Zeeko Salvage

Xtracycle Bags for a Michigan Winter Commuter - 90% Salvaged Materials

Just finished some Xtracycle bags for a Michigan winter bike commuter. He wanted bags that could stand up to being coated with salty slush for months at a time.

These bags are designed to stand up to grime, rain and snow in an urban environment.

This project started with a roll of truck tarp from the ReStore, and the fabric from Brian Keough's trampoline. I have a pattern that I created for an earlier Xtracycle project, and it saved me some thinking this time.

Here was the original design that I made 3 years ago - actually the guy that ordered this new yellow pair saw this bag on Flickr and tracked us down - funny, because it is the only other Xtracycle bag that I have made. I got halfway thru the brother to this one before I got sick of the project - it is still in a milk crate in the garage, and I have been sporting a ratty original Xtracycle bag on the other side of my bike.

So the lesson from the first session (that I forgot this time) is that these bags take A LOT OF TIME to do well. Another thing that I learned from the original project is that leather is amazing for this type of exposure. I have been using this bag a ton for 3 years, in rain, mud, and sun, and it still looks and works great!

Bob wanted to be able to use these bags with Xtracycle's new-style 'P-racks' - which are set up with a crossbar on them to hang normal panniers from, so unlike the older-style racks, where you can just sew fixed loops in the hangers, we needed to be able to snap these ones on and off.

I created a harness out of 2" webbing that spreads the weight of the load across all 6 of the hangers. This webbing is backed with the woven nylon mesh from the trampoline and covered with the waterproof truck tarp. After the harness was in there, I trimmed the tarp and trampoline panels to match, and ran the whole shebang thru a binding foot to wrap the edges in 1" nylon webbing trim. That was a huge PITA, and there has got to be an easier way to do it.

Pockets are coated cordura packcloth remnants from another local bag business.

Some friends of ours go to the Unitarian Church down the street. Someone there heard that we were into salvaged textiles and gave us a box with 85 of these camstrap buckles in it.

I added the female snaps to the flaps, and then stretched the bag onto the rack to locate and mark the male snaps on the body of the bag.

The side flaps have loops of fire hose across the top that wrap a piece of 1" nylon webbing. The ladderlock buckle lets you crank down the top of the sides to support your load.

More pockets.

These bags fit any bike that uses the Xtracycle Freeloader rack system. They can be used either with the older-style Xtracycle V-racks, or the newer-style P-racks. They feature coated truck-tarp backed with a heavy, UV-resistant nylon mesh. Recycled military-spec aluminum cam-buckles adjust the bag flap to carry anything from a yoga mat to an 80 pound sack of concrete. Nylon fire hose armors the bottom against curb-strikes and the back of the bag where it rubs on the lower frame of the Xtracycle.

MAN, THESE THINGS TOOK FOREVER TO MAKE and I charged the guy about half of what I should have - made me grumpy. But now that it is done, I am stoked.

These ones are spoken for, but we can make more of these with about 4-6 week lead time.

Posted May 19, 2012

A Large Handlebar Bag

We are bike-lovers in a bike-loving town. When I first saw Erika's sticker-covered Stumpjumper (with lowrider pannier racks!!!) I knew deep-down that we'd be together for a long time.

I modified an army surplus night vision goggle bag to go on the handlebars of my townbike, and now I can't live without one. It is so nice to have a place to throw keys, phone, wallet, a U-lock, light, small pump, and maybe a burrito and bottle of wine too. The bag below is a knock-off of the army surplus bag that I have been using, made from 99+% salvaged materials.

We have made a lot of bike-related bags now, but until this week I hadn't made one that I really thought that we should focus on - I am kind of a 'perpetual prototyper'...

But I think that we'll keep making these ones.

Large handlebar bag with wire support on the sides.

Here is the bag in progress - body is a collage of our friend Lee's old world-traveling backpack, a thrift store laptop bag, and a fire hose panel from an old, unfinished messenger bag project.

Made sides out of three different kinds of fire hose. Yellow hose is from a jaunt in the woods with Jake awhile back.

Here are the sides sewn in, with some bling firehose trim that also provides a tunnel for a supporting frame that is made out of wire and scrap aluminum tubing.

