One of the new things we are considering for the NEB's Fun World is a garden railway. It of course will be no ordinary garden railroad. A large scale railroad at faery scale becomes a riding railroad in NEB's garden. The European faery garden would be best served by an elegant European styled train. It would certainly be a fun project!
Launching a ship
We've yet to build something that doesn't fit out the giant magic doors of our shop but it has been a little tight on occasion. Over the last weeks the Viking ship seemed to get bigger and bigger with each passing day. A few days ago Peter and I actually got concerned enough to break out the tape measure to check things out. It looked good. Today it was time to actually begin pulling out the structure for the ship. We knew that the first piece would be the toughest. We first moved shelving and benches away from the back wall of the shop. Then we used the forklift to push the ship frame up against the back wall. The forklift was barely up to the task but after a couple of runs at it the job was done.
Then we unbolted the first large section of the hull and hooked up the chains. Again it was all our little forklift could handle but it managed to lift and pull the section of structure away from the rest. One end was hoisted onto a pallet jack. I then moved the forklift to the other end gingerly side shifted the piece over and over until it was against the side wall. Then we pulled the other end towards the door. With a couple of inches to spare it cleared all of the obstacles (as carefully planned of course) and we inched it out the door. It took four hours to remove about two thirds of the pieces of ship. We were much more concerned about safety than speed. The parking lot was suddenly very full! Tomorrow we'll remove the rest and begin work on the next one.
Matt came back
Back when little Matt was in high school at the tender age of fourteen he decided to become a welder. To get into the trade program at his high school he needed to put in two hundred hours working in a shop. I happily took him on. Matt had little experience then and had much to learn. Under my watchful eye he learned about working in the shop doing all manners off jobs. I insisted he learn his fractions back then although he resisted mightily. In the end I knew just the way I would teach him. When he came in one Saturday there was a very large pile of plywood scraps in the corner, each marked with numbers that included fractions of course. His instructions were to mark each board accurately with a square and then carefully cut them to size according the the numbers I had marked on each board. I told him I would check of course. After many hours of labor by Matt I did check a few boards and then told him he had done a great job - which he did. I then told him to collect all of the pieces in the wheel barrow and throw them into the dumpster. When he gave me a mighty eye roll I told him that we had accomplished two important things. The scrap lumber was now small enough to fit easily into the dumpster without wasting space and he now had a good handle on fractions.
And so it went for two hundred hours. Once Matt got his welding ticket he lived with us and worked for us for some time before going out into the big world on his own. He did us all proud. He's back in the shop for a few weeks helping us with the welding on the Viking ships for Dubai. Matt is soon going to go back to school as he works his way to a carpenter career. He must have enjoyed cutting all those boards back when he started with us years ago. :)
