Art & Inspiration I'm proud of my end table, gotta show it off to someone!

Hey guys!
I have a 4 year old son the spends 4 or 5 nights a week with me, depending on the week, and the weather is suckin' here and my garage is a wreck so I can't work on the A until I get it cleaned up. So, I was doing some spring cleaning and came up with an activity for us (he likes to come downstairs when I'm working on the A and fart around with stuff... I give him a rubber mallet and let him bang on the fenders, I'm goin' fenderless and they're not in good enough condition any one would want them anyway), him and I made an end table out of some spare parts I have layin' around...

We took a stock Model A 21" wire wheel and gave it a once over with a wire brush. Then we got a crank I had for a 351 just laying around, and flipped it so the snout would go through the wheel's hub. The snout was too narrow so I drove a timing gear onto it, did the job perfect. On the other side, I didn't have a washer big enough to span the whole wheel hub, but I did have a ball bearing out of a banger's transmission that's ID was smaller than the crank bolt washer, but was wide enough to tighten up against the bottom of the wheel. From there we just bolted on a flex plate from an FMX, and voila, a kickass end table! Not only a kickass end table, one that's so wide at the bottom and weighs so damn much it isn't EVER gettin' knocked over. Just had to show off, the kid had a blast putting it together. And a couple pictures of my new "single guy whos a hotrodder" living room I did today now that I am once again a bachelor.

-Jason

 

"I love Lamp."




Good job man.. Give your boy more stuff to build.

 

Old camera's and car parts.... must be what heaven looks like.

 

Very cool, man... and even more-so, since your son helped ya!
I also like having car parts strategically placed around the house - bachelor home decorating at its best


Malcolm

 

bitchin.

 

very cool! looks good man!

 

Very cool. Keep up the shop time with your boy. It pays off big time!

 

24 yr old recent college graduate........... that being sad having my dad encourage me to tinker in the garage, wonder how...then figure out how stuff works...... was probably the beginning of, and why i followed through on my mechanical engineering career.......... (just don't get toooo mad when he tears apart your lawn mower engine when you get home one day and you see the head and the piston laying on the ground..... just make him put it back together..... (I didnt mean to )

 

I mean..who needs "Home Interiors" and "Ikea" when you can bolt up an old crankshaft end table and yes broken cams make lovely knick knacks.

 

Wow... can I steel your idea?

 

I have built trophies for our local car shows out of spare parts for the past few years! We just built a lamp out of a T ring gear, A cam, Zenith updraft and A headlight bucket! I'll put pics up soon but just remember those parts you might toss could look real cool when you weld 'em all together!!!

 

Yes, I love my cameras... I'm on to digital now (except I'm taking some graphics design courses at the local community college a couple evenings a week and have to shoot and develop B&W) but have a mountain of film cameras, some really nice old ones... From left to right, there is my most treasured, a vintage Kodak 35 Rangefinder. My grandpa was an Army Ranger in WWII in Europe and was issued that camera in the early 40's. The range finder portion itself doesn't work, the mirrors are hosed up, but I'd like to refurbish it one day. Next is a Kodak Duraflex IV medium format from the 60's that was also Grandpa's. Then my A2 that I used in the late 90's-early 00's. I have it there just to have one from every decade (almost) plus I must pay honor to it as I dropped it in a swimming pool when my little boy came flyin' outta control of a water slide and I had to go in. I got it off the bottom, let it dry out, and that damn thing works to this day. Then there's an A1 that I used the HELL out of back in high school, handed down my Grandpa again. I shot thousands of pictures with that one, it's one of my favorites. Then an old OM-1 that was dads, nothin' really fancy and I'm not sure I ever used it.

Chicks dig the shelves full of manly-ness... At least I'm sure they would if there ever was one here. Mainly its me and my son playin' with Tinker Toys and Legos all over the place. That boy's already a car guy, I want to start teachin' him the technicals early so by the time he's older he'll have a good base to go from.


Feel free to steal my idea... I'm gonna go through some of my other stuff I have and see if there's any more fun projects we can do together. He get's really excited when HE's the one using the tools, he bolted the flexplate on and I thought he was gonna pee his pants.

 

That is awesome!!! hahahaha

 

That cam I can take great pride in the EXTENT that I destroyed it... I think my HV pump musta done a pretty good job suckin' the oil pan dry at high RPM's (it was in a stout Cleveland) because I managed to wipe SEVEN lobes off that sucker! They're not all grouped together, the destruction is distributed evenly along the whole cam, which makes me think it didn't get enough oil. If I'm gonna go to the trouble of destroying something, dammit, it's gonna get DESTROYED!

Before I bought the house I lived in now, I was in a crappy house in a bad neighbor, my garage was separate from the house. That cam lived on 2 nails above my garage door and was the official "bonkin'" stick.

 

My kids would have tried to crush their hot wheels in the blower vanes.

 

Love it. Great idea. Your son will never forget it...

Mike

www.Customikes.com

 

OH... BELIEVE ME. We had that discussion... I sat his little butt down, let him take a look and give it a once over, and said there, its not a toy , its daddys, and its very special. And if you touch it I'm gonna take your Legos and hide them up in my closet... Do you WANT your Legos?...

The Legos do it every time, the kid folds like the laundry if you start snatchin' Legos. I dunno what I'm gonna do when I can't make silly threats and trick him any more!

 

that's too cool, man. nice work.

 

My girls were never into Legos, so my threat was always to unscrew their little heads and screw them back on cross-threaded. Worked until the oldest was about 8, when she realized it was an empty threat, and tipped off her younger sisters.

 

excellent!

 

Nothing more precious than some time w/ the boy. (something I'll never have)

great projects - keep him busy!

 

That is great... I'm a single dad myself with a 6yr old girl. She's with me almost every day and at least one day on the weekends. She can't wait to help me with "our" coupe project.

Here she is on Easter when I brought most of it home...

 

Great looking place and even better that you included your son in the project! My daughter is 30 years old and says some of the best times in her life were as a small child in the garage with her dad. Today she's a lot better mechanic than her husband!

BTW, where in WV are you located?

Jim

 

Thats cool! Some of the neatest stuff is junk. Time in the garage with your kids? Priceless.

 

awesome!!!!!!!

 

Great work, Its allways cool to hear father and son stories. Wonder if I can convince my wife to let me hang a 53 chevy grill in the house?

 

Very cool

 

I dig the blower on the shelf! casual.

 

I'm in Fairmont... I work out of an nTelos engineering office in town, lived here forever (well, almost, I lived/stayed in various spots around Morgantown and Fairmont when I was in college)

Winfield near where they're doing the new Route 35? I do network design, it's budget proposal time... Nothing's been approved yet, but it came from high up that the new Route 35 is to be covered, come up with a good design 'cause it is DEFINTELY happening. It's sorta a hard thing to do, estimate cell phone signal coverage in an area no terrain map matches with all the new excavation.

 

That's my "new arrivals" portion of the shelf (the other half is my son's... GOD-FORBID I intrude on his half, I'll hear about it QUICK). The bell is an aluminum one I picked up to bolt a later model Toploader to an 8BA flathead (it's smooth, I think I'm gonna polish that sucker up!), it just showed up last week or so. I'm pretty proud of the blower though, it's probably gonna hang around upstairs longer than most .