At an estate sale this weekend I wandered through a tiny little house filled with carefully organized possessions. What had reeled me in was the mention of tools on the sign, but each room on the first floor had all kinds of interesting stuff. In one bedroom I happened upon a box on a dresser filled with watches of different kinds, and two of them caught my eye. The first was a small (31mm) Douglas diver with a white face and location dial on a metal band. The watch is in decent shape but needs a cleaning, and does wind about two twists before stopping. I can’t get the crown to pop out to set the date or time. Some research says it dates back to the 1960’s; Douglas made watches for the military, including a diver Neil Armstrong wore to the moon (which is a very pretty watch in its own right) and was a name I recognized when I picked it up. With a 20mm NATO band and a good servicing, this $2 watch could be a nice addition to the collection. I can’t get into the back, as the notches down’t fit my case tool, so I can’t investigate further.
The other watch was an impulse buy, because it made me smile: a 38mm Irish Spring novelty watch with a date window, which did not wind and feels bound up inside. The dial face claims it’s Swiss made; opening the back reveals a 1-jewel Swiss movement in a Hong Kong-sourced case. I can’t figure out why the movement won’t work, and it was cheap enough that if I can’t fix it, no big deal.
Down in the basement I spent a half an hour going through the tables and racks of tools, practicing restraint in what I picked out: All hand tools, brand-name dupes of things I’ve got, but all very welcome: four Vice-Grips, a couple of C-clamps, four Craftsman wrenches, some metal files, a heavy-duty metal shear, some screwdrivers, and awl, and two tape measures. Not bad for $15.
Finally, I found a set of Farm Bureau insurance medallions that I got for a buck; these were attached to a license plate back in the 30’s and 40’s for things like advertising or NPS visits. Originally I thought it might look cool on the Travelall but I think it predates the truck by a couple of decades.
Having used a lot of my hand-me-down tools for work on the trucks in the last couple of years, I’ve put some serious hours on them, and like everything else, they need maintenance. I’ve got a drawerful of Craftsman gear from back in the days when it was made in the USA and Sears actually backed up their unlimited warranty; recently a couple of my 3/8″ ratchets began slipping under load, which points to a lack of lubrication. Given that I’ve never serviced them, it’s been 30 years since I got them, and they’re older than me, I think it’s about time they got some love. Doing some research, I was able to easily disassemble one ratchet, clean and lube it, and put it back in service, but I’ve got another which isn’t coming apart as easily. It’s a cartridge-based design where one retaining clip releases the entire mechanism, as opposed to two separate clips on the front and back. My issue is that the retaining clip ears broke with the clip outside the channel—and the cartridge still hasn’t released. There are replacement cartridges available for this wrench but I’d rather keep it as original as possible, so I’ve got to do some more research to figure out how to release it without wallowing out the handle.
Meanwhile, I’ve been building out a basic toolset for the OG-V and supplementing the one I keep in the Scout. Jen got me a trio of Tool Rolls for Christmas, and the universal roll I put together has gotten a lot of use so far. I like it better than the canvas roll I had previously, which tended to spit tools out the side at the worst times. If I had the choice again I would have asked for the larger version, which would hold a better assortment of larger tools. Meanwhile I’ve tried to make the one for the OG-V inexpensive, scabbing together some metric sockets I had laying around and other tools from Harbor Freight.
Something I need to invest further in are another set of screwdrivers; mine are a mix-and-match assortment of inherited sizes and shapes, and it always seems like I’m missing the ones I need. I bought a Milwaukee set a couple of weeks ago and put that to use on the green truck but I need another big set to round out the collection—and so I can finally retire some chipped and rounded junk in the garage and basement.
My other avenue for tools has been a bust. All of the local yard sales have been terribly disappointing this year: a folding table covered in glassware and fabric, boxes of kids’ clothes, or piles of books and toys. I used to pack Finn up in the backpack and roam the streets on Saturday morning, and almost always came back with at least some good tools.
When Finn was a tiny baby one of my favorite things was to get her fed and changed, put her in the backpack, and sneak out of the house while Jen slept in to hit the local yard sales. Catonsville has a reputation for epic yard sales because there are scores of big old houses with attics and basements and garages filled with decades of stuff. Finn would sit up above my shoulders and sing and talk to herself, and I’d walk from house to house and look, occasionally stopping to stuff something into the pack and occasionally panicking as I realized I was going to have to drag three lawn chairs and the baby a half-mile home by myself. Usually it all worked out.
The historic section of our town (basically all the houses across the street from us) were doing their community sale on Saturday morning, so I snuck out of the house with Hazel, a backpack, a wad of cash and my AirPods, letting the girls sleep in. We headed across the street in a thick fog and strained to see where the sales were through the muck. My guess is that many houses who planned on selling probably took one look outside and passed; the pickings were slim at first. Hazel and I found that most of the offerings that were out were junk; ugly decorations, Christmas stuff, glassware and fake flowers, uglier lawn furniture. One house toward the end of our route had some period bike gear I briefly considered—as well as a Specialized Rockhopper of the same vintage as my Cannondale. Discouraged, we headed downtown for coffee and triple ginger muffins, and on the way back I played a hunch and headed down the one street we hadn’t tried. Through the fog we came upon a huge sale in one of the old victorians by the Catholic Church and I guided Hazel up the driveway toward the back, where a bunch of old tools sat. For $12 I got a handful of box wrenches and this sturdy Craftsman toolbox:
With a little cleanup this will replace a modern plastic toolbox with a flimsy caddy that folds in half.
