Before the Holidays I ordered some materials for the connecting rods of the York Compound and a chunk of bronze to make a replacement languid plate for a whistle repair. I had ordered the items several days apart but as it would happen all three boxes came on the same day. The first box had three 1.5 x 3 x 14" pieces of CRS, the second three pieces of 1.25 x 3x 4" CRS and the third box contained the 3" dia x 12 chunk of bronze. Each box weighed well into the twenty pound range each. It seems that many of the packages that come to the house contain large chucks of metal either in the form of rough material or in the ever popular tool format. Two years ago a 70 lb piece of granite arrived on the doorstep, that was a bad day for the UPS man. Sorry!
I have been ordering much of the bar stock from
Online Metals. I highly recommend their establishment. The prices are competitive, they have a large selection, I can get small quantities and the first cut is at no extra cost.
The Holiday festivities took precedent over work in the shop and then the blower fan on the heater in the garage developed a cracked fan blade and its been a cold here in Colorado so not much progress has been made in the last few weeks. I do love my garage heater, even with the recent problems with the fan. It's a Mr. Heater 45,000 btu unit natural gas heater and it's far superior to the Kerosene space heater that I suffered with for the last ten years. A new fan blade is on the way and Kudos to the customer service at Mr. Heater.
If any of you received an iPhone from Santa (or already owned one) check out the machining app from Machinist Journeyman. It's geared toward CNC machinists but the app is helpful for us home manual machinist as well. I like the drill point length calculator. I'll post more as I use the app a bit. The standard disclaimer applies.
Hope your New Year goes well, Cheers!
