Photography.

I am still learning all the darn settings on the camera, and shutter speed, and finally how to properly frame a shot. Anyway, here is a picture of a neat tower I took.

Golf

The last 3 matches 'A' has been the medalist. She shot a 50 at Torrey South, a 47 at Torrey North, and a 36 at Balboa 9( she had two birdies). One of her birdies came on the par 4 last hole, and the par 3 first hole.

I hope when she gets a taste of victory, and a good score, it willl inspire her, or at least teach her what mindset she needs to be in.

Welding with entertainment

My buddy
Dave came over this weekend, so we could finish welding on his trailer.
Tha idea is that he needs a little more length on his trailer to accomodate his Ryno/buggy. We welded on some hitch receiver tubes, and built a 1.5ft, by 2.5 ft plateform that fits inside the receiver, and will support the wheels of the Ryno. When he gets to his destination, the extensions can be removed for ease of storage.
It was fun day of welding, there is a certain amount of satisfaction in connecting steal, and building something usefull out of it. Here Dave is learning how to perfect his welds, and that without gloves it does not take long to examine a hot piece of steal that has just been welded. ( hope the Aloe helped, Dave).

















The Canopy worked to shade our work, ( with the helmet on it is hard to see your work when you have light shining in from behind you) it also kept our project secret from the prying eyes in the sky, "The Blue Angels" claim they were in town for an airshow, but you can never be too sure when you are working on cutting edge inventions.

fabricating out of boredom

Been working on getting 'A's bike going. It was bought for a very low price, but had some issues with it.
The first being that it had a hard time starting, and the valves needed to be adjusted. I adjusted the valves with help from Kelly (it was a learning expirence for him as well). Got those adjusted, and the bike starts better now. The next thing was cleaning up the bikes appearence, Using some mothers polish, and some diesel fuel and a brush, I cleaned up all the corrosion, and polished the frame.
Brushed and polished the shift lever, cleaned the carb, new air filter, new fuel, new oil, new trans oil.
I decided (out of boredom) that it was time to fabricate my own parts. A lot of bikes have skid plates which is a thin guage sheet of aluminum, that is shaped along the bottom/front of the frame, in order to reduce damge to the frame and engine when clearence is compromised.
I first made a template with cardboard that replicated the area I needed to cover.














I traced the template on to a sheet of Aluminum, and started cutting.
















I drilled holes for ventilation, and punched them out larger with a greenly hole punch:















I needed to bend the sheet to confoprm to the shape of the frame, so i used the tanks of my welder, and a rubber mallet, and finalized the shape:















I used a 3m pad on my pnumatic die grinder, to take off the edges, and give the plate a brushed look:















I cut a piece of aluminum bar stock, drilled and tapped holes with threads. this is on the top side of the frame, and allowed me to clamp it to thew frame. I drilled two holes in the plate, and recessed tthe holes for the tapered flat screws: