1/13/2013

Refurbishing a Trailer Part I

Many years ago while out in the desert north of Florence we found an abandoned trailer. That was about 6 or 7 years ago. The trailer had been out there for probably 10 or more years. It was barely half a mile from the nearest dirt road. Someone had loaded it with junk, drove it out there and just left it.

Over time many people had shot the wooden sides full of holes and pack rats had built a nest in it. The tires were flat and it was rather rusty. I would like to show a picture of it but it appears we never took one.

We had thought about dragging it back to Phoenix and rebuilding it, but did not have a way to do so. Recently Chris had bought a trailer and last year he drove out there and picked it up. He took it back to his house and removed the wood and "axle"

and did a bit of clean up of it. This year he brought it over to my house and we have been working on it every weekend.
 We began by removing the old brackets for the leaf springs

Then cleaned up the steel.
 
 
 
 
 The old tongue and the front of the trailer were bent.
So we removed it.

 Cut the Steel near the front of the frame to bend the tongue back up. Then welded a piece of steel in place to strengthen it. We did this on both sides.
 We welded a new piece of 2x2 steel in place of the old tongue.
  
And bolted on a new hitch. 


1/08/2013

You are Defeated Annoying Epson Printer

So I had a simple idea. I had acquired a Trintec wall clock and thermometer from Goodwill for $5. The clock had a face like an artificial horizon (which is stupid).
 
Everyone knows that aviation wall clocks should look like Altimeters (DUH!). however I could not find one on the internets that looked good when printed. SO! I made my own in autocad and converted it to something printable.
It only took about 4 or 5 hours (SHUT UP!). BUT THEN THE FUN BEGAN! Printing it on my laser printer produced shitty results. I drug out my old Epson CX7800 and tried printing with it. OH GREAT! well if you don't print on an epson printer like you know EVERYDAY! it dries out. So I had to spend several hours getting the printheads unclogged.(Magenta still will not print). This is made even more annoying as epson cleans EVERY print head even if they do not have a problem. So I wasted a crap load of ink. I had to go to staples and pick up some more this morning. Then spent several tries getting the printer to print ONLY in black and to do so on the glossy paper I have. See if you tell the printer that you have glossy paper it does not allow you to print in black ink only. So I tricked it by telling it I had thick card stock. Finally after 2 days, untold amounts of wasted paper, and about $80 dollars in ink (I'm not bitter)... BEHOLD!
Trintec has the same one on their site and it only cost $70. SHUT UP JUST SHUT UP!