It seems like I know you...

Once upon a time...in a land far away...


wrote in message ups.com...
:
:
: Recent posts to this Newsgroup made some folks think I'm sitting here
: with nothing to do, eager to help any homebuilder who wanders in the
: door, which caused several to do just that. Fer example...
:
: A flaw in the construction of my home revealed itself this past weekend
: when my favorite porcelain fixture suddenly lurched to one side
: slamming me into the tiled wall as the service pipe snapped and a spray
: of water filled the room.
:
: I thought it was an earthquake. Finding out it wasn't made it okay,
: even though it was still a hell of a mess.
:
: Tried to shut off the valve on the service pipe and the shaft snapped
: in my hand, corroded through at the packing gland. A towel over the
: broken pipe converted the geyser into a flood. More towels, most of
: the Sunday 'Times' and a hunka wood created a diversion channel,
: directing the water out of the house, giving me enough time to run
: outside and shut off the water.
:
: Whoever installed the toilet failed to provide a foundation for the
: bowl, causing most of its weight to be borne by the cast-iron soil pipe
: flange, stabilized only by a rime of tile grout. Thanks to the wax
: seal being squashed out of position by the lack of support, the
: sanitary flange began to rust. Fifty-four years later it finally
: fractured, bucking me off in the process.
:
: Like everything else, a house requires maintenance, the older the home,
: the more maintenance it requires and our place was built in 1952. Being
: poor (by American standards) the maintenance chores fall to me - -
: carpentry, cement work, roofing, glazing, electrical, plumbing,
: tile-setting, cabinetry, carpeting. . . you name it, I can do it.
: Not to mention outside chores such as paving, fencing and painting,
: along with vehicle maintenance, including everything from alignment and
: wheel balancing to overhauling the engines and trannys every few
: hundred thousand miles. (You can do that kind of piece-meal
: maintenance with older vehicles having a conventional frame and
: rear-wheel drive, like my 1965 VW bus or my wife's 1986 Toyota.
: Newer, unibodied front-wheel drive stuff, forget it.)
:
: I didn't set out to became a Jack-of-all-Trades, I simply had no
: other option. I may not do it as fast as some folks, surely not as
: well as someone who specializes in doing just one thing but the work
: gets done properly if not prettily and always at a price I can afford.
:
: House, car, airplane or boat, doing your own maintenance takes up a
: significant amount of time, enough to justify applying the principle of
: Preventative Maintenance, replacing/repairing things BEFORE they go
: bad, allowing you to order the parts, assemble the tools and schedule
: your time so the chores don't impact more important activities, such
: as writing the Great American Novel. Or sneaking off and going flying,
: now and then.
:
: My wife is off to Hawaii this week (she surfs more than I do),
: providing me the opportunity to get at a lot of chores that would have
: gotten in her way, such as rebuilding the clothes dryer, replacing some
: window screens in her studio and resetting a door (old houses shift
: about). Plus the usual stuff, already scheduled. If I get all the
: maintenance chores done in a timely manner it will leave about twenty
: hours - - for the whole week - - to call my own.
:
: Now I had to add Toilet Repair to the list.
:
: Not a problem. I have the tools, know what needs to be done and had
: most of the required parts on hand. (With three bathrooms (it's a
: BIG old house) it's prudent to keep a stock of spare parts.)
:
: The toilet is a close-coupled American Standard round-bowl, a design
: popular fifty years ago. 'Close-coupled' means the water tank is
: mounted directly to the bowl rather than up on the wall. This is
: old-fashioned stuff designed to last forever and is nearly twice as
: heavy as the stuff they sell nowadays, the combined weight of the tank
: & bowl about a hundred and fifty pounds. The weight and the shape and
: the fact the bathroom, a small one near the back porch, has only a
: 24" door makes the toilet too awkward for me to handle without removing
: the tank from the bowl. After disconnecting the tank I grab it in a
: bear-hug and I'm side-stepping my way over the dyke and out the door
: when someone comes crunching down the back drive.
:
: No one has called; no one is scheduled to visit until Wednesday, when
: I've promised to show a fellow how to measure & adjust the volume of
: his cylinder heads. Unannounced, unwanted and uninvited, a total
: stranger has come to call, complete with a six-pak of cheap beer.
:
: The unwelcome stranger is Joe Homebuilder, who has decided to build a
: Teenie Two and seeing as how I'm such a helpful sonofabitch, he and
: his six-pak are there to convince me to weld him up the landing gear
: for his Dream Machine, preferable while he watches. He hasn't
: brought any steel, figuring I'd have lots of that stuff on hand, for
: which he's more than willing to pay me. Along with the six-pak of
: beer, which he plunks down on the patio table with a Significant
: Glance. (Everyone knows old sailors will do anything for beer, right?)
:
: All this while I'm standing there with sixty pounds of toilet tank
: stuck in my boly-holy. "I'm a bit busy at the moment," I hint.
:
: No problem, he can drop by the next afternoon to pick it up although
: he'd kinda like to watch; mebbe even lend a hand. Being a
: homebuilder he's a very handy fellow although he doesn't weld, of
: course. Nobody welds nowadays, heh heh heh.
