Wood Shop

And in the wood shop area, as is our custom, we produced a lot of sawdust and chips.  Production is at such a high level, the collection barrel needs to be emptied more than once every day the machines are running.

Victor Humphreys is our 'go to guy' for painting and he does a fine job.  Here are the new cupola cab windows for Chicago Great Western X 38 getting the first coat of maroon.

Dave Rogan does careful work in fine tuning the mortise and tenon joints for the second CGW X 38 door.  We make it a practice to completely assemble and dry fit the door before gluing, and on occasion, fine adjustments need to be made.

And at the end of the day it is worth it.  The second door is in the glue press curing as Dave makes a final check.  The first door  is done to this stage and can be seen in the background.

John Faulhaber and Rich Witt are trimming a new roof board for the Lake Shore Electric 810.  The new boards are being installed from the top down towards the tack molding. 

John is on the belt sander now making the final fit fpr this piece.  Nothing ever comes out exactly perfect when working on an eighty year old car body, so the last piece is a custom work of art.

And here is the car, outside in Barn 4.  Three or four rows of roof boards are done, and the new tack molding has been installed.  Wednesday morning it was about plus 7 F and these guys were on the scaffold first thing.  At least they were out of the wind!

Henry Vincent has completed the new pieces for the repair on this door for Chicago Aurora & Elgin 36.  He has moved forward and is sanding old paint off, and preparing the mating surfaces for new finish before final assembly. 

Well, more properly, speaking OF tongues.  A good sized crew worked again throughout the day on new roof boards for Michigan Electric 28.  I think the goal is for something in excess of 1200 linear feet to be made.  That is not a trivial effort.  Here are the first boards off the shaper showing the new tongues.

Paul Cronin is acting as catcher getting the stock as it comes off the shaper, and Buzz Morisette is feeding the machine.  Not the only two working this project, others helped, but were not in this image.  Jeff Brady and Norm Krentel were outside in the barn, working on the top roof sheathing.

Progress was also made with the new Boston & Maine windows - beading, planing, and ripping.

A very busy day in the shop Saturday and a lot of hands at work!

Work continued apace on the second new door for Chicago Great Western X 38.  John Faulhaber did a lot of the fussy work of fitting the joints and I pitched in when I had some free time.  The second door is ready for assembly and glue up.

The BIG job of the day, volume wise and manpower wise was making stock for new roof boards for Michigan Electric 28.  So you will see a lot of pics of those steps.  The goal is to have about 1200 linear feet of stock sized and planed for milling a tongue and groove on each piece.  Henry Vincent, Paul Cronin, and Buzz Morisette got the ball rolling by running the remaining rough boards through the jointer to make one edge true and straight.  I should note that Paul Cronin had knee replacement surgery a little over four weeks ago and he is back in the shop working.  TWO THUMBS UP for Paul!

All the wide boards were cut to the needed two inch wide strips and Paul, Bill Peterson, Henry, and Buzz were stacking them completed around midday.  But these guys are like the EverReady bunny, they just will not stop.  They were ready for MORE!

So we have this stack of something over 100 pieces of stock and the next step is to plane to about 7/16 inch thickness.  Buzz, Henry, Paul and Bill took on that task.  It is fairly simple if you have two or four pieces, but 100?  A lot of handling and the consideration of where do you stack it up along the process.

Buzz and Henry were feeding the stock, and Paul and Bill were acting as catchers.  Every 15 minutes or so an intermission was called.  We have a pretty good system to collect the dust and chips.  But you have to watch the collection barrel and make sure it gets emptied!

Henry and Buzz continue feeding the planer while Greg Kepka pitched in moving and staging still more stock to feed that voracious machine.

Still these guys wanted more.  Paul and Henry are at the infeed end of the planer for the second and final pass to produce the finished 3/8 inch thickness.  Bill and Greg are at the outfeed end acting as catchers.

Whew! With all that done, now what do we do with it?  Bill, Henry, and Paul are stacking off the finished work while others help to clean up the work area near the planer.  A BIG job DONE!  With much of the center stage area of the wood shop and its machines busy, that did not mean all the other work stopped.  You merely had to take a number and wait your turn.

