[AT] Circus wagons & old tractor stuff ramble

[robinson at svs.net]

On 19 Jan 2005 at 19:12, CBear81438 at aol.com wrote:

> Just my 2 cents worth.  I had to paint a stock trailer earlier this  year.  It
> had several different paint colors and several layers of paint in  addition to
> some of the steel panels were from old oilfield tanks that still had  a
> "paraffin"layer on them.  I started out with a Northern Hydraulics  sandblaster
> attachment with my 11hp 3500 psi pressure washer.  After 2  hours of water
> blasting, I had used 600 lbs of sand, and only got tghe back  doors and a 6 X 4
> panel cleaned.  I hooked up the old sandblaster, and in 6  hours had the rest of
> the trailer done including the interior.  It was a  mess, but now is something I
> can pull without hanging my head.  I just  don't think you can beat sandblasting
> dry.   I do mine under a big shade  tree.  The sheep love laying in the sand
> later.  I am creating an  inland beach.  
> 
> Cecil in OKla



	Do the sheep wear woolen bathing suits?   ;-)
	This message triggered an image of the brightly painted old circus wagons I 
saw as a kid. I was very surprised at how thick the paint was on most of them. 
They must have repainted them just over the top a couple of times a year or at 
least every winter. Some of them you could have cleaned the old paint down with 
a hatchet and still made them look better up close.   :-)   
	That also reminded me of one time when I was a kid that we had a hired man 
rewhitewash the milking area in the barn. It always looked very bright after 
white washing. About a day or two later I saw him white washing over a large 
two foot splotch of runny but now dried cow manure on one wall. It bled through 
quite green. I later scraped it down, hosed it off and brushed on some more 
white wash. That part of the barn is now part of my woodshop and while the many 
layers of old whitewash do make it a tad brighter I cannot drive a nail in 
those loft joist without coating myself and everything else in the area with 
big white flakes. I would like to brush on a heavy coat of cheap white latex 
paint to help seal it down on the joist. The bottom of the loft floor I want to 
cover with some sheet foam insulation. The hard part of it is that they sat 
those joist to the nearest 2 inches    :-)   and since they were green at the 
time they warped too. Some places they are 24" OC and some places they are 26 
OC. I hang a lot of tools on the sides of the joist.
	 A teenage city girl (Muncie IN) cousin was visiting one time and she hosed 
out the milking area quite well. Later when a cow in off of a very lush green 
pasture raised her tail to dump my cousin ran and grabbed a scoop shovel and 
held it under the back of the cow to catch it. It took her quite a while to get 
all of that soupy manure washed off of her face and shoulder area and out of 
her long hair. Scoop shovels are curved at the back...   :-)

	At the Indiana State Fair there is a pickup bedliner company that displays an 
8N Ford that they have painted with that stuff in red and gray. The stuff is a 
good 1/4" thick on that tractor. I would sure hate to have to work on it... I 
don't supposed you could even blast it off without ruining the tractor sheet 
metal. Maybe you could get under it and peel it off?

	I am not all that big on removing "all" of the paint on an old tractor or 
implement like many are. Even if I was sand-blasting as long as the original 
paint is good and tight I would stop with just getting it cleaned well and any 
surface glaze broken. On castings I would just as soon leave the old sound 
paint down in the porous surface and remove only the top surface and anything 
scaly. I realize that "Tim Taylor" rules but I don't think that "the max" is 
always the best way to go. Sure do it right but "right" is not always black and 
white and not always "the max". Now in a case of many layers I would probably 
try to remove all but the original layer except down in holes and welds.

	Diana's brothers had a "Tim Taylor" attack recently. I had suggested to the 
family that her 88 year old mother that lives with us might benefit from one of 
the new walkers that has 4 good sized wheels (brakes on two of them). Her old 
one has tiny 2" wheels that snag in every sizable sidewalk crack of any size 
and only has two of them. Since she is legally blind those cracks sneak up on 
her and I feared that she would end up vaulting over the top of the walker. The 
new walkers also have a basket or compartment for small items and a padded 
small seat where the user can turn around and sit down for a few minutes to 
rest. My sister in law bought a nice one with 5" wheels and brought it to a 
family dinner to give to her. As I said Diana's brothers had a Tim Taylor 
attack (I was not there) and began the "bigger is better" magic chant...   :-)  
 They found out that there was another model with 8" wheels and also an option 
to go about 6" wider... "Bigger is better, bigger is better, bigger is 
better..." So they had my sister in law go get the biggest one and return the 
"normal" one... After all "bigger is better"... She has had the damn thing a 
month and has never used it except to sit down on it a couple of times. It is 
simply too big for her to manage it down the halls and around furniture etc. On 
the other hand it might be good for her at tractor shows. I don't know if there 
is a pulling class for walkers or not.    :-)

	Bigger isn't always better...


-- 
farmer, Esq.
      Wealth beyond belief, just no money...


Francis Robinson
Central Indiana USA
robinson at svs.net



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