Some time last year Charley salvaged a bureau from the trash. It looked just like one he had had as a kid, a ’70s Scandinavian type design chest that we had got at Children’s Workbench. This one was on the curb, had lots of loose joints, and had “JUNK” spray painted in red on the top. It looked salvagable to me, though, and we put it in his basement.
We have our new vacation house in Maine to furnish, now — we had the inspections done two weekends ago, got the report saying we needed a fire door in an open doorway between the garage and the basement, a fireproof access panel to cover a hole in the garage ceiling, and that one pane of skylight had a failed seal in the thermopane and should be replaced; so we asked for a reduction in the price to cover those repairs, decided that since we know the house isn’t new we couldn’t ask for adjustments because the roof and furnace may or may not need replacement in the next few years, and sent in a form to amend the purchase and sale agreement. Our realtor called back last Tuesday and said, “It’s a deal”. — so after that long digression, as I said, we have it to furnish. Bureaus salvaged from the trash will do, at least for the duration. But not with “JUNK” spray painted across the top, and not without being glued back together.
We brought the bureau here from Charley’s yesterday. I have a power sander, a reciprocating, not belt, kind, that Charley and I had started to use on the bureau about the time he got the thing. I tracked it down and got psyched up to sand the paint off the top. But!! the sander didn’t start when I turned it on. The trouble wasn’t in the power cord or the connection. After much mumbling, I decided to take the sander apart — after all, if it wasn’t going to work, what was there to lose — and see if a good cleaning and lubrication would get it going again.
Well, at this point you should know, or recall, that I started a new job about three weeks ago. I haven’t done one single constructive thing there yet, unless you want to count writing a twenty-line Emacs Lisp program to reconstruct something useful I had at my previous job; I’ve been spending all my time with web-based training classes learning the product I’ll be working on. The product is a mechanical computer aided design program, something engineers can use to design their companies’ products. The web-based training uses an imaginary company, Cordless Power Tools, that’s making a gasoline powered drill. I’ve been spending all my time at work for the last two and a half weeks looking at power tool parts.
So, in short, opening up my sander and taking it apart was like old home week! Look, there’s a gearbox to reduce the speed and increase the torque coming from the motor, just like on the CPT drill! There are sub-assemblies that I have to put back in the proper order! It’s just like the exploded view of the drill on the drawing I did two days ago! I had a ball. Well, getting the brushes back into the motor and getting the core of the electric motor back together was a little tricky, but I did get it together. Of course there was lots of sawdust to vacuum out of the works, and I put a couple of drops of oil on the motor shaft. I didn’t see anything specific that had been keeping it from working, so I wasn’t at all sure I had done it any good. But there weren’t any unused parts left over, so I plugged it in and tried it. It ran!
I took it back to the backyard where the bureau was waiting for its red paint to be removed, turned it on (and it still ran!), leaned down on it, and sanded and sanded. The red is gone and the bureau is waiting for some glue and clamping. So excuse me while I go back to the basement with some Q-Tips to get glue into the little spaces.
Sorry there’s no “before” picture. When it’s all together I’ll try to remember an “after” picture. But you can believe me that the bureau looked like JUNK in the “before”.