Boeing Surplus - the Perpetual Garage Sale

[Peter Miles]

I have a limiting agent on the disease at the moment. I don't have a truck at home, I have to rent one when I need it. I hauled all of that stuff home in the trunk of my Acura CL. The weight really wasn't much different than putting two adults in the rear seat, but it was definitely noticeable.

Last Labor Day, I bought a 2002 GMC 2500 heavy-duty long-bed pickup from my father. I was going to drive it home then since I had a free week, but my nephew asked if he could do it the next month since he was planning on taking a driving vacation anyway. So, I said yes.

Then, of course, he had something come up at work and couldn't do the trip. I've been working continuously since then on this project in Virginia so the truck has been sitting in Lawrence, KS for the last six months!

In May, I'll probably finally have a chance to drive it home. Then, I'll have fewer limits on my disease. I'll have to be careful!

Travis, you asked about plans for my purchases. I pointed out the uses that I have for the tools.

I will be able to use some of the cutoffs for my heavy fabrication table project. I need to make some angle braces/gussets for the legs and these should work well for that.

I've shown these in other messages before, but here are two views of the table top:




I picked up some 4x6x 1/2" rectangular tubing last year for the legs.

The whole thing is very heavy. (Speaking of heavy, I have my eye on a 6,000 lb. capacity hanging scale that I could suspend from my forklift. Anyone have any experience with such scales?)

Those Boeing drops are mostly precision-cut with very square ends. The short pieces will work well for temporary parallel fixturing, stand-offs, etc. (That's shorthand for I don't know, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.)

Wray, I don't doubt at all that your stuff will out-weigh my stuff. I KNOW that you have more functioning equipment and that you have used it to make more finished products than I ever will. And it goes without saying that you know how to use it all at an expert level, while I struggle to even find the time to put any of it to use.

Jeffrey - I saw some of those slicks there. They seemed too stiff to me, but they are certainly softer than a solid tire. I wondered about the possibility of shaving some of the rubber off and/or maybe about cutting some of the plys from the inside to make them more flexible.

BJH - give us a call when you're going to be in the area.

JVO - My wife tolerates this, but thinks it is a bit nuts. She calls it my theraputic shopping. She does hers at Nordstroms and Chicos. She won't go to Boeing Surplus with me anymore, and typically stays in the car when I'm dropping stuff off at the hangar.

But, how can you pass up something like that elegant air manifold with the single-handed, push-to-connect fittings?