:
: Hitting him with the toilet tank might break it. Plus there'd be all
: the blood to clean up and the body to get rid of. "Actually, I could
: use a bit of help. What do you know about toilets?" I ask. He
: thinks I'm kidding. If he needs to know something about toilets
: he'd call a plumber. "Maybe clothes dryers? You any good with
: them?"
:
: His eyes are starting to dance around a bit. Big, ugly, old man
: carrying a weird porcelain box getting right in his face with all these
: dumb questions. Hell, he's brought me some BEER for crysakes; he's
: even willing to PAY to have a little welding done. What's the big
: deal?
:
: "You ever re-set a door?" I ask. Solid Douglas Fir, thirty-four by
: eighty-four. Weighs a ton, which is why it's got three hinges but
: the lock's been reset twice, the bottom trimmed at least that many
: times and now it needs a shim across the top plus a new jamb and
: striker plate.
:
: He doesn't have any idea what I'm talking about, is looking
: seriously nervous, starting to edge toward the gate and his car beyond
: it. "I've got all the stuff you'll need; shouldn't take you
: more than a couple of hours, you being so handy and all."
:
: "I guess I caught you at a bad time," he sez as he opens the gate.
: But I'm keeping right up with him. "Howzabout window screens?
: Gotta build a couple of new frames but two of them only need new
: screening, take you half an hour, tops." But he's not looking at
: me any more. He climbs in his car and gets the hell outta there,
: leaving me standing in the back drive cradling a toilet tank in my
: arms. I croon it a little lullaby as I carry it back into the patio,
: lay it gently on the patio table, note that Joe Homebuilder has taken
: his six-pak with him.
:
: I found a few pounds of Portland cement that was still good, sealed up
: in a plastic bucket, use it and some #80 sand from the blast cabinet to
: build up a proper foundation The sanitary flange needs to be replaced
: but there's still enough lip for the wax seal. I'll get a new
: flange and schedule its replacement for another time. Once it cures,
: which should take about two days, the new foundation plus two new bolts
: anchored in the concrete will provide a strong, stable footing. I
: install a new service valve, turn the water back on and go to work on
: the dryer.
:
: As with toilets, clothes dryers are easy to work on, although awkward;
: a spare pair of hands can cut the time in half. But by noon the dryer
: is back together with its new belt and new idlers, all the stray lint
: sucked out, a couple of scratches touched-up with appliance paint, good
: for another four years of trouble-free service.
:
: After lunch I flip a coin, the door loses and I go to work on the
: screens. The frames are aluminum, corroded beyond repair by fifty-four
: years of western exposure within sight of the ocean. I use anodized
: stuff to fabricate the new frames. The east-facing frames are still
: sound although the original fiberglas screening is not. I replace it
: with aluminum screening, etch it, then apply a thin coat of flat black
: paint which I'll renew every five years or so. By the time I'm
: done the sun is over the yardarm.
:
: Then comes a good sweep-down, putting away the tools, five cats to be
: fed and me too - - a sandwich, carried out to the shop, where I spend a
: couple of happy hours making bits & pieces of an aluminum airplane
: whilst thinking of a wooden one. There's lotsa little parts in an
: aluminum airplane and although I use tumblers for most deburring chores
: and drill jigs to assure proper location of the holes, fabricating
: small parts still takes large amounts of time. As my hands work with
: metal my head is working with wood, calculating the weight of wooden
: stringers. .
:
: Aluminum is smarter than wood, requiring fewer tools and skills to
: produce a sound structure. But having made a gun-rack or bird house,
: most Americans consider themselves to be woodworkers and are more
: willing to consider a wooden airframe than one made of aluminum or
: welded steel tubing. If I can come up with a safe, simple airframe
: using Box Store lumber it may help stem the steady decline of
: grass-roots aviation.
:
: It's kinda boring, making a batch of identical parts but the numbers
: aligning themselves in my head are exciting. Even at twenty-eight
: pounds per cubic foot -- a fair average for box-store lumber -- the
: frame of a wooden fuselage should weigh less than twenty pounds.
: I'll need to make some drawings to confirm that, and build a couple
: of mock-ups to verify the strength where the landing gear and wing
: fittings attach to the fuselage, but the testing should be interesting.
: If only I had a little more time I could...
:
: -R.S.Hoover
:
: PS -- I've created a Yahoo Group for the wooden airplane ideas. When
: it comes to designing a plane from scratch there's more I don't know
: than do. Which means a lot of problems to solve and that's always fun.
: As I solve the problems -- or find solutions worth stealing :-) --
: I'll post the solutions along with drawings and photos, warts and all.
: If/when it flys, I'll tell you how good or bad. Odds are it won't come
: to anything. Like the fellow said, nowadays nobody welds. Nor do they
: hang doors, fix dryers or do any number of other useful things
: including building airplanes from scratch. But a few do and we swap a
: surprising number of messages, drawings and so forth. Putting the
: stuff where it's easy to get at will save ME some time. Since it's
: primarily for my benefit rather than the looky-loos, I won't bother to
: mention its name. I figure anyone with a sincere interest will track
: it down. -rsh
: