I know you've all been anxious to see how the new high school project is going. The part I'm excited about is that the ground compaction machines will be gone and I will not have to take Dramamine to get through my work day. Here the electrician is drilling holes in the outside of our building for the temporary (2 years) parking lot lights.
Finally the asphalt is being layed. When I go back to school after Spring break, students will be parking here. It'll be nice since our guys are always going to the parking lot to get their trucks. They can never seem to drive directly around campus and to the shop. It seems they always have to make a detour through Taco Bell or McDonald's. It's gonna kill 'em that I can keep an eye on them now.
This is Chris, the electrician drilling holes on the inside of our shop. He was in Bob's class for his first year apprenticeship class and was in fourth year class when the big shake-up occurred t the apprenticeship school and Bill Bowser was let go, followed closely behind by Bob. Strangely enough, he is best friends with Kyle Kern, who was living with us for a while and became an electrician because of Bob's influence. Small world. In this picture, he is smiling and giving "thumbs-up" for Bob.
Later in the week we received a donation of TWO crispy new 2012 Volkswagen Passats as training aids for our shop. I signed for the cars and the delivery driver had gave me those funny "switch blade" style keys that VW's use and I hopped into one to drive it into the shop. Oh, farfegnugen! Revolting situation here. I cannot find the ignition. I finally realized it was a proximity key, located the start button and headed for the shop. Upon a closer inspection there are no keyholes. Anywhere. Not the door. Not the trunk. The glove box was lockable...without a key...and contained a valet button but no place to put a key. So why did VW go to the expense of packaging two switchblade keys and two plastic wallet keys with a car that had NO keyholes. What were those Germans thinking??? Well, whatever they were thinking, Thanks for the cars!
Saturday we went to Bellingham for one of Carissa's high school friend's wedding. Andy went to Western to college and ended up working in a bike shop there happy as a bivalve (clam) at high tide for the past few years. Now it appears he's finally found someone who values Andy's uniqueness and I'm delighted.
Before we met up with Chris and Roo for dinner we went to the REstore to check out the used building materials. The Bellingham used building materials store is especially good since there are so many old homes in the area to gather materials from.
As it turned out, they were having a recycled art event and I thought of Kyanne when I saw this dress made from maps since she likes maps so much.
We bought a new pedestal sink for the cabin since I've been wanting to replace the almond-colored sink with a white one. This has been bugging me since the entire cabin is done in light blue and white and the fact that the sink is not white really shows up. Anyway, we bought a white sink with a bit of an art deco-y thing going on that fit the cabin well. Sadly, after we got it out of the car, I seriously doubt that it's white. I think it's the same color we already have. I hope not but if that's the case, Craig's List here we come.
We met Chris and Roo at the Chuckanut Brewery and Kitchen on the water at Boundary Bay. As with a lot of places in Bellingham, it's a quirky old place with lots of personality. There were some cool old buildings on the waterfront as seen below.
After dinner we went to Andy's and Megan's wedding. It was at a very interesting venue at the Lightcatcher Building of the Whatcom Museum. The wedding was supposed to be in the glass walled courtyard behind this building.
But as we all know, it rained Saturday evening. And I don't mean it just rained, but it RAINED so adjustments were made and the wedding went on without a hitch. It was hard to get a glimpse of the ceremony since each time I got a bit of a view someone shifted their umbrella and my glimpse evaporated.
The umbrellas finally parted--unfortunately the clouds did not--and I got a quick shot of the ceremony. You can see the big lightcatcher wall around the courtyard.
There were paper music hearts everywhere. They were really cute.
The theme of the wedding was a natural look as demonstrated by these real mushroom centerpieces on each cocktail table.
Being an art museum, there was some oddly placed art behind the cake table, but the bride and groom we so happy they outshined the art piece. Here they are cutting their cakes that carried through the natural theme with the 3-D grass on the sides.
After a nasty drive back from Bellingham that included the Cruiser tossing one of it's wiper assemblies up over the roof of the car. We circled back and grabbed the wiper off the road and Bob stuck it back on. Since we had lost the little pin that holds the wiper on, the wiper kept slipping loose so that I had to roll the window down, reach out and push the wiper back on every few minutes leaving me with a very wet arm.
After we got home, unpacked and grabbed a nap, we went to Tacoma to meet Kyanne and Ryan for dinner at Harmon Brewing Company. A brew for the guys, and dinner for all made for a great evening. Kyanne topped off a perfect evening by presenting me with a nice pair of Sofspot shoes that she found in her thrift store travels. They fit my ginormous feet perfectly! Thanks, Kyanne.
With that, I say "Have a good week everybody!"
Bob had planned the Jag restoration based on what he could see. As the job progressed he found additional items that needed attention...such as needing to strip the car down to bare metal instead of just sanding the paint. Although he kept finding roadblocks, he was making forward progress.
Now, as in most big projects, it's time to go backwards. After he got the nose all cleaned up and filled, the filler cracked because some of the metal is too thin from being hammered into place after a couple of accidents. That meant backing up, removing the filler, and stabilizing the metal so it can withstand the body work.
Here Bob's doing a bit of welding on the corners of the "mouth".
After welding comes grinding the welds flat. I took about a millon grinding pictures so it was really hard for me to choose just one to put in here. I decided I liked the Star Wars-esque look of the sparks in this one.
This week Bob has been busy and has been making a lot of progress, but it's not flashy progress that shows that a lot has gotten done this week.
Here Bob has gotten the freshly welded nose covered over with filler.
He's spent hours and hours and HOURS sanding the old paint right down to the bare naked metal.
He did a bit of finishing work on the hitch area and the underside of the area looks finished now.
More shiny metal. I like the way the car looks right now, but we live in Washington and that shiny finish would last approximately 3.6 seconds in our environment.
An aerial view of the crispy shiny Jag's finish.
More filling, sanding, feeling, guide coat, sanding, feeling, guide coat, sanding, feeling, guide coat, sanding, feeling, guide coat, sanding, on the nose and it's done.
A bit of filler on the low spots using the sequence above will make for a finished look. You can see how little was needed on the sides of the fender. None was needed on the other side.
See you all next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment