Hi, I know that I have been gone for awhile and so thought that I would document my excuses for being gone so long.  I see that John has been busy giving everyone something to watch.  Now go out and do something!

I have spent the last several months working at work, a novel concept. 

I work at a power plant where the newest unit was built in 1959.  It seems strange to work on something that is almost as old as I am especially considering that it is in better shape.

Both of the coal fired units were taken off line for maintenance.  We did them one at a time to avoid turning out the lights.  Since I am the only I & C technician working here I got to learn a lot about the units.  I have been working at these plants for a little under a year so the outage was a real learning experience for me.  I now know what  to avoid.

During the outage I worked ten hours a day seven days a week.  Then I had an hour plus commute each way.  That left only enough time to band aid any emergencies that came by at home.  It’s a good thing that I have several cars available to drive since I now have several partly broken ones that are cluttering up the side yard.

Becky and I did find time to buy her a “new to us” car.  It is a ’07 Dodge Magnum R/T.  I keep telling people that we bought grandma a used station wagon.

After the outage I got to deal with all of the things at home that didn’t get done while I was away.  At some point I will either be done or dead.  I’m hoping that the ’51 gets some work progress, too.

Enough belly aching.  Here are a few pictures that I took at the plant. 

At one time Canon City had electric trolley cars that used 30 cycle power.  This building was used to distribute and control that power. Continue Reading »

I have gotten back to working on the ’51 after the summer doldrums.  Doldrums interspersed with changing jobs, thinking about moving, and doing the remove & replace thing with the transmission in the Wife’s Miata…..twice and a half.  The Miata transmission still isn’t right but ignoring it until spring is starting to look like a really good idea.

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Last winter I spent several months working away from home.  This meant that I had lots of time but since I couldn’t bring the garage with me I couldn’t work on the ’51.  Being disappointed with this state of affairs I brought the steering wheel along with me to work on during the long winter evenings.

I figured that it would only take a week to finish the steering wheel, two at the most.  I guess that I was partly right because it did only take a couple of weeks to do the steering wheel paint.  What I didn’t figure on was doing the job multiple times at two weeks a try.

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Knowing that at some point I would have to cut the glass for the ’51 I determined that some glass cutting practice would be a good thing. 

I have cut laminated safety glass in the past using the traditional method of scoring and snapping each side and then burning the laminate with alcohol or lighter fluid.  This method worked out so well for me that I have been looking for some time into an alternate method of cutting automotive glass. 

A number of years ago I attempted to cut some old flat safety glass that came out of a school bus.  I used a four inch angle grinder, the same one that I am still using to grind weld beads.  I did manage to cut the glass but the abrasive heated the glass up to the point that the abrasive wheel was throwing off fiberglass strands.  At least I learned how to make fiberglass!  The heat also made what I call “herring bone” cracks all along the cut.  None of the cracks went into the usable glass area because they arced along the cut line.  My plan was to try to sand them off.   Continue Reading »