Random Tandem

"Why do people throw this stuff out?" I asked my wife. She said nothing and raised an eyebrow.. "Exactly, right??"

She face palmed and walked away. 

She'll get the idea when she is propelling me along in the fresh summer mornings. 

It raised a question, can we be charged for drink riding if one person is sober??

Anyway, cool future project. 

Metallic chewing gum fixing.

Mmmmmm metallic epoxy putty. Fixes anything worth more than 100 dollars to replace..

This engine case used to have a huge hole in it, but after creating a mold using strips of plastic to create the correct geometry I was able to reform the case to suit.

I coated the inside with a hard setting fuel/oil resistant gasket compound. Seems to have worked a treat. The best fixes are the cheap fixes.

Skiving the skiver

Ahhh a beautiful machine. A leather skiver, simplistic complexity at it's very best. This one is used to make shoes, it trims the under side away from the edge of a leather shape so that edge can be folded back on its self to allow for a super neat edge. Just until recently this machine lay alone in a state of disrepair..

That was until after years of sleepy searching I managed to find a replacement bell knife blade. Made in Germany, sent from Texas used in Sydney. Below you can see how much wear the old blade took.

Once the blade was fitted the guess work into how this machine was meant to work began. But before that could happen I needed to make a tensioning device to reduce slippage and in turn reducing creation of heat by friction slip.

With good traction, bedding in of the new blade using the inbuilt blade grinder commences.. The bell life needed to be adjusted in such a way that it is in it's position to skive. When it is bluntened during work, the sharpener can be engaged in the same place it was in during bedding to ensure the blade geometry is not interfered.

12 hours later.... A correctly honed, bedded in and super sharp blade ready for another 80 years of work.

By far one of my favourite machines so far. 

This one was for you Dad.