Still Here!

 

Yes, yes, I am still here! 

It's been a while since I've last visited this part of the world. Not because of any real calamity in my life, unless you consider being tied up with a lot of other side "projects" a bit of a catastrophe. (I tend to disagree there, since I always like having things on the go - cuts the boredom and it really helps keep me out of trouble!)

So what has been going on? 

Well, the first thing is that the shop is almost turning into a bit of a viable business. A couple of years back, I established an Etsy Shop which has started to really take off on in the past couple of years. 

I've also expanded operations to eBay, Facebook and this year I started to get into doing bulk wholesale orders for a local retailer, making Christmas trees for the holiday rush. 

Anyone want a tree?

I'll admit, I have pretty much had my fill of making trees for this year - but it was a pretty good exercise in how to bang out stuff in volume and it helped me figure how to build as efficiently as possible! 

So between filling orders, creating replacement stock and doing R&D on new products, the shop has been humming along.

If I wasn't busy enough, I seemed to have fallen into a bit of a nostalgia trap. A couple of years ago I won a bid on a lot item from the a local estate auction for a ridiculously low price because there was a specific item that I was interested in. 

While I initially didn't really want any of the other items in the lot, I did take a look at what my booty was in the lot. Among the items was a bunch of old 35mm film slides and some home recorded VHS tapes. I was a bit intrigued on what they contained since I grew during the time when these things were almost everywhere. As luck should have it, my parents did have a still functional VCR and slide projector. 

The film slides were a bit of a time capsule from the 1970's around the time when I was but a wee lad. The VHS tapes yielded a snapshot of television programming from the 1990's. Both periods, I am actually quite shocked to say that are 30 to 50 years in the past now - and also very hard to find now (I mean - who saves VHS recordings of "ALF"?) 

As someone from Generation X, "something" clicked within me and I now made it a bit of a mission to keep an eye out for those homemade tapes, film slides, and eventually 8mm movie films at the local estate auctions. 

I also started to prowl the thrift shops to rescue any functional VCR that I could find.  All this forgotten media turned into a pretty healthy library of TV programming from the 1980's, 90's and early 2000's and thousands of film slides. 

Not to be some kind of weird hoarder, I decided to archive the material and make them available to all to see.  I also found out that there was a bit of a resell market for film slides, so if you prowl the Etsy shop, you will see some there for sell.

The end result was I ended up creating a few YouTube channels. In cases where I chanced upon a cache of tapes that was focused on a certain subject matter, I created a dedicated channel of them. 

At the moment, I have a combined count of 3,800 subscribers and over 1.6 million views so it seems that I may have tapped into something here. 

Go ahead and check them our if you like! 

Bargain Bin Cinema  

Farm Equipment Video Library

A Slide A Day

The 80's Railfan

So yes, on top of the full time job, I've been a bit too busy to write!

But I do want to start recapturing some of  the activities in the shop and now that the post holiday period is approaching, I want to spend some time with you again. 

I don't think I will be posting at the pace that I once had in the past, but I am going to aim to have something to talk about at least once a month. 

Talk to you soon! 

  

Project Basket Case - Finishing up

Now that all the painting was done and everything was nice and shiny, the big day had arrived. 

I could finally put the tractor back together.

Reassembly in of itself was pretty straightforward. It was after all a matter of bolting the bits that I had removed earlier back onto the tractor's frame and reconnecting the remaining electrical components, mainly the headlights. 

Project Basket Case - Giving Things a Nice Coat of Paint

 

Yes, it's been a little while since the last update. This fall I started a new job which has taken a fair bit of my time as of late, and just life, in general, has been making its presence known.  In particular, I have noticed quite a significant uptick in requests for some of my laser engraved signs. So I have been spending quite a bit of time in the shop, just not enough time for writing it seems... 

Now that I have my excuses out of the way, it's now time to focus on the next chapter of bringing my basket case tractor back to life. 

Project Basket Case - The Saga of the Stubborn Wheel

 

With the engine all squared away, I now could focus on the other parts of the tractor.  One part that I had noticed when I was bidding on the tractor was that one of the rear tires was horribly cracked and in dire need of replacement.  

I did some pricing on a new tire for this size of tractor, and I was absolutely floored at the price - basically, I was literally doubling the value of my tractor by installing a new tire.  Well, I couldn't really use the tractor without it, so I held my nose and soon a new tire was on its way. 

While I was waiting for the tire to arrive, I decided that I should at least prepare for it by removing the rear wheel from the tractor, remove the old tire and perhaps freshen up the rim with a fresh coat of paint, 

Little did I know that I was in for the most frustrating part of the whole tractor rebuild.

Project Basket Case - Wiring It Up

In my last post on the garden tractor restoration, I had just finished installing the new engine and gotten the fuel and throttle connections all done. 

The only thing that I needed to do to get the engine going (and in theory, the tractor moving) was to hook up the electrical system.