Sunday Morning

Did some cleaning early this morning in the shop. We are working on a wood sculpture in the shop right now and everything is covered with fine wood dust. Hey its supposed to be a metalworking shop so were not tooled to handle fine lightweight dust.

After a little shop cleaning we took a quick run out to the Solano flea market. In the summer we go pretty frequently. Prices are better than the huge Alameda dealer faire but you have to wade through more pure garbage. Picked up a nice cast Iron Desmond belt dressing tool. The red handle caught my eye. When I picked it up I saw it was a dressing tool for abrasive belts instead of the more common grinding wheel type.I really like the cast iron handle.

I also got a pretty decent American Beauty 600 watt soldering iron. It needs a new cord but for five bucks I had a hard time walking away. My neighbor is an antique and collectable dealer.  He goes to France twice a year specifically to buy French junk and collectables. He fills a cargo container and ships the stuff back here. One of the things he seems to find for a bargain over there is broken down ancient French watering cans and Champagne buckets. I do a little repair work for him from off and on to fix some of the more unique pieces to make them more salable. These old bombproof soldering irons are the ticket for soldering thicker galvanized or tinned steel sheet and copper.

Here is a picture of one of the cans I repaired for him using old school soldering techniques and some good acid flux.

These old cans are a challenge to repair. On one hand you are trying to preserve as much of the patina they have built up, and on the other you really need to clean down to bare metal to have any chance of making a decent repair.

 Two champagne buckets and a cool little sponge holder that mounts to the wall above the sink All old, and all French.

Another wine bucket. This one was difficult because the rim was split in two places so it had become seriously out of round. The wood form inside is to help it hold its proper round shape during the repair.