The Whole Garage Catalogue: August 2013

Thursday, August 29, 2013

A Ball Caster

It looks to me like a 1" diameter ball. The maker, "REX-MATHEWS", appears to no longer be with us.

There's only the one, which renders this thing a bit useless.

Ball casters are something I have no experience with. I'm impressed by the smoothness of the ball's rolling action. I must keep this type of caster in mind for when I next need to put casters on something. Depending on the application, these could be a good way to go.

Meanwhile, I'll stash this in the box where I keep spare casters.

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While feeling the action of the ball in the caster, who should come to mind but Captain Queeg, the fictional American warship's captain in "The Caine Mutiny". [Go to 1:30 in the movie clip.] Captain Queeg would have been a ball caster aficionado for certain.

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A 6" Bench Grinder

This brings back memories. This machine was my boyhood introduction to the grinder and the wire wheel and what they could do.

It's a fine brute of a thing; the bearings still feel ok; it wants a new grinding wheel -- the wheel that's on it is very worn down in diameter.

This is going directly to the workshop -- I have plans for this.

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An Electrical Power Frequency Meter

It's from my dad's years as a generator mechanic. Permit me to explain the instrument briefly.

Gasoline or diesel engine powered electrical generators all run at a fixed, governed engine speed in order to produce a fixed frequency of electrical power output, just as the utilities do. In North America, that frequency is 60 Hertz (Hz -- cycles per second or cps).

One could set governed engine speed by using a tachometer, but a more direct, fool-proof method is to measure actual generator output frequency; that's what the pictured instrument does. Here's a view of it in operation.

Note the oscillating vanes. The instrument is reading just shy of 60 Hz.

I'm disinclined to believe that Toronto Hydro's power would be off at all from exactly 60 Hz, so I'll open up the instrument and see if there's a calibration adjustment.

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Nope. The meter appears to be a sealed unit, with no provision for adjustment.

Anyway, that's ok. The meter's accuracy is plenty good enough to be useable, and it wouldn't be hard to remember what Toronto Hydro's 60 Hz indication looks like.

This instrument can go in a bin along with some other electrical test gear.

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Introduction

This blog is in honour of my deceased father, Nick Gaspick.

It sprang from what had started out as merely a post on my workshop blog, Rouge River Workshop. Here's my introduction to that post:

"My son has been clearing out my deceased father's garage, so he'll have a place to restore an old car, and he's been finding all manner of stuff. I've begun one post about an old woodworking vise that I mean to restore. This weekend, my son brought me four toolboxes full of items. As a small honour to my father, I'll 'catalogue' them in this post, in no particular order, little-by-little as I go through the boxes."

The nature of the post was for it to grow ever longer, and that can be dangerous. Blogger has some quirks that I've experienced in the past, and I was getting tired of always backing up the entire post so I wouldn't lose it should Blogger vapourize an editing session. I finally decided to make a full-blown blog with an index out of the post. Here it is.

I'll leave the original post as it is, where it is, but I'll bring over all the items in it so far as individual, indexed posts here as well. Needless to say, new material will only appear here.

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A Little About My Father:

My father emigrated to Canada with his family from Croatia at about the age of seven. His family took on a homestead up Sudbury, Ontario way, and made a living there through the great depression.

My father loved school, and yearned to continue his schooling past grade eight, but that was not on. He had to leave school to make a living -- trapping, mining, whatever. Eventually, he and his made their way to Toronto -- the big smoke in Canada.

My father was built like a brick shit-house; he was a sturdy guy, unlike scrawny me. My father was a guy who could clear an acre of Canadian bush before breakfast, have it tilled and planted before lunchtime, with the plants sprouting before dinnertime.

Jesus H. Christ!-- a guy like my father ought to have lived forever!