 lbs and it takes up about 2' x 4' of floor space! 

I picked up a drill press too, an older Enco with 2 stage speed reduction, so it will run much slower than my old one.  The old one was a little small for some of my uses anyways, so I'm happy to move up in size.  the table is a little beat up, but I think I can re-machine it and make it like new. 

It was funny, in the process of buying these and selling my old mill, I came across at least 4 people who saw my little Atlas lathe and wanted to buy it off me as well.  I really like that one, but wish it were bigger.  Good to know there's a strong demand should I decide to move up in the future. 

I did some shop cleaning this weekend as well since I need space.  I'm going to be starting a sale on misc stuff around the shop, lots of bike parts and some tools, so check out the same page I listed my mill on for updated sale items :

http://www.bobbrowncycles.com/sale.htm

I'll try to keep it up to date as much as possible.

bbbb

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Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:32:00 -0500
Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:32:00 -0500
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bobbrowncycles

That title may seem like an obvious statement, but you never really get a feel for just how heavy it is until you move about 40,000 lbs of it.  And yes, that's how much I've moved with this retaining wall so far (yes so far, meaning I've still got 1/3 of it to go!). 

I knew building this wall wouldn't be easy, and I shouldn't complain, it's going much faster than I imagined it would.  Not to mention, the results so far look fabulous:

Pat has been back the last 2 nights to help me out with it.  As you may recall, I did all the prepwork last week to get ready.  We laid down the base layer on this side of the driveway first, then I started building the wall while he cut the blocks to form the corner at the garage end.  This random looking pattern in the block is really pretty tricky to do.  It's not really random, but composed of 24" x 10" sections which vary in orientation and composition.  So you really need to keep track of where you are as you go.  We ended up taking out more than one section of block after realizing it was in wrong...

The good news is, I feel like I've pushed through the part of this kind of work that really hurts.  You know where you wake up unable to even get out of bed the next morning.  I now feel like it's a good workout, I wake up fairly refreshed in the morning.  Sure my muscles are a little sore, but it's that good kind of sore like after a hard bike ride.  I think that means I'm doing too much of this, my body is adapting to it!  I guess I have spent almost 3 weeks now just digging, pick-axing and wheelbarrowing dirt and gravel.  I haven't really ridden at all in the last 2 weeks, and I feel like I'm getting in better shape.  weird.

We had 18 pallets of blocks delivered and each pallet weighs about 2250lbs.  Then I got 6 yards of fill material to make the base layer and the back fill (and I'm going to be short on that).  Plus I estimate I've dug out about 10 yards of dirt and hauled it off by hand in order to make the trenches.  By my math, that equates to approximately 80,000 lbs of material.  All of which I will have moved via manual labor when this is said and done!  That's one heavy wall.   

Not much new in the shop, I haven't really had a lick of time to spend in there aside from moving the new mills in.  I did get a single phase motor for the vertical mill and mounted it, but I need to figure out how to wire it next.  The thing has a nice Allen Bradly started and switch relay set-up on it, I'd like to see if I can use that with the single phase power, but I really don't know anything about how it works.  But fortunately I have a brother that does!  So I'm hoping he can spare a few minutes sometime to take a look and see if we can make it work.  Otherwise I'll just rewire it all for single phase and get new switches. 

I'm really excited to get that Nichols mill together though.  The more I clean it up, the more I'm impressed with it.  I went through the box of parts they included with it, and it appears that the machine was simply dis-assembled at one time and never put back together.  The only thing that is actually missing from it is the hand-crank mechanism for the knee height adjustment.  The head is set up with an automatic rise and fall though, so I don't really even need to move the knee for my purposes.  However I might try to find that part just so the machine is complete. 

well, that's about it for now.  Check out my for-sale listing, things keep getting updated and I'm still adding items:

http://www.bobbrowncycles.com/sale.htm

Many things are claimed already, but don't worry there's plenty to be unearthed yet!

bbbb

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Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:06:00 -0500
Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:06:00 -0500
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Yeah, it's been one of those weeks.  I'm definitely not running at 100%.  I think I may have pushed a little too hard Sunday trying to get the north wall finished up.  I did get it finished, but don't have any pics right now, it's always dark when I have time to take pictures....

