Open Shop

[manofthemullet.livejournal.com]

Mac opens up the shop class for his students.

"If you guys want to continue working on your projects for the pumpkin fling tomorrow, you can. If you're done you can go ahead and work on any personal project you might have."

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[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

John attacks the day and his project with a sledgehammer gusto.

Using a floor jack, he manages to force the leg of the cherry picker back through the floor and then pulled the whole thing off. Examining the floor of the trailer, he decided that destruction was the way to go and spent the next half hour smashing shit up removing the plywood floor of the trailer. Measuring the legs on the cherry picker, he cuts some tube steel to reinforce the bed and welds in more cross braces, and welds in crossbracing to those. Removing the wheels, he uses some longer bolts to bolt the cherry picker to the reinforced floor. And, just because he felt like it, welded some gusset pieces from the reinforced floor to the cherry picker legs.

Moving on, he looked around and found a couple tubes of RTV. He began bolting the steel pipes together so that he had two 6 foot sections, bolted together with RTV gaskets. He took some more measurements, and fabricated a housing for his crackpipe and began welding up that part of the cage. Taking a piece of 1/4" steel plate, he cut a hole in the middle the same diameter as the inside pipe diameter with 4 tabs for mounting brackets at the outside corners and holes at the pipe flanges.

John takes some measurements AGAIN and fabs up some quick supports for the center flange and attatches them to the cherry picker arm. Wrestling the front section of the pipe in place, John drops it into the cradle and slides it down so that it meets the center flange mounty thing. He tests the fit, and ends up redrilling one of the holes because it's too far off center. He slathers up another RTV gasket and bolts the front part of the cannon to the center flange and bolts it down. He then bends up some more tubing to create a top cage to support the front of the cannon.

Having done all that, John takes another piece of plate, drills the mounting holes for the pipes and the 4 corners, and drills a hole in the center, which he taps and threads for a fairly large size air hose. He Teflon tapes a long fitting, screws it in, and puts a fender washer and a nut on it so it can't just strip the threads in case of blowback. He makes a gasket out of an old corkboard, with a hole cut in the center for the air fitting.

He bends up some more tube steel, makes some measuremens yes, in tht order and makes a cage for the bottom of the cannon, attatched just above the pivot point of the cherrypicker so as to balance the beast. Sorta. The RTV between the upper cannon and the flange has set, so he unscrews the nuts and threads them into the upper part of the lower cannon after slashing THAT side with RTV and bolts it snug.

And with that, it's pretty much ready. He spends a few minutes fabricating a storage rack for the air filled welding tanks, attaches the hoses and tightens them up, and does a dry run with the air fitting flange loosely bolted in. It works.

He tightens the bolts slightly, and tags the whole thing with some red and yellow spray paint while wearing his gas mask finally got a use out of it and lets the bright orange ungainly thing dry. He pulls it out of the way and notices that one of the tires on the trailer is flat.

John curses. He's done for the day, dammit.