Hey Ladies, Gentlemen and Glort....
Happy Easter to Y'all!!!!!
Got back from a visit to family a few days ago, spent a week in a neighboring city - What a difference!!
Saw sisters, mother, nieces and mates! Was good to visit my old home town for a change, its been long overdue... Dunno why anybody was happy to see me, me being the obnoxious, ill mannered, ill tempered lout that I am... But had I a genuinely great time, everybody else at least "said" that they were glad to see me, some were so genuine that I almost believed them...
Whilst I was there, I visited the local
porn tool retailers, I was totally amazed at the lack of quality of medium duty workshop kit that was on sale... I wouldn't pay a quarter of the marked price for that junk...
Totally discouraged I set off back to the mother's abode (where I was staying) and threw a chainsaw around the place for a while, after a quick repair of course... Felt much better after taking out my frustrations (Heavy rain caused a Coral Tree to shed some 18" x 10 yard boughs.) ... The best woodworking implement I have ever used - Stihl038...
Whilst I was there, I started stripping my "offsite" milling machine which was stored in their garage... Took a few days to unlimber everything from the base, its been in storage for nigh on 10 - 15yrs now, so I figured it was time to hook it homewards and start playing with it... About 3000+kg later, we had the base and bed on a trailer, with the slide/swivel/head carefully packed into the VW Microbus... All done with hand chain block and the like, no gantry or fancy stuff was available - the most high tech bit we used was a 2t chain block, second to that a few pipes as rollers and third to that a crowbar or two... Who said that a Lister was a basic machine....?
After a four hour drive a couple of days later, we unloaded it at its home premises here in EL... What a pleasure to use the overhead gantry and hydraulic engine hoist!! (The unit is a Kondia 70 series Powermill, similar to a Bridgeport, possibly a bit sturdier.)
With around about 500mm or so table clearance, this unit has a wee bit more gap than my old Elliot, but, the Elliot can take way heavier work.... But....They each have their place!
Also brought back a dividing head... The damn thing weighs in at around 50kg, I guess, almost busted my spleen/spine/liver and rectum lifting it out of the car... (the engine hoist was occupied at the time)... I paid for the workout a bit later, for about 72hrs in fact... The brain's definitely writing cheques the body is having trouble cashing....
But, enough of that...Glort, when you coming to visit SA? I need another grumpy old fart to commiserate with... I think that between the two of us, we could put up and host quite a few entertaining evenings... I don't know if anybody else would enjoy it besides us though.... Certainly would be interesting...
Enough rambling...Time to go pack away the tools from the last few night's assembling...
Keep it grumbling...
Cheers
Ed
As usual, the mandatory crappy quality cell images follow...