Front has reflective trim and backpack cordura.

Other than rivets and thread, the snaps and webbing are the only virgin materials in this project.

Inside pockets are scraps from some other old backpacks.

In action

He has only had it for a few days. Give him a few weeks and it will be full of loose change, receipts, food wrappers, diapers, wipes, a vice-grip, headlamp, swim trunks, lip gloss, and maybe a few Sierra Nevada bottle caps. Mine is.

We'll make you one out of your favorite old backpack - your bike-based life will never be the same.

Posted May 11, 2012

Salvaging an old Delta Rockwell Drill Press

I went to the metal scrap yard last month looking for some steel to use in a project.

I really should never go there unless I take a chaperone. Didn't find the steel that I was looking for, but bought a broken drill press and a bandsaw too.

This is a Rockwell Model 20-421 20" drill press. Made in about 1959. This is about the biggest common drill press size, a common factory tool, with a large 'production table' on it. There are some great online resources for finding out about old tools. Lots of other people share a passion for fixing up old beautifully-made tools, and I am always delighted how eager people are to share what they know.

I didn't have a truck with me, so I went home and looked it up, though I already knew that I wanted it. I knew that as long as the column was straight and the main head casting was solid, that everything else could be restored. Bought it for 20 cents a pound.

It came with a brand new USA-made Baldor 1.5hp electric motor. Problem was, the whole machine had tipped over (probably right after they moved it to put on this new $400 motor), and the shaft on the motor had snapped right outside of the casing.

They forklifted it into my truck and I borrowed a chain hoist to unload it - it weighs about 500 lbs.

Unlike our older (1937) Delta drill press, this one has a fiberglass belt guard, which - though cracked - I was able repair with some epoxy.

The biggest problem right off of the bat was that the motor mount assembly was badly damaged. Luckily the broken parts were on the pallet with everything else.

I used a torch to braze the broken ears back on.

Also had to braze a few of these cracks.

Not pretty, but... Notice the broken tab on the left - this part was missing the broken-off piece.

Brazed on a washer and ground out a notch.

Here is the repaired assembly, ready for the motor.

I was able to pull the motor apart and weld a 7/8" bolt onto the broken shaft to extend it back to its original length. I had an ancient machinist in town turn the shaft down to 3/4" on his lathe, and this ensured that the new shaft would be centered with the rest of the motor. He also keyed the shaft for me so it would take a standard pulley.

I had to replace both the motor and quill pulley - found both on Ebay - and replaced a couple of the bearings in the quill. One is impossible to find, so I was able to repack it and keep using it.

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Here it is all back together.

It was missing the levers that feed the quill downward. I made a new assembly by drilling a standard pulley, brazing on 3/8" concrete anchor bolts with the tips of some 3/8" lag screws welded onto them, and threading on knobs carved from a yard sale baseball bat.

I rough cut the knobs with a hatchet, and then finished them with sandpaper using my other drill press as a lathe.

I had been using a newer/lighter drill press from Craigslist in our warehouse, and its last deed was to drill the holes in the pulley that makes up this new mechanism, then back onto Craigslist/Facebook, where an old friend snapped it up in about 10 minutes. Call it 'upcycling'.

Found this vise at a yard sale this weekend for $10, and made a mount for it to finish off the job.

With a little oil and any luck at all, this tool will run well for another 50 years.

Filed under // the shop toolmaking

Posted May 2, 2012

Folks, this ain't vegan

Our messenger bags for 2012 are chock full of leather scrap from a commercial upholstery shop! The bag below is made from leather scrap, printed leather from a second-hand bag, vintage cotton, and basketball. A used vinyl banner serves as the inner layer and stiffener.

A close up of the embroidery. Notice the strip of basketball in the center under the "V." Thanks to our friend Matt for thinking of us when his old ball wore out. Zeke then peeled the outer skin off the ball, and put the neat strips into my working pile of materials.

This bag is made with vintage indonesian fabrics that I won at an auction the past summer. Plus fire hose and salvaged hardware.

Fun with an old cowboy shirt, leather, and sarong.

More leather scrap, plus world map spirals.

Two more, in similar style. I'm making the flap adjustable in the larger bag this year.

