Last week was spring break for the kids. We didn’t have care coverage for the kids on Thursday and Friday, so I took those days off work. Mom was traveling through town and at the last minute, offered to take the kids up to the farm for a long weekend on Friday morning. Wife was already planning to head up to Minnesota on Friday morning as well to visit family and friends. That meant I was going to have most of the day Friday, all day Saturday, and a few hours on Sunday morning all to myself. This is the first time since having kids that I can remember being home by myself for such an extended period of time. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yep… a couple days of uninterrupted QST for me! That was the plan at least…
Friday went as planned. Once the kids left with Mom, I headed outside to tackle a couple of projects on the Flex – install a trailer light harness and swap out the winter wheels/tires for the summer set. When I bought the car, it did not come with the factory tow package. While I had installed a hitch soon after buying the car so that could use the cargo basket, I skipped the wiring because it wasn’t an immediate need at the time. I ended up picking up a slick little harness made by Tekonsha that just plugs in line with the factory taillights. Other than fishing the connectors through a near-impossibly small gap between the bumper and frame, installation couldn’t be easier. Four screws to remove the taillights, plug in the harness, a couple of zip-ties to route the wires, and done. Swapping the wheels was a quick project as well. Now that I’ve got my system sorted out, I don’t think it takes me more than 20 minutes.
The reason for needing a trailer light harness is because I’m going to be borrowing my Dad’s cargo trailer to haul materials for some upcoming projects. Since trading the minivan for the Flex, I’ve been getting by with borrowing my neighbor’s truck whenever I needed to haul anything of size. While I certainly appreciate my neighbor’s generosity, it still takes a certain level of planning and coordination that isn’t always convenient, especially when I’m in the middle of a project and realize I shorted myself on materials. I’ve been thinking about buying a small utility trailer for awhile now, and when I mentioned this in passing to Dad a month or two ago, he said that I could just borrow his. I felt a bit silly… of course he has a small utility trailer. I towed the darn thing home for him! In my defense, this happened right after my Grandpa passed. It was actually his trailer. When Grandma was moving out of the house, nobody in the family wanted the trailer, so Dad ended up buying it last minute. I literally went from the funeral to my Grandma’s house and picked it up for him. He’s only used a handful of times over the last 5 or so years and assured me that between his two pickup trucks, car hauler, and homemade trailer that he built years ago, I could use it as long as was needed without any issue.
Feeling good about progress, I headed into the shop to finish the vise restoration I’ve been poking away at the last few weeks. I have three vises in my shop. A small Wilton machinist that my Dad snagged for me from a scrap bin, a Wilton Shop King that I picked up for $20 years ago when I was buying something else off a guy, and a small no-name vise that I bought at the Restore for $10 that the kids like to use when they’re working in the shop with me. The Shop King was definitely an impulse purchase. While not the best or strongest vise out there, I’d argue that it is definitely one of the coolest looking vises ever made. I don’t get into anything too crazy with it, so it works well for me. When I built my workbench, I wasn’t exactly sure where I wanted the vise to be located on the bench, so I used a pair of c-clamps to ‘temporarily’ hold the vise in place. That was at least five years ago, and I haven’t moved it once. A few weeks ago I was puttering around the shop and I figured it was time to get it mounted for good. Before I did that, I figured I should make a mountain out of a molehill and give the vise a refresh.
Now, of the three vises I have, I was certain that I had several pictures of the Shop King from when I bought it. Nope. Plenty of pictures of the no-name and other Wilton, but no good pics of the Shop King. The picture above will have to serve as the ‘before’ pic. As I took it apart, I was happy to find that the vise was in great shape considering its age. The refresh ended up being just a cleanup and repaint project. The factory color was red. At some point in its life, someone spray-bombed it silver. It was kind of a shame that the red was painted over. When I was stripping the paint, the silver came off without issue and, from what I can tell, the red underneath seemed to be in good shape. Once I had everything to in bare metal, I spent a little time with a file cleaning up some of the casting flash lines around where the body and slide meet. The vise has never been able to fully close, always leaving about a 1/16” gap between the jaws when fully tightened. It’s never really been an issue for me, more of an annoyance. I always figured it was just gunk built up, but once I had the lines filed away, the jaws now meet as they should. Kind of weird to think that this vise is probably around 70 years old and the jaws have never touched each other until just a few days ago.
