Britbike forum Forums British Motorcycle specific Brands Vincent forum 1950 Black Shadow: Total Rebuild

By the end of today destruction should be complete, at which point reconstruction allegedly will begin. It looks like the Russians had invaded that end of the house after intense fighting. Although thus far I've been unsuccessful in prying a guestimated date of completion out of anyone, I keep trying.

Just be glad the contractors aren't on "island time"! AMHIK...

Steve

Since we're now in the depths of winter, where sometimes the high for the day doesn't even reach 70 ℉, it occurred to me that a heater for the paint booth might be useful at times. An ulterior motive is I've had one on the to-buy list ever since completing my trailer nearly three years ago. Somewhere in Montana on the Cannonball I had to go outside when walking from my motel room to the restaurant, and I passed by shivering people working on bikes on a cold evening. By "cold," I mean it might not have been more than 40 ℉ by the time dinner was finished, but the bikes being worked on weren't. I immediately added a heater to my list of desired items for a trailer.

I have three propane tanks at home, to power the barbecue, an outdoor space heater, and an emergency A/C generator, so I already have those on hand. While it might seem one tank should be sufficient to be shared by all of these, tanks don't have gauges so a second one is needed for the barbecue to be switched in when the other one runs out. Having a third tank ensures there's always the equivalent of approx. 2.5 tanks of propane in case of a power failure, which is enough to keep the generator operating for 24 hours.

Anyway, the heater I bought operates on propane, is rated for indoors or out, occupies less than 1 sq.ft. and weighs only 9 lbs. Since it only uses ~1% of a tank per hour, and since the generator would accompany me on any Cannonball-type ride, one tank could do double-duty. It claims to heat areas up to 225 sq.ft. on its high setting, or 100 sq.ft. on low, while the inside of the trailer is 67 sq.ft., and of the paint booth 45 sq.ft. I also bought a CO monitor to permanently mount in the trailer (powered by a 10-year Li battery), and I have a fast-acting one I can use in the paint booth.

I would take a moment to think carefully about ignition sources and paint fumes.

As far as I remember, propane heaters produce a lot of humidity, so if you are using one indoors decent ventilation is needed.

Humidity and paint spraying are not the best bedfellows, so I would avoid using a propane heater a while before spraying and monitor the humidity.

Just my tuppence worth of thoughts.

Are you trying to spoil my fun?

Good point. During painting a lot of air will be pulled through the booth, but it wouldn't do to have the parts sweating before I started so I'll pay attention to that. Thanks.

these make nice heaters

Why stop at a heater? Propane furnaces for doing your own foundry work are quite reasonably priced.

The phrase 'mission creep' comes to mind .....

Hmm.

They are, I just googled it.

But then, I've got a small electric kiln for when I finally get around to those sort of projects.

For fifty years my wife's parents gave up garage space for an electric kiln they bought her when she was in high school. Instead of discarding it when they died, I thought it could be useful for some future projects of mine, when I finally got around to them, so we hauled it from LA. It took up space in my garage for the better part of ten years before I came to my senses and had it hauled away. I decided if I ever needed a furnace for something like heat treating, I'd look for one designed for the purpose.

Ah yes, I think we've all been to that rodeo. It reminds me of the old Chinese saying:

"Too soon we get old, too late we get smart" ...

.. Gregg

There are only nine vehicles in the driveway right now because the A/C guys aren't here today.



I assume skilled tradesmen come cheap so this can't be costing me much money… Also, apparently white is the official color for this kind of thing so one of the trucks is a badly-disguised imposter.

This photograph goes a long way toward explaining my recent lack of progress on the Vincent.

Take comfort in the fact that you can use that spray booth as a sensory deprivation chamber to help deal with the PTSD. I had a guy give me an estimate to make 4 flares on copper tubes, pressure test with nitrogen, hook up a vacuum pump, and release the refrigerant stored in the mini split. No parts… no refrigerant… said it would take a day and only cost $1,800 plus.
I’d [***] myself if I looked out the window and saw that many contractors.

What makes you think that's not what I did?

Still life with sagauro directing traffic

most of those trucks look like fleet vehicles , like the specially glass trucks and plumbers inventory truck
( and could be a sign of one of those days when you can see progress actually being accomplished )

Whats scary is when Your Contractor and Major Subs
show up on site , with brand new trucks
Bought right after they started ... your job .

Question: how many fleet vehicles does it take to constitute an armada? That photograph would be funny if I weren't paying for it...

We've been warned to count on being without power for at least 6 hours tomorrow due to a sub-panel being moved, so first priority in the morning will be to make coffee before we go dark. The rest of the day will be exactly as if we were living in Ukraine. Except maybe for the predicted high of 63 ℉. And having food and water. Other than that, exactly like Ukraine.

Doesn't everybody have a gas powered backup generator these days?

Yes, but. The generator is in a small utility room that is normally easily accessible. However, the problem is we've been living like backwoods Appalachian hill folk for over a month, with our washer and dryer outside, next to that room. The water lines for the washer that I could get on short notice are shorter than I'd like, which makes it difficult to step over them, open the door to the room, and squeeze between it and the back of the washer to get to the generator. It's not that I couldn't crawl over the lines and get in the room to shut the water valves and disconnect the lines if I had to, but I'm not sure I'll be sufficiently motivated to do that. There are two coffee houses, both 8 min. away, so I have that emergency situation covered.

Interesting that you noticed that most of the contractors trucks are white in color.
There is a well known political phenomenon in UK where these contractors are often the swing votes in elections.
Very often the contractors are guys who grew up in working class, very often where the father was a union member and where the traditional political allegiance was Labor Party in UK/Democratic Party in US.
However once skilled many of these guys (plumbers/electricians/alarm systems/painters etc etc) start their own businesses and find their political allegiances being pulled towards the traditionally more business friendly Conservative Party in UK/Republican Party in US.
These shifting allegiances mean that these guys often flip from one party to the other in elections.
So much so that in elections in UK at least the deciding voter group is known as "White Van Man".
Sorry-- nothing to do with Brit bikes but I find it interesting!

Best of luck with your construction ordeals, MMan.

The vast majority of vans in the UK are white and its interesting that vans and pickups in the US also seem to follow the same trend.

I also have a white van. Not because I am a Tradespeson but because I love having a van, they are so useful. I did used to be a Tradesperson so maybe my liking of vans stems from then. Anyway, in the past I have always had a Ford Transit but my current van is a different brand and I found it hard to find one that wasn't white and time pressure drove (pun intended) me to go for the white one. In hindsight I would have preferred a different colour and also in hindsight I should have stuck to a Ford Transit.

I, however, am not typical White Van Man. Also in contrast to typical White Van Man, as described by Tridentman, when I changed from Tradesman to Management W****r my politics did not shift.

John.

I spent nearly 3 years building a new house. I do not understand why there is a ton of lawyer jokes and few construction trade jokes. I found that most construction contractors make lawyers look like Mother Teresa.
While some contractors were very good the vast majority had little skill and even less morals.

It pained me to hit 'like' on your post, because it's not what I'd like to read when there's a driveway full of construction vehicles.

Another similarity between our two nations. Over here its pretty much the same. Good Contractors hard to find. Good ones who are also reliable are even harder to find.

John