All Dressed Up - LGPH Pt5

Nov 11

After cleaning everything up and assessing the damaged parts, it was time to start makin’ her look pretty again.  I stopped at the hardware store to pick out the color I want it to be.  My initial thought was a green as it had a green base color to it after I stripped it all down.  The final color ended up being Ace Safety Blue.  Next was to paint all the parts, giving at least two coats to protect every bit of it.

The frame was the first thing painted.  What a dramatic difference in appearance.  It didn’t take long to see how good this machine still looked. 

Next I painted the flywheel or Faceplate.  I can’t believe this is the same ships anchor I found in the woods.  A few of the other parts were also painted safety blue.

While I was elbow deep in blue paint I talked to Roger from littlegianthammer.com.  He gave me the only piece of history they had on it…the original Ship Date and Buyer.

No. 16 was shipped to F. Peterson of Madelia, Minn. on Monday March 9, 1908.  What a lucky guy.  Wish I knew what it did for most of its life.  I’m pretty sure Mr. Gene and his father had it for 40-50 years.

Nov 12

I had to use a die grinder to get a couple of the parts free of rust and grime.  Completed painting all the blue parts.  Now I need a little warm weather to paint all the smashy parts.  That would be the ram, toggle arms and the tread.  The tread also needed to be beaten back into shape as well as a mess of grinding to make it look good.

The rest of the night I spent racking a big double batch of beer into 2- 5gal carboys and 1- 2gal carboy.  These will help me through the holidays.

Nov 14

The weather warmed up enough to paint some of the last parts.  I went with a gray for contrast to the blue.  Parts were ordered from littlegianthammer.com and took drawings to a machinist to make 5 pins.  When all the parts come in I will be able to pre-assemble the hammer.  The only thing it need is a motor.  I placed an ad on Craigslist to find a used motor.  We’ll see if that pans out.

Nov 16  Homestead Work

Got a pic of the beast on the trail cam, a couple weeks ago, that’s been tearing up my barn and eating all my cats food.  Haven’t seen much of him lately.  This morning I finally caught this big ol’ possum.

Ain’t he scary?

 Leslie and I went over to a friends farm to help butcher a steer that I put down the week prior.

 There were seven of us and it all went very fast.  We dealt with one quarter at a time.  Ribs and steaks were cut out of the quarters before we cut the rest.

Most of it was boned out and ground into burger or left cubed for stew meat.

I was really surprised at how similar it was to butchering a deer.  Which I do myself a time or two per season(Five times last year).  The steer was on a different scale though.

When we returned from the farm I dealt with Mr. Possum.  His pelt was prime after all the cold weather we’ve had.  After skinning him I fleshed the hide.  This was not my first attempt at fleshing but the first successful attempt.  If I was going to sell the hide I would have case skinned it, but I want to put it out on my show table for people to touch.  The hide was stretched on a flat board and borax was rubbed into the flesh to preserve it.  After it dries it should last through years of shows