Sunday morning the girls and I put 32 hardened tomato seedlings plants into bins in the greenhouse. I wound up buying 20 bags of soil for all of the containers, and we jammed all of them with as many plants as we thought might fit.
There are more varieties this year, and I expect all of them will try to get huge, but I’ve told Jen I’m going to be merciless about keeping them cut back to focus on producing. I’ve still got to get the rain barrels organized—the one under the garage gutter is leaking slowly, so that will have to get tossed—but the other two look like they’re in fine shape and will get pressed into service directly.
Meanwhile, the hand I burned smoking meat last weekend is looking worse and worse as the damaged skin peels off; the knuckles have been in bad shape all weekend (I did wear nitrile gloves while planting) but now the other skin is beginning to let go. The whole thing needs a soak and some Vitamin E. Don’t play with fire, kids.
Hazel was up to pee at about 7:10 so I put on some warm clothes and snuck her out of the house to let the girls sleep in. It was brisk outside. Yesterday was 80˚ but overnight it dropped into the 30s and it was only just beginning to warm up as the sun rose. Hazel and I wandered over behind the school and down the hill to the Junction, where I tied her up in front of the local café and ordered some breakfast and a coffee. I was the second person in the door this morning. Usually there are a crowd of eight or ten people at the tables on their second cup discussing the paper or news on the TV, but today it was empty. It was strange.
We walked back home up the trolley trail and by the time we got home the girls were awake, so we all ate breakfast in the living room and played with the dog for a little while. I then went downstairs and set up a seed starter for three varieties of tomatoes in the hopes that I’ll have more luck this year than I did a decade ago when I tried it on the workbench. I’m going to build a platform for them under one of the basement windows so that they’ll get daily sunlight and hope that a warming pad will regulate the temperature under the plastic properly.
Then I went outside and assembled our new pressure washer, 1/2 of which is my birthday present from Jen. I got a Craftsman gas model on sale—electric pressure washers are crap—and had it clearing green mildew from the garage doors in about a half an hour. I went around to the front steps and cleaned all the green off the Trex, rinsed the siding, and anything else that needed a wash. We get mildew on the front of the house yearly because it faces north, so I’ve rented or borrowed a pressure washer for the past five or six years to clean things up. After I’ve put this one to use this year cleaning the rest of the siding, washing the engine and undercarriage of the Scout, cleaning the back deck, lawn furniture and Finley’s playset, I think it will have paid for itself.
I’ve had trim for the bathroom waiting to be picked up for a week, so I headed into Columbia to grab that before they closed and then circled up to the gucci Giant to stock up on some essentials—a little bird told us that statewide lockdown is imminent. I was able to get most of what we needed, but the paper product and soap shelves were empty (we could use more hand soap but we’re generally OK for now) and the frozen breakfast aisle was wiped out along with all the ice cream. Then I stopped at the liquor store and stocked up some extra beer.
At home we set to work putting it away; one of the first things I did was go to the garage and plug in our old fridge. It took a little to get going, but began cooling itself down quickly after that. Then I stuffed the extra beer and groceries inside. It’s been a pain to fit in the limited space available, but now I’m glad I didn’t Craigslist it like the last one.
After a quick break, I broke out all of my brewing equipment and fired up the burner in the backyard. I’ve had a Shiner Bock knockoff kit sitting in the basement since last fall, and I got tired of waiting for my neighbor to get his act together to brew with me. By 7PM I had it in the carboy and all of the dishes piled on the back porch, but it was time for dinner by that point.
Now I’m settled on the couch in the den with a cold beer in hand, Hazel snoring at my feet—the first time she’s been calm all day—and Fallout 4 loading on the Xbox. Time to relax.
Monday I had off from work, and I intentionally made it as laid-back as I could. I spent a quiet morning with Jen while Finn was at school. We relaxed around the house until about 11 and then she ran out for errands while I walked Hazel down to the local café for a bite to eat. The two of us sat in the sunshine and watched the cars pass, and I fed her a little bacon from my sandwich, and then we walked home the long way, up the trolley trail.
I then drove the Scout into Baltimore to the local Grainger storefront, where I had a pair of rocker switches waiting for me. About three weeks ago I was using the bench grinder in the garage for something and the switch on the front broke in my hands. I flipped it on its back and did some surgery to pull the broken switch, then sourced a couple of articles online about a bench grinder with the same issues. From there I was able to find a rocker switch which mostly matched my needs.
