The Three Amigos

 OK, I feel guilty. Sometimes you are caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is artistic licence, being true to the muse. The other is censorship. For morality, for social appropriateness,  you really don't want to say/blog things that will tick off your best friends and hardest workers.
 After our day on Saturday I thought a more appropriate title for this post would have been:
 The Three stooges, but that would potentially rub the volunteer help the wrong way....so do I compromise and put the three Amigo's?....which we are... or title the post to reflect the occurrences of the day...or cop out and blog about both.....ahhh Blake ya big chicken!

 Saturday turned out to be a great day, for Jeff from the moment he woke up he was counting down the hours until he got to go to a birthday party sleepover at his buddies. Needless to say for him (and I) to stay sane I needed to keep him busy. Jeff is pretty handy with a drill gun and wood, so he was on prototype duty. Randy emailed Friday night saying "My wife is busy...can I come back and give those heater another run for their money?" After a full day of measure-measure cut-cut, Randy shook his head and said..."I'm still not done, I thought this was going to be an hour and a half tops!"
And for me?.....

I was on Hot Air part duex, time to fabricate the stand for the rad fan. After some detailed old school CAD design, it was time to implement. This is where I thought of myself as a stooge. In the photo layout...it appears that this all happened very quickly and efficiently. In reality there is a lot of humming and hawing, seemingly endless time periods of blank staring at something and running scenarios in my mind, the occational ribbing by my work mates about trying to use the "think method" of learning.....(another slightly older pop culture reference...see The Music Man). But after some time I did formulate a plan.

It was time to pull out the hydraulic fan motor. One of those....you have to take it apart to put it back together kind of things. Jeff was given the dimensions of the stand, and in the for mentioned photo he was busy making a prototype.

Once we had direction things started to move. Again another dry test fit, and all looks good!

Then it was time to create some sparks. Cutting and prepping the 2" square steel for the fan motor stand.

It was at the end of this stage that I realized it is time to change the metal cutting wheel. After a year of cutting this and that.....I couldn't fully cut through the 2" square tube!!