[quote="BuckeyeDennis"]This is a most interesting thread. Not in the least because no one has asked you what YOU enjoy. Is it fine wood working? Or restoring vintage machinery? Or perhaps both? (I do believe that most of the denizens of this forum fall into the "both" category.) The single best path to the restoration of your headstock depends on your honest answer to these questions.
What did you like most about the chuck-extraction adventure? What did you like least? Are your outstanding communication skills a hint as to your day job? ]
'lo Dennis,
Your questions threaten to inspire a screed about my entire life. However, I’ll try to keep it simple.
Since childhood I’ve been inclined to make things. Loved to draw pictures, build things and fix things. But I can be near tyrannical about the results — When something is fixed I like it to stay fixed and take a dim view toward anyone who causes damage. “
Lady, I told you that the toilet is not a garbage disposal and the next time I find walnut shells and mailing envelopes in there will be the last time I fix it as it’s only hope of survival will be your inability to reach it.” (A huge problem in my marriage. It was just about impossible to set up and keep a workshop. Two weeks away each month meant that, signage and locks notwithstanding, I would regularly arrive home to find the shop converted to a lounge and I repeatedly purchased tools that I already owned but couldn’t find. Things got so that I could probably have found a screwdriver under a pillow while mowing the lawn. How any of it got there I’d never know.)
I was always much inclined to solving gnarly problems. Aunts used to love to have me work at untangling all the baubles in their jewelry boxes, and I loved to do it. Spending hours peering into the mass to find just the right link to tug free two or three necklaces from the Gordian Knot they were part of.
I’ve always been an avid reader (Dickens, Carroll, Stan Lee, etc.) and these, along with my passion for visual art, led me to a career in advertising and publishing. Work that usually starts with a blank page and a bundle of ideas that need to be organized in a way that helps people to understand whatever it is the seller or author is trying to communicate.
Nowadays, I got an entire basement and backyard all to myself. I’ve been gathering tools and machines to help make repairs to this odd little house and, no matter how messy, I enjoy every bit of it. I’m evaluating squeaky stairs, some sloppily installed copper tubing, a sorely ignored backyard… all just begging to be made beautiful and functional.
When I read boards in this forum regarding some concern, say a fella trying to control lathe shavings, I immediately designed a system that I felt might handle the problem. (Being a newbie I kept it to myself and, besides, he’d come up with a solution of his own.) I might build it if I ever get around to using the lathe.
If I hadn’t had to return to the office I’d likely have just hopped into repairing this Gilmer without much concern about my ability to do the work. Though I have wondered if I’d do it so well as Anderson. (I’ll probably order his CDs.)
When dealing with the stuck chuck what I liked least is that it was stuck. What I liked most was coming up with ways to unstick it. I actually sat here and designed my own puller; only to discover that the exact same thing was already available at Autozone. Fortunately, I was able to undo the chuck before reinventing the wheel as it were.
It’s being away from the machine for the first time since I got it that brought on a sense of doubt, and maybe a lingering feeling that I might return home to find it had been scattered by a woman who’d decided it works well as a shoe rack… but that’s not likely to happen.
Thanks for asking.
