Hi,

I have been busy in spite of the snow. I had to fix the cowl area (the panel in front of the doors) on both sides. The doors had been opened too far and had put large dents into the cowl. I expect to make some kind of door stops to prevent future occurrences.

The cowl is not accessible from the inside so I had to remove them to pound out the dents. I checked the cowl on my parts cab but they were all rusted and so were not usable, drat.

After I got the driver’s side off I discovered that I was not the first tourist to work on the cowl. It had at least 1/4″ of lead filling some dents and creases. There also was a little lead on the passenger side. The inner kick panels were in pretty rough shape on both cabs so I expect that I will have to make new ones when I get that far.

I actually managed to get the cowls done without any serious damage to myself but ruined a bunch of light bulbs. I’ll let you know if I manage to figure out how to keep from breaking the light bulbs.

I am using compact fluorescent bulbs because they can be dropped (usually) without breaking them. I have found that dropping an incandescent bulb (even the rough service type) results in turning them into a “dark”. The problem with CFL bulbs is that if they are hit with a piece of welding or grinding slag it ruins them. I like to hold the drop light in one hand close enough to the work that I can see the work through the welding hood. Then I weld with the other hand. This puts the bulb pretty close to the welding splatter, and at a couple bucks a pop it can get expensive. I currently have a 20 watt CFL bulb that has a cover that makes it look like a regular incandescent bulb. Hopefully the cover will protect the bulb.

I like the CFL bulbs because besides being pretty rugged they don’t get hot, I get burned enough with out getting toasted by the drop light. They also put out good light (after they warm up that is) and the light is spread out in the bulb enough that it doesn’t cause spots in my eyes if I happen to look directly at the bulb.

More Pictures in Norm’s ’51 Gallery

I went out for a quick cruise in the ’66 this morning and as I was heading south on Rt 24 towards the old Peyton bridge, I remembered a buddy sharing some folklore with me recently about the old Peyton Jail so I thought I’d take a couple of minutes to go exploring.

As the story goes, the bridge abutments were hollow with barred windows so that prisoners who were working on the road crews could be put in the hole at night, a piece of plate steel being slid over and a dump truck parked on top to prevent their escape.

The highway being all but desolate early on this cool holiday morning, I parked alongside the road and headed down the embankment to take a look for myself.

Sure enough, window openings built into the embankment and some still had the barred gratings on them, just like he said.

Closer inspection revealed that over time these openings seem to have become more of a party spot for local adolescents, as you might imagine. I’ll spare you the interior graffiti.

As I checked things out, one of the first things that came into view was the continuously poured ceiling on top of the deck trusses. I could find no evidence of where an earlier top opening would have later been closed or poured-over.

The second thing that came to mind was that these openings were actually made large enough to climb through; intended more of as a man-way, for the bridge base to ventilate & “breath”, and for future inspections and maintenance access, guarded by bars in a failed attempt to keep the would be explorers out.  If we were going to keep people in here, we probably would’ve left them a much smaller, impassible hole.

To keep things in their proper perspective, when we were talking about this story, something to the effect of “you know how those stories go” was also mentioned, so I didn’t do this to prove or disprove anything. But it did give me good reason to stop the ride, get out of the truck for a few minutes and take a walk down by a little, half-frozen stream that evidently gets crossed from time to time by some four-wheelers & ATV’s.

I wonder if there’s any cool, old stories about the adjacent, defunct train tressel. No matter. I’ll just bring the boys. They’ll give me enough reason to go climb around it. 

Colorado being what it is, the cold weather has motivated me to insulate & heat the garage. Since moving here in ’02, projects had slowly come to a halt during each Winter, but wanting to continue some of the woodwork for the house requires an environment where stain & urethane can dry without blushing from low temps… and it sure would be nice for the old man (me) to be able to continue with some other projects in comfort for this upcoming half-year instead of putting everything on hold yet one more time.

The current equipment storage and work area layout has evolved over time & suits me pretty well considering it’s a simple 24×24 two car garage, a step in the right direction from the 12×12 shed I built with my Dad some years back. But since I’ll be sheetrocking soon, I’ve been thinking whether I should do something other than stark-white walls.

Although white will reflect the most light, I’ve had a friend toss more creative ideas my way during a recent road trip to Berthoud and have have since been looking at other small-shop set-ups on the web for inspiration. Some of them follow:

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With all that being said about working with the small shop, I just have to throw in a link to Morris L Hallowell IV – Architectural Ironwork

Having written about beginning the blades in a previous post, I was able to get back to them today and continued roughing-in the front faces of the remaining two. You can think of the taper I’m making as the blade’s “angle of attack” to the wind, in much the same way that an airplane has to change its wings angle of attack to climb.

Although there are probably many different way to do this, you can see that cut slots in the board after laying out my leading and trailing edge lines. The slots connecting the two lines that will form the face.

Yes, my saw handle is duct taped together. It cracked when we were using  the saw to completely renovate the Malaga NJ home – during the removal of a beam for a load-bearing wall and the resultant weight redistribution. I could just pick up another handle at a hardware mega mart, but it was my father’s before I got it and although it hangs on the wall, it gets put into service on occasion. Maybe someday I’ll glue the handle back together and paint a pretty picture on the blade and leave it to hang…. and maybe not

After cutting the slots the arbitrary 1″ apart as marked, all that’s left to do was to knock out the kerfs between the slots with a sharp wood chisel, contemplate the universe, and reflect:

and then sand:

For the backs we can use some of the aerodynamic general rules of thumb that tell us, for efficiency’s sake, the thickest part of an airfoil should be 1/3 of the way back from the leading edge. This means that since the blade is 3″ wide at the tip, the thickest part of the airfoil will be 1″ from the leading edge. Making another mark @ the 30″ radius where the blade is 6″ wide, the airfoil will be 2″ back from the leading edge, and so on down the blade…

We also know that for strength’s sake, an airfoil should generally be at least 1/8 as thick as it is wide, but since this was already figured-in when we previously laid out & cut the root-to-tip taper on this side of the blade, we’re just about ready to shape the rear side and then ‘glass each blade.

Alas, I stopped working on these to get to the boys’ basketball practice a little early, giving me some time to watch them. The next game isn’t until 12/5. The blades will be right where I left them, but the boys keep growing and I’m going to cherish every minute of the gift that they are while I can.

While I was sleeping late yesterday morning after working this week’s series of night-shifts, Wilbur and Orville caught a rabbit and were having a tug-o-war with it. By the time I woke up, Leigh and the boys had taken what was left of it away from them and cleaned everything up – except for the patches of bloodied snow.

My first question when I heard what had happened was probably quite the same as yours would’ve been, “Did you get any pictures?“. The answer being a resounding “No” from both she and the boys led me out to grab the only snap-shot I could get, the one of Wilbur (above) protectively clutching the last bit of fuzz in his mouth from that conquest.

Now before all you tree-hugging-bunny-kissers start writing, you need to understand that I accept this as being about as natural as hound dogs can get. And even more amazingly is the fact that they actually caught something… since hounds instinctively bark and howl as soon as they see something, giving ample warning to any prey they might be after.

It was a triumphant day for the dogs indeed and I guess rabbit’s feet aren’t so lucky for the rabbits.