hi guys!
been way to long without an update here so im gonna try and catch up, and this update is going to be HUGE as you guys say in america now
me and my better half bought a in the end of 2015 so last year was quite busy with work offshore in africa, work in the shop and with the new house. the new house is situated in a quiet area just 8 minutes away from the shop, its also very close to the sea, actually a stones throw as we say here in norway and unlike the standard housing lots here these days its a big lot at about 1500 square meters so i see a potential for a big workshop at home as well but building anything here in norway is expensive so thats a bit down the road, but i have slowly started preparations to make a foundation for a new shop with the help from a couple of buddies who borrowed me a small escavator and a HUGE fasttrac tractor to haul the dirt away. got a big project ahead just changing out the soil for solid rock foundation but little by little im getting there.
about 33 of the near 5-600 tonnes of rock needed is in place.
a well deserved pizza break after a lot of digging.
enjoying a cool Cider in the garden after a long day of digging.
the new house only has a small one car garage with separate gymroom in the back and a room on top of the garage that im going to make a man cave out of. we filled the gym with all sorts of fitness equipment but between me and my misses we have probably spent less than ten hours there so i convinced her to move the gym equipment into the small cabin in the garden and leave it there for a year or so and sell it off if we dont use it more, and that will leave some space for me to use for more usefull things. so next task will be to open up the wall between the garage and the gym and set up a small workshop for the powdercoating equipment, electroplating stuff and also a nice bead/glassblasting cabinet i got as payment for welding a rocker panel on a friends car. and that in turn is gonna clear up some more room in the workshop at my parents house and we really need the space we can get because we have sourced another project there; a 1970 nova
i also did a lot of work at the shop since the last update, betwhen all of the engines, cylinderheads etc thats been rebuilt, i have sold off the old rotary broach i used to surface cylinderheads with because i needed something slightly more effective and with a smaller footprint so i got lucky and found a small swing surfacer from a trade school half way on the other side of the country, and stuff like this is rearly listed in the classiefieds in this country so eventough it was broken i jumped straight in the car end went to get it.
its a nice italian made piece of equipment, meant for grinding and it also has a carbide cutter made for aluminium, the head is 330mm big and the swing capacity is big enough for BMWs biggest straight sixes so its big enough for my shop.
some of the students at the school that sold it had a mishap when they moved it with a forklift and they broke the flange where the feed motor is fitted to the swing head so they sold it of rather than getting a new motor for it. wich was nice for me.
i got a quote for a new motor and it was about 350 dollar and having paid only 700 dollar for the machine itself i figured i would rather try and fix it myself and that turned out to be quite easy, i just turned a new flange piece out of a big slab of aluminium roundstock, and i sourced a motor of a similar size and used the fan and the fan housing from that and straightened the bent motor shaft in the hydraulic press and it worked perfectly.
i also made a holder for CBN and PCD insert, and one holder for a regular radius insert, and bought a set of new stones for grinding. having the grinding in mind, i got a covermade out of aluminium and that turned out to be quite a task in itself because i forgot to have fittings for coolant and return made so moving it around in the shop to weld the fittings on was quite challenging but getting the cover between the stand and the machine itself was also a challenge
moving anything big around in the shop is a pain in itself and requires a lot of planning. but with good help from my dad we got it in place. i also made a coolant system out a fuelcell, a coolant pump from the lathe i hardly used anyway, som AN fittings i had laying around and a ballvalve somebody threw in the trash. works perfectly. i also copied a fixture for heads and manifolds i found on this page and im gonna make an extension for the machine to gain height for v8 blocks.
with around a 1000 dollar invested in this machine it really has become a proper money maker for the shop
and the results are perfect aswell, straight and with the right finnishes for different gasket materials.
im actually travelling to bergen tomorrow morning, catching a plane from bergen to france, then congo-africa. Looking forward to some sun and time off from all the work at home 
