Gloating, Again

I live well away from civilization, so garage sales are rare. Usually, what we do have aren’t worth hitting, though you do come across the occasional gem.

Last week, a family was clearing out their pop’s garage, in anticipation of moving him across what passes for town here. Since sales are rare, I went. I found a treasure trove of aluminum stock I could use for jigs and even parts for musical instruments. In the end, I probably ended up with about a hundred pounds of stock that ranged from 1/8” 4”x4” pieces to 1/2” thick angle iron (four inches), heavy plates, some 2”x2” and so on.

In one of the bins, I found a Brown I dial gauge, so it went into my bin. I also found a couple small squirrel cages and a little DC motor. Then I found what I’d been contemplating for a while – a 3/4 horse, variable speed, DC motor (reversible) with the controller.

Another tub had a couple of the big toggle hold downs sitting on top of some aluminum, so I grabbed that bin too.

They charged me $25.00 for the three bins.

When I got home and went through them, I found a nice metal punch, with interchangeable tips, which was perfect for the wife’s jewelry efforts (she just didn’t know it yet). There were other things too, like a $120.00 (new price) Ridged flaring tool, and saw set, a chuck that fits in my drill press chuck and holds my smallest bits.

I thought about it and figured I might as well go back and buy some aluminum, since it isn’t hard to store and the price was so good. That time around, I ended up with a bin with a thousand dollars, used value, gauges and dials, a box of new metal lathe cutters, a 7.5 amp Variac, a bunch more aluminum, and so on.

That round cost me $20.00

Still high from the DC motor score (looks like my four wheel grinding-buffing station or my drill press will be going to a dial control in the not to distant future), I drove an hour and a half and bought a router carver. It came with the foot pedal controlled rotary dohicky for doing gun stocks and had a little Colt already mounted. This was all mounted on a [damn heavy] two inch thick maple butcher block counter.

That one was only about half of new, so in the area of market value.

I’m already started on converting it so I can slide the gun stock accessories off and slide in a sign making or just light 3-D carving set up that will move the pattern and blank on the X and Y axis.

When done, I intend the whole thing should flip up, after securing the head, so it will only take up about on fourth the room, but still be quick and [relatively] easy to set up.