Progress on anything has been slow this week due to my lethargy.  As I said, the one wall is done and it looks great.  The other wall is part-way up, but needs a bit more work.  I probably won't get to it until the weekend though.  Pat's going to get rid of the extra fill that's covering the area where the stairs need to go, so I think we should be able to finish things up this weekend with the wall and stairs. 

There has been indoor progress, but no thanks to me.  Our sheetrock taper has stared and has most of the initial layers done.  He's just adding one final coat today, then spraying the ceilings Monday.  It's really nice to see the walls taking shape, and the ceiling looking all smooth and finished. 

I did get a little bit done in the shop this week too, pretty well finished up a frame and a couple other odd jobs.  I think I've got everything ordered that I'll need to get my mills running and cutting tubes.  Just waiting for those parts to arrive.  Pretty soon I'll be back to spraying paint, which has been on hold for about 3 months now since I lost my spraying area.  I'm pretty excited about that, since it means I'll get 3-4 frames out of the shop once they're painted. 

Probably the biggest going-on is the State CX championships this weekend.  Kenwood has always put this race on, and we're going all -out this year.  We did some course cleanup work last weekend and laid out a few new sections.  The last team meeting is tonight to plan out finishing touches.  It's gonna be big, tents, red-bull arches, stairs, beer, chili, brats, and superfans everywhere.  If you've never been to a CX race, this will likely be your best opportunity to check one out. 

Even the local news got into it, the sports color guy at Kare11 did a segment on the upcoming race.  It's pretty funny and features many local Kenwood greats:

http://www.kare11.com/sports/perk_article.aspx?storyid=110766

There's Kenwoodies all over the footage, and some shaggy-haired yahoo in some other team kit commentating. 

I'll be out there all day Sunday, so come on out, you might even get some BBC schwag stuff.  Don't know if I'll race due to the recent sickness, but we'll see, I've probably done dumbing things before.

bbbb

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Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:14:00 -0500
Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:14:00 -0500
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bobbrowncycles

It's been a long week, thankfully it's nearing the weekend.  We had the last official team meeting last night in preparation for the state CX race Sunday (you are coming, right?).  It's gonna be big, huge, killer, the best ever.  I'm pretty pumped just to be there, hopefully I'll even ride a little.  I might even have a couple frames out there to display, so if you want to see a few in person, this is your big chance.

Since I was slacking this morning and didn't get into work as early I was finally able to get some pictures of the retaining walls in the daylight.  So you can finally see what I've been whining about all this time.  They're not totally done yet, but this weekend should fix most of that.

Here's the north wall:

This one is mostly done and backfilled.  We still have to put the caps on the wall (which will cover the grooves you see on top of each block).  I've also got to finish burying the second drainage line all the way to the street, but there's a big pile of dirt in the way right now. 

Here's the south side wall:

This one still needs some more backfill, but it's mostly done.  The stairs will be at the end of this wall, but once again there's a huge pile of dirt in the way of making them right now.  Hopefully Pat will be taking care of that detail for me tomorrow. 

Here's a closer shot of the wall, showing the pattern, or seemingly lack of pattern:

It's really a pretty neat idea they have going.  The segments are a set of 4 smaller blocks, then you repeat those in an alternating pattern, which gives the impression of random stones. 

I can definitely say that this has been the most labor intensive part of the project so far.  I think when all is said and done, I will have moved about 80,000 lbs of concrete, rock and dirt!  On the plus side I'm feeling really strong these days, and my back has been feeling much better, I think it's helped doing all this lifting.  I weighed myself for the first time in a few months yesterday and I'm down to my normal racing weight, which is a good thing.  Now if only I had my aerobic fitness back....

See you Sunday at the big race!

bbbb

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BB- Wow, beautiful work!! I love that wall... really pretty. See you both next week! -Me
large fella
Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:08:00 -0500