Recent content by WisJim

@KwikFab --I've been waiting for the real date. Happy Birthday!!

When my my grandmother died, a few years after grandpa, my aunts were back at the house throwing things in the dumpster before we got back from the funeral. My dad rescued some new-in-the-box collectible pottery and dishes and some $5 gold coins that were in boxes that they threw out. Who knows...

I do this on occasion for my wife. She has a replica of an antique circular knitting machine and she makes wool socks (her actual antique machine has worn out from over 100 years of sock making). A couple of totes of merchandise, table and display things, her machine and the table to clamp it...

Here's a nice shiny one that I recently got. Still has the old original hardware store tag.

Spent an hour looking at a house on the other side of town that my wife discovered online. It's advertised as a 2400 SF house with 3400 SF garage and shop area. Not quite an acre lot and neighbors all around, but I'm not longer interested in having 80 or 100 acres--been there, done that, and...

I have an assortment of maple and oak block pairs, marked on the side with magic marker, for just that kind of task. I try to mark them so I don't need to make new blocks the next time.

I dug out my T&B crimping pliers for a picture. I got them at a garage sale long ago, and they have gotten a lot of use from me.

I stopped at the closest Habitat Re-Store yesterday and picked up a couple of things, including a Stanley 40 scrub plane for $4, and a made in England Sears (Stanley) block plane for $2. I felt so guilty getting the #40 so cheap that I felt I ought to buy more so picked up the block plane also.

The 2 Fujitsu units that we installed a decade ago in the old farmhouse we lived in are still working fine. They were able to keep the house from freezing (above 50 degrees F), when set to their lowest temp, in minus 20 outside one winter when we were out of state in January, otherwise we had...

You ought to be able to find a good used 1970s era General Electric Elec-trak lawn tractor for less than cost of a new motor and controller (maybe $1000 or so?) and save a lot of time re-engineerin something. I had a couple of them and used one for 15 years or so, and gave it to a son about 4...

While out of town on other errands and appointments, I stopped at the Eau Claire Habitat store and was glad I did. Two small brass bristle brushes, a Sears made-in-England block plane, and a nice later version Stanley No 40 scrub plane with a few scuffs but most of the original japaning and...

I recently discovered that I have 2 editions of the Peterson's VW book--that I bought new back in the 70s. Trying to decide if I need to keep them--every once in awhile I get a VW question and it sometimes helps to have these, and other old VW references, still on the shelf.

My grandson is now 10, and has also been accumulating Hot Wheels since he was a toddler. A couple of years ago he decided he wanted cars in unopened packages and now has perhaps 800 unopened vehicles plus many hundreds that have been played with. He has also learned how to put them on a...

My door covers most of the lights and there are no windows in my garage door. It was something that never occurred to me when planning the light layout. Just a couple more lights would have made a big difference, and I keep telling myself it would be easy to add them.

Before I retired I often have some thought to what I was going to accomplish in my limited time off (evenings and weekends mostly), so when I got home from work I would get right at whatever I had been thinking about all day, and I'd not worry about other things that needed to be done. After...