The Whole Garage Catalogue: A Ball Caster

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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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!