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24 days til Christmas and Deb and I got in the spirit again today . We went and bought all the goodies for fondue . For over 40 years we have had fondue at Christmas time and we still will but today we just got crazy and went outside the box, ha,ha. It tasted yummy !! Also threw a couple steaks on the grill after I brushed the 13 inches of snow off it, ha,ha.
Toy Truck – I enjoy looking back on past toys i have made and posting them again . Now that the pressure is done from the many hours of cutting out the parts and welding them all together it is nice to look at my toys again like other people would look at them. Just as a toy truck that is 15 feet long with the lowboy trailer. I have built over 20 toy trucks and this is one of my top five favorites , maybe top two or maybe this is my favorite , anyways it is right up there (:>)
I had my doubts if I could make the hood, fenders and and cab look right or not. There is lot of guess work when framing in the first parts , then a lot of standing back and looking at different angles. I got lucky with this cab and I did not have to redo anything and it turned out pretty good.
I know i am a little old to be building toys and I used to be embarrassed to tell people I make toys . But now I am old it is ok to have a hobby making toys. This is the first year in th elast 18 years I have not completed one toy in my workshop. I switched gears a year and a half to garden tractors and I had a blast making my mini tractors. I almost have the Letourneau wheel dozer done and the Cat offroad articulating truck is half roughed in so it is still possible I could complete one toy before Jan. 1st. If I get real ambitious I could even finish the Cat off road truck.
I have not exactly been sitting around, I work in the shop everyday but not on toys lately. This week I have worked a lot on my Waldon mini front end loader. I bought all new ball joint linkages and new cables for the choke and throttle . So I got that pretty much done today .
Craftsman 5.5 ” vise – I have three Craftsman vises that I got over 30 years ago. A month ago one of them broke , the inside threads stripped out so I took it apart and just sat it aside knowing I still had 2 more bench vises. Well yesterday the second one broke and it also stripped the inside threads . These are old well built vises from the early 70’s . We ordered the parts for them and then we shopped around today to look at new ones. They are all made in china !! Wilton makes a vise that is made in the usa and it is $500.00 . yikes !!
So it sure makes me appreciate my old Craftsman vises . We asked Sears if they replaced the wore out parts free and they said no. Not on vises. Our manuals for the vises says right on them lifetime warranty for all parts. We didn’t argue about it.
Anyway were enjoying the countdown to Christmas !!!
Have a great Sat.
