HAPPY NEW YEARS 2010 !!!!!!!

Happy New Year's Day from the blustery Pacific Northwest! The wind is blowing a gale up here.... the skies are gray, the seas are white capped, and we are snug and warm in our little house enjoying a great day off at home. We took a little ride downtown and snapped a few shots of the ferry leaving for Whidbey Island and of a little sailboat that is anchored out and slowly working its way towards shore. PT Harbor is a great anchorage in calm weather, but when these winds blow, we seem to always end up with boats on the beach...

Steampunk Style at Work

One of the wonderful things about working in a 1920's era mill is all of the wonderful old machinery and equipment that has real style.......... steampunk style! I walk past this great stuff every day and thought I'd take a moment and share a few shots with you.......

Paper Machine #1

Pulp Cutter

There are great gears, knobs, wheels, cranks, gauges, etc. that are a great inspiration for steampunk designs.............. Paper Machine #1 dates to 1928 and is run by huge gears and steam. Steampunk style for real!

The shots above are from the back side of Paper Machine #1 and show the huge drive gears that run the drier drums. Everything is built on a HUGE scale here........ It's like you're is a little person in a giant machine!

Treasure Hunting on Hancock Street

This afternoon I dug out the metal detector that's been gathering dust in the upstairs closet for years now. I loaded it with new batteries, hauled it down the trail at the end of the street, and did a little treasure hunting. Under the big rope swing on the killer hill, I hit the jackpot! $1.30 in change and a bronze screw! I headed back home and gave the yard a try and scored an old nickle at about six inches deep. Treasure on Hancock Street! That's $1.35 total!




Here's the break down:

4 quarters
2 dimes
1 nickle
9 Lincoln pennies
1 Canadian penny
1 bronze screw

Not a fortune, and nothing older than about 1970, but pretty fun none the less!

Session at Sirens..... or "Up Late, Up Early"!

Tuesday night is session night at Sirens!



Great tunes, great company, good times.......oh yes, and "Up late. Up Early!".



Here's an action shot of everyone's favorite fiddle diva, Sweet Pea!

Campy for Christmas

Santa must know that he can never go wrong with vintage cycling stuff when he stops by our house on Christmas Eve.................. a new set of Campagnolo aero brake levers and a Campy seat post binder bolt from N8 and Santa left the the nifty vintage Molteni cycle cap. The cap is a repro-copy of Eddy Merckx's World Champion cap from the 70's. Thanks N8! Thanks Santa!

Now I've got the final missing pieces for the LOOK bike!

Christmas for old boats too!

Well it just isn't Christmas in Port Townsend unless there's "boat stuff" under the tree, and this year was no exception. We now have a wonderful painting of the Bernadine that was painted by Shasta! Preserved for posterity on canvas................ Thanks Shasta!


We also received a great triple set of custom embroidered watch caps with the Ed Monk Boat Club burgee embroidered on the front. These great watch caps go with the three ball caps that I received on my birthday.......... now we can outfit captain and crew in style! Thanks Dale and Debbie !!!

Mamod SE 1A Steam Engine

Well for all of you who have been wondering what I've been tinkering with these days, here it is...... a real, honest to goodness, live steam toy! The Mamod SE 1A steam engine. I always wanted one of these growing up, but they were always the ones behind glass in the hobby store displays with the price tag that was just out of my reach......... that is, until I found one at a yard sale a year or so ago for pennies on the original dollar!. How could I pass up the chance to fill in that missing brick in the childhood "I wanted it" wall? This unit was one of the last of the old production runs from about 1979 and is in near perfect shape, that is to say that it was probably only fired up a few times before I got a hold of it. Originally it was designed to use Esbit solid fuel tablets to fire the boiler, but I decided that I really wanted to fire it with the old style alcohol burner. After checking out pictures of the vintage slide-in alcohol burners on line, I noticed that they looked VERY similar in size and shape to the Altoids gum tins. DIY! That's exactly what I did and it worked out perfectly. My DIY burner is a nearly identical match to the old alcohol burners!

After a few experiments, I perfected the design and built up the final version of the burner. I will probably give it a new paint job at some point and build a better looking handle-frame at some point down the line, but for now I'm just using it as-is. The burner is filled with angel hair fiberglass, with a mat of woven fiberglass on top, and a stainless steel wire screen on top of that. A quick squirt of alcohol (methanol ..... HEET brand fuel treatment from the auto store), and it burns hot and odor free, running the engine for about 10 to 15 minutes. This baby doesn't slowly turn over, it screams along, at HIGH rpms, with the rod and flywheel in a blur, steam hissing and billowing.............. just like a real steam engine, which it is!