Perhaps the biggest delay of this project came when I had to choose a paint color. Red was the obvious choice, but red is also a color I’m not exactly fond of. I don’t know why… maybe because my high school colors were red and black and my college team colors were cardinal and gold, perhaps I just got burned out from seeing it constantly for 9 years? Even though it would have been the correct color to use from a historical perspective, these vises aren’t exactly collector pieces, I wasn’t so worried about trying to return it to factory form and decided instead to have some fun with it. I considered a hammered gold color, thinking it’d give the vise kind of an interesting retro vibe. Black and dark gray were also on the table. I even considered leaving it bare and coating it with BLO or blackening it with cold blue (or both). After looking through the vise restoration thread for inspiration, all of those options were eventually crossed off the list and I decided a subdued green or blue was the color I wanted. I ended up choosing a color called “Satin Midnight Blue” made by Rustoleum.
Now that I had my paint color picked out, I spent Friday afternoon masking, priming, and painting. I gave the vise a couple coats of high fill primer. This stuff works wonders for hiding blemishes in materials. This vise was a budget model from the start, so it certainly had its fair share of casting imperfections. While not completely gone, they are certainly less noticeable now. After that came the paint. At first, I was worried that I’d made a mistake. However, once I had several coats applied, it darkened up nicely and was exactly what I was looking for. The picture doesn’t do the color justice. It’s much darker in person, with hints of teal depending on how the light hits it. It reminds me a lot of the old Jet equipment blue color, just a few shades darker. While I wish there was a flat option for this color instead of just satin, I am pleased with the color choice.
I’m jumping ahead with that picture, I only managed to get everything masked and sprayed on Friday afternoon. By that point, it was getting close to 4pm. I brought the painted parts inside. I carefully removed the masking tape while the paint was still a little tacky and was happy with how everything turned out (a few rough spots here and there, but it’s not a showpiece). I was tempted to put the vise back together at this point, but also knew that I would probably ruin my fresh paint job in the process, so I called it a day. I took the car through the carwash, checked the Restore for any deals, stopped by Home Depot in search of some 7/16” hardware to mount the vise (which was a bust), and then swung by Fareway and picked up a nice, fat New York Strip for the grill. Allow me to toot my own horn for a moment, I freaking nailed it with the steak… cooked to a perfect, juicy medium-rare. I generally do a pretty good job on the grill, but I hit a home run on that one. I then did what any man with full run of his house would do after a perfect day of working on projects... I sipped on a couple cold IPAs while watching an action movie (Elysium – oldie but a goodie) and was in bed by 8pm.
Eleven and a half hours later I woke up feeling like absolute garbage. All that time outside the day before was too much for my allergy pill to keep up with and my sinuses were a mess. I’ll spare you the details – anyone who has dealt with this sort of thing knows what I’m talking about. It was a slow start to the day to say the least. I tidied up house, got the dishes caught up, and did some laundry before making it out to the shop around 11am. I was hoping that once I got moving I’d be able to push through, but no luck. I got the vise reassembled, admired my work for a moment, and then headed back inside (hence the mess in the background of the above pic). It just wasn’t going to happen. I wandered over to Menards during the afternoon and found the necessary hardware to bolt the vise down. I didn’t dare to try and mount it though; my head just wasn’t in the game and I’d certainly manage to screw something up. I was in bed by 8pm again on Saturday. So much for a full day of QST. Damn sensitive *** sinuses…
Sunday morning, thankfully I woke up feeling noticeably better despite being up a few times with congestion and coughing. Not back to normal, but not a zombie like the day before either. The trip to the farm to pick up the kids went off without issue. I hung out for a few hours, got a sneak peek at the project Dad is working on for Smasher’s birthday, hitched up the trailer and headed for home. On the way home I was reminded of the fact that this trailer likes to bounce like crazy when there is no load on it. I think it’s a combination of the relatively large tires and heavy springs on such a lightweight frame. Tow vehicle doesn’t seem to matter. It did the same thing with my Jeep and to my Dad when he’s pulled it with his truck. (Now that I’m typing this, I’m starting to question why Dad was so eager to let me borrow this trailer – he might just want it out of his hair!) Instead of being able to run 70mph for most of the way home, I had to set the cruise at 62mph. A few times I had to drop down to 55mph because hopping around so badly. Poor Maggie (our dog) ended up getting car sick from all the bouncing. I can’t blame her. I was sitting in front and was starting to feel it by the time we got home. Thankfully it didn’t seem to mess with the kids.
So that was my weekend… one great day, one crappy day, and one day in between. If you average them out, I did okay. Not the epic weekend of QST I was hoping for, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
A quick update on the tool reorganization… it is not going as well as I would like. While I’m happy with how the power tool storage is working out in the Husky chest, things are not lining up as well as I hoped in the old boxes. I’ve fiddled around with this for too long at this point and I just need to step away from it. The socket and wrench sets from work are just going to live in one of the Husky drawers for now. I’ll still have access to them when needed, even though they won’t be grouped with the other tools. My bet is that 90% of the time, I won’t need to go into that drawer anyway, so maybe this is just how it’s supposed to be.
www.etsy.com
