Friends

It has been said that old and dear friends take years to develop. While it may be true that friendships do deepen over time, some friendships are nearly instant and it seems that you have known each other your whole lives after only a short time.

One of those friendships for me started in 2010 when Lynn and I moved to Kalispell MT. After joining the local wood turning group I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Nickel. Bill was one of those people mentioned above. We hit it off right from the start and were soon great friends. Our love for wood working was deep as were many of the conversations we had over the 4 years we lived in the area.

Our ideas for projects ran the gauntlet from practical to sublime and all reaches between. We turned, or tried to turn many projects, made our own tools when the ones we had failed to meet our needs. We helped teach many teen agers at the local schools with demonstrations given by the local turning club. Found old lathes from some of Bill’s many friends and gave them out to the kids (both young of age and young of heart) so others could enjoy our love of turning, working with wood.

We used each other’s strengths to push our own limitations and create things that neither of us would have done otherwise. Most of those succeeded, some did not, but that’s how you learn, but not succeeding the first time.

 Bill was devoted to the community, doing volunteer firefighting for years, helping local library districts near his mountain home, heck, helping anyone that he thought needed help and would be thankful for the help.

It is also said that a dog is a great judge of character. If that is the case, Bill was of Great character. JJ loved that man! He could hear Bill’s pickup pull up outside our house and would start whining and wiggling at mach II. The only issue was that JJ is also a jumper, and due to his size, tends to jump on a person at precisely the Wrong height! It was a constant source of amusement to those of us watching, if not to Bill, when JJ would time Bill’s entry into our house perfectly to nearly bring him to his knees!

As you can probably tell from the tense of this story, Bill has been taken from us at far too young an age. A dear and great friend is no longer around. He is missed by all that knew him.

Good bye Bill, may we meet in another life, and be friends for many many more years the next time around. 

Happy JJ!

Everyone has funny stories in their life. One of our recent ones comes from our inability to leave our house arranged in any given way for longer than 6 months at a time. We always say we move more times in our house than we ever have from house to house.

The latest move, rearrangement, call it what you want, has us changing our living room around once again. What was the living room will now be the sewing/ silversmithing room and the dining room will become the living room. (We always eat in the living room anyway, so this seems appropriate.)

Here is where the funny part comes in: We have an old trunk that we padded and covered last year for JJ to be on and look out the window. At that time it was at the window facing the driveway, we moved it last year to the front window, figuring it was a bay window with three windows actually and he would be happier to be able to see more. Nope, he would get on there but never really seemed to like it. We moved it back today. He is SO happy about that! He gets up there and just wags his tail while looking out the window! Not sure why he likes that window, but it shows that he does... He has spent most of the afternoon looking out that window and then running outside to bark at birds, greet other dogs walking by, etc... All things he could have done from the other windows, but didn’t seem to.

It’s So nice to do things that make others happy, even when that “someone” is a dog. 

The CJ2A

It was a surprise to me, but one of my friends told me they would be interested in hearing about all the projects we are working on.. from wood working projects to the CJ2A project(s) and the barns/ buildings we are taking down.

To that end, I decided to write up something about each project and post it here on my blog, once a week (what day each week yet to be decided). This week I think I’ll cover the CJ2A project(s) and give everyone a bit of an idea where we are and where we hope to be in the not too distant future.

The CJ2A

Last September I told Lynn about an estate sale in Wallowa that had 5 CJ2As for sale. Figuring that there was no way we could afford even one, I sent the guy a message… and got back that he would take $400 for the 3 Jeeps he had left. One rolling chassis and two tubs… We have looked at and talked about these flat fenders for long enough to know that one of the “tubs” (the body of the Jeep) was worth that much… Yep, we scrounged and came up with the $400.

Since we didn’t get the reply back until late on a Sunday, we asked if he would hold them until the next weekend.. and he agreed. We headed over with Robert and his small trailer to get them, figuring we would have to make more than one trip.

Once there we were busy loading the Jeeps (the rolling chassis fit Perfectly in his trailer) when the guy came by and offered to throw in another trailer ( mid 50s Jeep pickup box trailer) to hold the extra tub. With one tub on the pickup and one on the other trailer we towed Roberts trailer down the road to a spot we could leave it and hooked up to the 2^nd trailer that we took to dad’s place in Imbler.

After returning for Robert’s trailer and making 2 trips to home we had all the parts and pieces (plus extra stuff we had bought from the guy) at home.

Fast forward a couple months and an add on Craig’s list came from a guy in Burns that had another frame (the one on the rolling chassis needed work) that had just been rebuilt. Yep, off to Burns to get just the frame and some misc parts for $320…. But while there we learned that he had 3 other tubs, a couple transmissions, more fenders, etc… left overs from when he and his son were building a CJ2A each, a project that ended up being 1 Jeep after the engine for his was toast. He said he was interested in selling all of the stuff, but we were tapped out on funds and had to pass…

I waited a few months and our son James offered us some money for many things that we had done for him in the past, etc… Yep, you guessed it, I offered the guy a lowball price for the whole lot of parts he had, and he agreed. By not though, its mid winter and Burns had gotten hammered with snow.

Fast forward again to late March, and we are again headed for burns with Robert and a different trailer of his… Just the axles alone were enough to convince Robert we had made a Great deal!

Now we have 6 tubs, 3 frames, 4 sets of fenders, 4 hoods, well, you get the idea. Between all the dealing I was talking to a guy back east that sometimes makes trips out to visit his wife’s family near Spokane and he expressed interest in buying all the parts we didn’t want to keep. I’m pretty sure there are enough parts to make two running Jeeps (minus one engine). With the other parts being sold or traded to the guy from back east to get us the other parts we need I hope to have at least 1 of them running by this fall! 

Spring renewal

We have all heard that spring brings renewal and re-growth. Well it seems that has many meanings.

The grass is growing like made, the flowers are blooming, the trees are budding out and my to-do list is growing by leaps and bounds! All the projects that were on hold because it was too cold in the shop are now either higher on the list or underway. We found another small barn (or part of a barn at least) to take down and are currently hauling in the boards from that project, for use on other projects.

New ideas for projects start with every sunrise, the materials for the most part are on hand, it’s the time to accomplish them all that is the issue. I know, I Know, we are not the only one’s suffering from this conundrum! It seems to be a fact of life that either you have lots of time and no money or materials, or lots of materials, and no time. Since I don’t see that every changing, we are just doing the best we can with what we have available of each and moving forward. Of that there is no choice, we could not just sit and do nothing anymore than we could wiggle our nose and make it all happen by magic!

Look for photos of new projects on here or on my facebook page soon.