While I was in the city I stopped and took some beauty shots of Peer Pressure in an urban environment. The best two setups I found were a line of loading docks facing a huge empty apron of concrete, and an access area adjacent to the train tracks, surrounded by warehouses. The sun was out and the day was warm so I shot about 100 pictures, about a quarter of which I’m happy with.
Back at home, I fiddled with the grinder until I’d sorted out the pins on the switch, and filed the opening on the front out until it accepted the switch housing cleanly. The original switch had a circuit where a lead for the power and a lead for the light shared the same pole, but I couldn’t find a switch that matched it. I went with a three-pole switch and hooked the light up to the center pole, so that it’s always hot (simply leaving the light disconnected prevents the circuit from closing) and unscrewed the bulb. In the summer I’ll solder the power and light leads to the same wire but for now it’s back up and running.
Up in the bathroom I continued painting and finishing small bits of trim. The baseboard behind the toilet is the last major piece to go in, and I’m having issues getting it in cleanly—I should have put it in before the toilet. I cut a test piece and I think I’ve got the shape down, and I’ll have to loosen the cabinet one last time to get it in place, but once that’s done the rest should be easy.
I did some more repairs to the greenhouse and got the irrigation system back online; a new hose bib to replace the UV-cracked original, and five new 5GPH misters over the tomatoes for backup watering are now in place. But what I’ve been reading is that overhead watering isn’t good for tomato plants–it will promote disease. This isn’t a problem, because I planned for drip irrigation when I put the misting system in years ago, so it’s just a matter of switching my hoses around.
The tomatoes themselves are all doing very well. I restaked and tied all of them because they’ve grown 6″ in a week with no sun, and there are blooms on all but one–there’s even a tomato! I’ve got to go out and manually pollinate them all, and then pinch off the new growth to keep all of the energy in the fruit.
Finn and I snuck out in the Scout during some sunshowers and picked up two more containers, three cherry tomato plants, and more potting soil to start covering the second bench in back. I have to split out the cucumbers into a second container because they’re getting leggy and crowded.
We saw a matinee of Solo: a Star Wars Story on Saturday and the whole family really enjoyed it. Jen made a good observation that in their initial scenes the actors playing Solo and Calrissian did an excellent job of imitation, and then dialed it back for the rest of the movie up until the end. It was subtle but very well done. The story seems to be that it’s a bomb (compared to other Star Wars movies) but I honestly don’t see why.
I got a $7 rebuild kit in the mail for my Plomb ratchet on Friday and couldn’t wait to see if it would work. Disassembly was pretty easy, aided by some PBlaster to loosen up years of crust, and all the guts of the ratchet fell out easily. I found a YouTube link for a rebuild and within about 5 minutes had the old parts cleaned and new parts installed.
The one roadblock was understanding how to attach the selection lever to the cam inside the ratchet, but I read somewhere that you’ve got to use a ball-peen hammer to mushroom the top of the cam nub over the lever. Once I’d done that I used some heavy duty gear oil to lube the whole thing and buttoned it back up. Now it’s ready for another eighty years of service in my toolbox.
There hasn’t been a Sears near us for a while, but anytime I venture into the one, I’m amazed they’re still in business. I read a Businessweek article a few years ago about the crazy Ayn Rand disciple CEO who is running it into the ground, but the news that he’s going to sell Craftsman off to Stanley/Black & Decker is a shock. I have a couple different sets of inherited Craftsman tools (read: 20 years old) in my collection, and with the exception of anything I’ve bought from them lately, I know they stand for quality. As a hedge fund manager, the CEO is going to make out fine either if he saves Sears or if he craters it, but hopefully the folks that make and sell Craftsman tools will come out OK.
You may have noticed that smell coming from your toolbox. It wafts all the way across the shop from one end to the other. It smells like bathtub cheese gone bad.
Huh! I’ve always wondered what the smell coming from my toolbox was. I’ll have to go sniff some screwdrivers later today.
Here’s the build thread for a very internet-famous garage (a picture seen on a thousand car enthusiast Tumblrs): The 12-Gauge Garage. What can I say; it’s inspiring. And the guy has a race-ready 911 Porsche.
This morning I found myself at the entrance to Crazy Ray’s just after opening, tools in hand, looking for a Saturn of comparable vintage in order to pull the moonroof switch and motor. I had almost given up finding one in the GM section when I stumbled upon a dark green SC-2 tucked away next to the motorcycle heap, and as luck would have it, it had a moonroof.
Pulling the switch was a 5-minute project, but getting the motor out was another thing entirely. I wasn’t worried about saving the headliner, so that came out easily with a boxcutter, but the mounting nuts were small and hard to access, and I didn’t have a socket set. some elbow grease and the pliers on my Leatherman started the nuts, and within ten minutes I had it in my hands.
I had a little time to kill, so I browsed the SUV and import section for anything that might be useful for our existing fleet, and to see if there was anything new and interesting, but pretty much struck out.
After paying $21 for the switch and motor, I returned to the parking lot and plugged the new switch in to see if it worked; unfortunately, there was no response. The winding screw does work, so I’ll have to have Jen help me push the glass up the track while I wind the motor in order to close and seal the top completely.
