chuckey larson and his little shop of power

Rode the K-bike sewing machine to Chicago on Sunday. Man, it was a cold ride! I went to E's place to swap vehicles back. I was excited to check out his progress in the shop. He has everything plugged in and running including the plasma cnc. He still needs to do ventilation for the cnc, but Chad donated a blower to the cause and I'm hoping E can pull it all together. I was proud of him for getting everything run (this includes 110, 220 AND 3 phase stuff) without killing himself. That plaque should read "200 feet of conduit, accident free". The city of Chicago should be happy that there was no acetylene involving with the running of conduit and pulling wires (sorry E, I just luv the story about seating the bead on the hotrod tires). (editors note: I must point out that I don't have a clue about running this stuff, so I really have no right to give E a difficult time.)


Of course I got there and insisted on us tearing something apart. It started with a simple clean of the lathe bed and ways and turned into a tailstock overhaul. We ripped it apart so we could fix the ram and tensioner. I was even able to beat the tailstock ram handle shaft back into "relative true" since it was bent from what appeared to be a inadvertent drop sometime during it's life. Anyway, we got the carriage tightened up and and things are a bit more functional than they were. We had to cut the "grease-fest" short since we were meeting friends (Carrie & Michael) for lunch. I'm hoping to continue our workday in the future....