Darcy,
I sometimes like to give you a hard time and pull your leg about some of your finds. In actuality, I am amazed at how you find some of your monster machines that look like junk to many. you just load onto a triaxle or flatbed trailer, bring them home with the ease that i bring home my latest 15# toy that is brand-new. You take a pile of parts and figure out how they are supposed to go back together. It sometimes takes a lot more genius to figure that out than it took the guy to design and make work the original piece.
I had a good friend who did all of my welding (God rest). I would buy a piece of machinery and after a couple of uses, would think of a way it could be put to use in ways not originally intended. I would call my friend and explain what i had in mind. He would curse me out and tell me how crazy and foolish i was to even think of trying to stretch my machines. Within an hour or two, he would show up with his little truck, no sideboards to hold all of the odd pieces of scrap floating precariously around loose, a couple of come-alongs, and old wooden chair with one leg broken off, a couple of ancient tool boxes with a bunch of nondescript tools that probably dated back to Methusala. He would look over my newest toy and shake his head and reiterate just how stupid and foolish I was. He would, as he continued his tirade, take a few measurements and scratch the info onto one of those scraps of iron, or onto a scrap of wood supplied by yours truly, get back into his truck, still shaking his head and asking God how he ever became encumbered with a so called friend like me. Within a day or two, he would be back with a pile of parts he had fabricated clinging somehow, and quite miraculously, to his old truck. He would take those parts and start welding, or drilling holes for bolts, without removing anything from his truck other than drill or welding tools. Once he had finished doing the prep work to my machine, he would start taking those parts off of his truck and start to assemble onto my machine. Very seldom, did he ever have to put a tiniest bend or grind into a part to make it fit. I never saw him get flustered or even get himself into a position where he had to make any major modifications to those parts he had fabricated miles away, but the measurements had been written down on a tiny piece of metal, or wood scrap. He is gone now, but I think you two must be related.
Tinker
