First dive of 2012

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ORIGINAL: blobbottlebob

Cool video E,
I use aluminum tanks. Looks like they fly the best.

LOL...[8D]

 

[MINNESOTA DIGGER]

GREAT finds

 

[surfaceone]

ORIGINAL: blobbottlebob

Cool video E,
I use aluminum tanks. Looks like they fly the best.

Hey Bob,

Back in me college daze, I was making a loaf of styrofoam bread in the sculpture studio one fine spring day, when a guy that I did not know came in to use the welding equipment.

He didn't get far, as he somehow knocked over the oxygen tank. On the way down, it sheared the valve top...

This large tank, circled the studio, about 8 feet off the floor, and exited through the brick and block wall, landing outside the building some twenty five feet away. If we had known about Scud missiles in those days, that's how we would have described it.

I took this as my cue to leave the area, and went in search of lunch, and a nice calming lime-aide.

 

[blobbottlebob]

Thanks Minnesota Mark. I'd have preffered a bit more but I guess you should be happy with what you find. [] Really. It's a nice philosophy to live by. This is a hobby and a fun one at that. Appreciating what you find is getting the most out of your (our) hobby. Thanks.

 

[blobbottlebob]

He didn't get far, as he somehow knocked over the oxygen tank. On the way down, it sheared the valve top...

Hey Surface,
Glad nobody was hurt. You know, my impression of my tanks is that they are extremely tough. I'm surprised that you could knock a valve off so easily. But, anytime you have contents under pressure, it makes sense to treat the stuff like a loaded gun. In dive class, for example, they taught us to hold the pressure gauge away when you turn the tank on (for a second) before looking at it to insure that it did not blow out.

Your story reminded me of a high school shop story. This is long and way off the topic but it is funny and I think I'm going to type it all as a reply. I remembered these incidents years later and started laughing out loud about it . . .

 

[blobbottlebob]

Oh yea, Surface, I was going to talk about scuds. Love the picture. Do you remember the start of the first war? They kept warning us of the casualties and the horror that Hussein would rein down. Not to minimize the losses that did occur (on both sides), but Iraq was no match for us militarily and this picture shows exactly why. We had fighter planes and they had missiles on donkeys. That guy was a small town bully, and a world class a-hole. His country still suffers because of him.

 

[blobbottlebob]

Okay. Back to funny. Sorry. Like many of my stories, I can get long winded. This actually happened and it relates to true events.

It's high school 1980s (for me). I went from a pretty good grade school to a lesser quality middle school where I had signed up for a shop class. One of my best friends Scott and I decided to makes chess boards as a wood project. We used two different wood types, a light and a dark, to make the alternating squares then outlined the board with a border. We had been working on these things for awhile (a week or two?) and we were in the finishing stages - literally. We were applying the end product varnish before we turned them in for grading. We both had taken pride in our work and planned on keeping these things. The finish coat was several layers thick. So, we'd apply one coat (after finish sanding) and then have to let them dry before we could put the next coat on (presumably the next day of class).

Okay. One step back here. I kind-of mentioned that this was a 'lesser' quality school. This school, in my opinion, was suffering from a lack of leadership by the administration. This was demonstrated by a shortage of discipline from the teaching staff. Some teachers, the vigilant ones, kept control of their classes just fine. Others, has no control. This shop teacher was a nice enough guy, but he was content to let the students do whatever they wanted. (Guess where that leads?) He spent a few moments teaching us now and then and then left us to make whatever it was that we were to be graded on.

Both Scott and I knew all of this the hard way. Our chessboards had been vandalized by fellow students along the way. But now that we were approaching the end of our projects, we needed to use more care to avoid 'setbacks'. I, personally, resolved to carefully hide my drying chessboard, so as not to inspire anyone inclined to wrecking things, who just happened to walk past, to make some creative design on my project with a sharpie or something. Scott was in a hurry at the end of class and set his out in an easily viewed spot to dry.

The next day, we saw the creative work of a deranged artist. Luckily, he did not find my board, and it was fine. But someone had taken a screwdriver to Scott's. He scratched about as deep and hard as he could into the surface of the finish one simple word in large block printing. It had four letters and it started with an "F". (It also rhymed with duck. []) Well, as you can imagine, my friend was not happy. In a calmer state of mind, he would have laughed it off and said to the prospective offender, "Good one. You really got me. Hey, you don't mind if I actually finish my project now, do you????"

But, as mentioned, Scott was pretty angry. He wasn't exactly thinking clearly. There was really nothing he could do because no-one was going to own up to this and pretty much everyone else thought it was funny (except me, of course). He should have taken out the finish sander and carefully began to remove the surface to see how deep the damage was. Well, in that state of mind, Scott slapped the board down on the snading table with a load thud. He grabbed the belt-sander with the heaviest grit (for removing the largest amounts of wood).

Okay. One more step back. Our sanding tables had wooden tops. There were outlet plugs (for the tools) at the base down by the floor. The table was wider than the base, so, you had to get down (almost kneel down) to plug something in. One of the regular stunts that the tricksters liked to play was to unplug a tool but leave a little lever on the handle in such a postition that the tool was still on. (Many tools have a lever on them by the switch that you can push in if you are going to be using it for awhile. It allows you to leave the tool on without having to hold your finger on the button). That way, when you plugged it in, it would start working or spinning and often would scare the person who was holding it - who had just plugged it in - but was not expecting it to be operatinal(because they weren't pushing the button). Pretty funny.

Back to Scott. Angry that his chessboard had unauthorized engraving. He slammed the board down. Grabbed the most powerful sander. A belt sander. It has a loop shaped band of snd paper that rotates around in a circle. Scott smacked the sander on top of his chessboard. He bent down, cord in hand, to plug in the belt sander in the outlet by the floor. You guessed it. Someone had swtiched the lever that left the belt sander on. Since Scott was not holding the tool, the thing took off like a banshee. It dug into the finish of the chessboard and started getting traction. This was a strong sander. It began clawing at the finish of the board until there was not enough friction to hold the board on the table anymore. The sander kicked the board behind it with incredible force throwing it across the room until it hit a wall about twenty or thirty feet away. Scott had to duck to avoid getting hit. But the sander was just getting started. The force of the belt drove the tool like an out of control vehicle across the surface of the table heading away from where Scott was now recovering his wits. The tool was picking up speed as it removed the finish of the table. It was just about to fly off the far egde when it reached the far limits of its cord. At the end of the table, teetering off the edge, the sander stopped rollilng and began ---- sanding. It was making tremendous noise as it chewed away the edge of the table grinding and spitting out the sawdust that was formerly tabletop in its wake. Scott now tried to grab it, but it was too far away. Everyone in the whole class was watching because this was quite a loud spectacle. Suddenly it occurs to Scott that he could unplug the thing to turn it off. Too late. After finding solid purchase in grinding away at the table's edge, the tool got up enough force to pull itself out of the socket! It flew off the table seemingly suspended in the air for a very long time until it crashed head first into the cement shop floor. Pieces of the tool broke off and went spinning in every direction.

 

[blobbottlebob]

Weird shop story.

Changing the title so people can see what I just posted.

 

[surfaceone]

RE: Weird shop story.

Hey Bob,

I use'ta love shop class, mechanical drawing, not so much. Thanks for taking us down shop memory lane. I've got one for you:

We had a shop teacher, "Mr. H," we'll call him. Mr. H was a very proper older gentlemen. He always wore dark brown, even to his ties, which he always tucked into his shirt, and tie barred down to be doubly secured...

He always wore a long white shop coat, too, with "Mr. H____" embroidered on the left breast. Fastidious with a capital "F."

We had Shop 1st Period in 9th Grade. Mr. H was late that day. Mr. H was never late.

Due to his absence, pandemonium broke out amongst my classmates. There were knots and scraps pieces flying around the room, Guys were hanging out the windows. People were exploring the store room where they kept the desktops that had been removed for obscene graffiti, when my buddy discovered a pipe protruding from the ceiling with dangling cloth covered wires hanging down. But that's a story involving a great "double dare," for another day.

Mr. H suddenly came through the doors, and he was dismayed, and quite unhappy to see what was going on in the shop. He unlocked the tool room, hung his hat and coat, put on his white shop coat, and assembled the class, now all wearing plastic goggles in front of the jointer for that day's lesson. He stood behind the machine, pointed out the sharp rotary heads, pointed out the proper direction of feeding material along the fence, emphasizing the dangerous nature of the machine.

He then switched on the jointer, bent over to grab a piece of stock, and the cutter head grabbed his necktie, which, in his haste, he had neglected to tuck in & tie down.

Now there were 20 some guys standing around in a semi-circle watching this. Nobody moved at first. Then the laughing and elbowing began. Nobody made for the shutoff switch. Mr. H's chin was being dragged down to the cutter head.

I don't really know how much time elapsed. It was slow motion. My buddy Eddy pulled out his pocket knife, opened it, paused, and at the last minute...

cut Mr. H's tie, just below the knot. Mr. H reared back, horrified, purple faced. Speechless.

He quickly scuttled into the tool room and banged the door closed behind him.

We all looked at one another, crazy grins all around. I think we were quite literally saved by the bell, which rang soon after.

We heard at lunch, that Mr. H had gone home soon after the incident at the jointer.

The next day, in another class, one of the students said, or did something. I'm not sure what, but it set Mr. H off! Mr. H took after this kid with a file, or something, in his hand, and chased him zigzagging around the room. The kid easily escaped. Mr. H did not.

Mr. H was soon "retired," and we never saw him again.

 

[LC]

RE: Weird shop story.

The good old days of shop . Took shop in school and never did like it much at all . We were instructed by Mr. C to come up with a decent wood project to be graded on . After a few weeks Mr. C came up to me and asked why I had not come up with a wood project as we were to be graded on it . I told him I have chosen a project and was indeed done with it stating that it was in the tack room drying as we spoke . Mr. C went into the tack room and came back out red faced after seeing whathe had seen . I had cut out a couple of wood hearts and shellacked them . It did not go over well , ended up finally making a book shelf .Nowin my later years I am an avid wood worker and have a great love for the hobby . I made it a point over the years to drop in at school now and then and say hello to Mr. C . It was a good twenty years since school that I took the wood knife shown below to have him plain the boards for it in the same old planer that I had used in school . The school I went to no longer has a shop class , only mechanical drawing , what a shame . And Mr. C is no longer there either . I missed dropping in on him as I did earlier .