Rich Witt was measuring and laying out cuts on new beautiful mahogany stock for the Boston & Maine windows we are making.  That got processed and is ready for the next step.

Tim Peters filled some of his time waiting for machines to be available by cleaning and wire brushing some castings needed in the next steps for rebuilding a door for Chicago Rapid Transit 1024.

Then Tim was back on the saw with a tricky set up for slicing a thin skin of quarter sawn white oak to be applied to one of the stiles on the above door.  The skin was not particularly loud but the nearby planer was still howling away, thus the ear protection.  Either that or he thought it was cold in the shop and likes warm ears.

Two of our PCC cars saw more work.  Frank Sirinek and Mike Stauber were in the shop stripping old paint and cleaning interior panels and trim for the Kansas City Public Service PCC car.

Lorne Tweed and Eric Lorenz continue work on the Cleveland Transit System 4223 PCC car.  They claim they were involved in some planning and engineering work, but it looks to me more like something shady was being discussed as I caught them in the act with some drawings and plans.

It seems a lot of folks like to volunteer in the wood shop, another very good turnout with some rare visitors - first timers or members who  do not spend all their time in the shop.  The event that is becoming space limited is noon around the lunch table - shoulder to shoulder swapping tales, telling stories, and discussing the work.

The biggest job for the day involved making new tongue and groove boards to replace rotted stock inside the MILW X 5000 dynamometer car.  Buzz had jointed the new lumber last Wednesday.  The next step was to set up the table saw and rip all the wide planks down to about 2 1/8 inches wide That was a lot of ripping but by noon or so, Bill Peterson, Warren Neuhauser, and Dick Melzer are standing in front of a large pile of the slats.  We started that job earlier with John Faulhaber also helping, especially with the fences, jigs, and set up on the table saw and soon to be used shaper.

Next - the wood was marked for the 'best side' and each was run through the shaper to mill the groove and a small chamfer.  All in one pass using our power feeder.  The crew feeds, monitors and catches each piece.  Not heavy work but many hands to do that and inspect each piece coming off the machines.

The second pass through that machine puts the tongue and a chamfer on the other face edge of the boards.  We kept the crew busy throughout most of the afternoon.

The result was about 450 linear feet of new stock, here being stacked up ready for priming and painting.  We purposely kept the tongues shallow as this will be installed on the inside, (concave) side of the car, and each piece will have to be able to create that inside curve.

Tim Peters was stripping the many layers of old finish off of one of the doors for Chicago Rapid Transit 1024.  He put on quite a show acting as a stripper wearing hearing protection.  Those were needed since he was right next to the shaper milling operation which is quite loud.  He also ran quite a stack of new basswood planks through the table saw and the planer.  This was the first steps to making boards to curve over the roof ends on the 1024.

Victor Humphreys applied the first coat of maroon paint to two of the new windows for the Chicago Great Western X 38 and also did more painting on the small quarter round strips for installing the glazing.

Not a lot of work on the new doors for the X 38 since the tongue and groove work was a full time process for many hours.  But the door joint final fitting came out well under the direction of John Faulhaber, and we did the planing and finish work on the four solid panels which will fill the lower two spaces on each door.  It is sitting in the press, ready to be glued up on Wednesday.

Lorne Tweed and Eric Lorenz are going over all the details for the the window posts on Cleveland Transit System 4223. While many of these are nominally the same, there are also many for special mounting at the front, rear, or near the side doors.  All seem to be measurably different from one another.

Dave Fullarton stopped by with a small wood electrical box door, I think he said for the CTA 2000's.  Whatever, you can be sure it relates to our rapid transit cars.

John Faulhaber and Rich Witt helped and the new door was made in no time while the shaper crew labored on.  Dave moved on to painting it at once with GLYPTOL insulating varnish.

We will close with the WHAT IS IT quiz of the day.  Roger Kramer has a box like dispenser removed from the Ladies Room of one of our heavyweight Pullman Passenger cars.  We think it held flat folded paper cups for drinking water, if any of you are old enough to remember those.