Hicks Car Works: Friday Snapshot

As always, this will be just a slice of what was happening on Friday. For instance, as I happened by Barn 6, Jim Ward invited me in to see how much progress they've made on the lighting in the barn for Happy Holidays. But I decided not to take any pictures -- they can best decide how they want to publicize it, and you really have to be there to see it for yourself. Phone snapshots won't do it justice. I also noticed that Tim Fennell and others were hard at work stringing up lights on some of the outdoor equipment. There are lots of volunteers who don't get the credit they deserve for all the work they do to make events like this a success for the Museum!

My priority for today was finishing up the newly-machined bearings for the 309. They needed to have the alignment holes drilled, and all three were done. Without one our Museum's big drill presses, I don't know what I'd do. Drilling a hole precisely through a cylinder is not easy.

The main challenge in this process is clamping the work in place. But it went well.

The next step is to unsolder the two halves of the bearing in the big oven. Unfortunately, it's not quite big enough. I had wanted to do all three at once, but that wasn't possible, so I started with just one. It takes quite a while for the oven to heat up, but eventually the two halves fall apart as seen here. Now they just need some finishing touches by hand, which I can do at home. The next two bearings can probably be unsoldered at the same time.

I also put in some time trying to undo the one remaining bolt holding the 36's pilot onto the car, without success. So I soaked it in Kroil, and will just have to hope for better luck next time.

What else was going on? Naturally, Tim Peters was working on his current project, Phase Two of the 1268.