Got A LOT done this weekend. Started with Friday night, Heabo and I cleaned the garage. And I do mean really clean. It’s still not DONE yet, however – still got a couple more boards to put up, and I’ve got some shelves to build for storage. But, it’s pretty close now.
Saturday we got up, and my love made pancakes and eggs 🙂 Started in on the back yard – built my wood rack, etc. Got a HUGE dent in the backyard cleaning done. Finally ran out of energy very abruptly at 4 PM, which was good – Heabo made food, and we headed for gaming at Jess and Dave’s house. Took my half-a-freakin’-cow with me, and worked on my armor why we gamed (I’m begining the process of obsessively working on my armor when I’m not doing something else.)
The armor it’s self should be a wonderful. It’s all leather, which is going to be dyed black to match the color scheme that originally existed on the Teracotta Warriors. The armor design is incredible – once it’s done, I’ll post a couple of pictures of it. It’s one of the best designs I’ve ever seen for leather armor.
Sunday I resumed work on the back yard again – still not done, and there’s at least another 4 to 6 hours work left. Sheesh. It was hot and humid out – so I alternated between working out there, and working in the shop on my armor and the Onager.
Unluckly, this turned a bit painful. I pinched my hand in the sawsall when I chocked up a little too close to the front. It snagged a callous, and ripped it open, complete with lots o’ blood (which I quickly hid – I had two kids, Shawnee and Gordan working with me!) When working on the catapult, the winding system caught the Mount of Luna on my other hand, and pinched the shout outta it. It was perfectly located to – normally there’s a slightly smooth spot on my hand where I shaved some skin off when I fell once. Instead now, it’s a strawbery mark.
I also found a nice way of doing rivets. For those reading this who haven’t worked with rivets (which is very few actually!) the trick to rivets isn’t force. Instead, it’s constant tapping – each tap adds energy, converted to heat, to the rivet. Once maliable, it’s easy to get it mushroomed right without it splitting. My rivets are a bit too long – so, I had an inspiration, and hit the top of a rivet with the grinder for a second, which reduced the height of the rivet AND heated it all at once. Few taps with the hammer, and it was perfectly mushroomed. Much faster than normal. Unluckly, that resulted in two more injuries. I reached over and brushed some dirt off the front of a rivet – whoops, wrong rivet! That one was the hot rivet, and I now have a white spot on my index finger. And whole doing another one, the grinder sliped and just barely brushed my thumb – a grinder does not discriminate between metal and skin. It will grind either one quite happily!
Of course, as usual, I’ve got misc. other cuts, bruses, etc. on my hands. But I’m torn up a little worse than usual 😉 But, all and all , not too bad. Managed to get more done on the Onager – too bad I have to re-do the windings, which didn’t turn out nearly as well as they should have. A trip to The Yard and $5 will fix that problem. The throwing arm looks VERY solid, bit a little outta place on it. I gotta go buy another half-a-freaking-cow from The Leather Factory today, and I’ll have enough to finish my armor.
Just found out that Steve, a guy here at work that got laid off recently, didn’t do his job. I sent him out and about to get serial numbers, software installations, etc. from ALL the computers in the offices. After hitting him up to get it completed multiple times, he said it was done. Just went to access some of the software assets, and guess what? It wasn’t completed. Son of a bitch. I get tired of that shit real quick – I’m fairly glad he’s laid off, otherwise there would have been some yelling. This is why I like working with Lance – if he says it’s done, it’s done. No excuses, no bullshit, no nothin – it’s done, or it’s not. That’s the way it should be. Man I’m pissed about that.
Oh well, I’ll get over it.
One of the strange things about this weekend is not seeing Heabo most of Sunday. She went to help Jess with dresses on Sunday, leaving me home alone. Well, except I think the neighbor kids were there all day