Notice the strips of orange on the mostly white bag. These are from my friend Jennifer who is a painter. She gave me strips of canvas that she cut off paintings before she framed them. There's gold paint in them that's shiny, and make a nice element for collage.

I'm shipping these bags off to Blue Gallery in Providence Town, but more to come!

Posted April 25, 2012

A stage bag for Mark Growden

Our friend Mark Growden is a storyteller and professional musician from my hometown. Several years ago, he asked us to make him a bag to use during his songwriting workshops that could hold his Sruti Box, a tambourine, and a notepad.

I have been watching 'Ax Men' with my 2 year old, and it conjures layers of memory from childhood in a logging town.

Our childhood hero was Mangin, the bachelor timberfaller across the street. He was home from the woods at about the same time that we were free of school - logger childcare. As kids with the whole afternoon to kill before our folks got home, we would sit in his yard in the shade of a big fir tree and watch Mangin and Kent take off tall boots, sharpen saw chains, drink Mickey's bigmouths, and spin yarns.

Mangin was also a Volkswagen mechanic. He wore the same pair of black Key Jeans every day in the woods, and they could stand up by themselves. His house smelled like fir pitch, sweat, and peanuts. He was half deaf from logging, and spent a lot of money on stereo equipment, on which he played very loud ZZ Top and rock radio. He welded a secret compartment in some bozo's gas tank, and when that guy got popped smuggling a whole bunch of cocaine in from Central America, Mangin had to spend some time in the Federal Pen in the Mojave. My dad the homebrewer put a six pack of beer into root beer bottles that - delivered to Mangin - proved a great hit with the boys down there in Barstow. I was about ten, but I still remember Mangin's going-away party before he went to prison. August in Goodrich Meadows, with kegs of Budweiser cooling in the back of Mangin's Willys pickup under a load of snow from Swain Mountain. Dave Foat roasting a pig over a pit fire.

Kent was killed falling a tree about 10 years ago, and there were a lot of broke-down burly woodsmen in his yard for the wake. A section of the street was flagged off for the overflow crowd using 'KILLER TREE' flagging. The preacher was from the church that Mark's dad helped to start about 30 years ago. When he said that Kent was going to heaven not because of his good deeds but because he the preacher had saved him not 2 months before, a surge of anger flushed through me, and a good part of the crowd too. Kent's good friends from the bar stirred angrily out in the street, and Kenny Bruns grumbled 'Bullshit! He is going there for his good deeds too'.

I have come to realize that we had a lot of male role models, and that we are of a storytelling culture.

My (Zeke) bagmaking has been slowed up by two young boys and starting another business - I've made three bags in the last 10 months.

I took measurements for this bag 16 months ago, and Mark has been very patient. Finally he called a month ago and said gently 'the bag I have been using has completely disintegrated, how's that bag coming?' I needed a prod.

Two or three years later, this one is finally done. Making it brought up a lot of these stories.

Fire hose, cordura scrap, necktie, a classroom map, a jacket lining, surplus webbing, treebark camo pantleg, and some aluminum tubing from the ReStore.

Under the flap is more necktie and map. Mark is a few years older than me and his dad was my track coach/crafts teacher in high school. Mark has been studying music for most of his life with influences all over the world ranging from Ravi Shankar to old slave songs. He came back to town when I was still in high school to regale us with tales of traveling around the West Coast juggling, making music, falling in love, and being offered a blowjob by a strange traveling salesman while hitchhiking across Eastern Washington. He knew how to make weird Vietnamese-shaped hats out of felt, and spent a few weeks telling us stories and teaching us to juggle, playing music, and generally blowing our smalltown minds. Then he was off again.

Old camo as a nod to shared millpond roots. This project brought up memories of growing up in Westwood, and the interweaving of lives there. Of track practice in the gym with 6 feet of snow outside, or running on melting slush through streams of icy runoff; of shooting guns at the sewer ponds with Dean Growden - Mark's brother who is now Lassen County Sheriff.

Or of the 1970s Cutlass that Mark's younger brother - my best friend Jeremy, filled up with gas one day during our senior year and just drove away.

And Mark has always been flamboyant, of course, so I had an excuse to go big with the bag. People in Westwood are still probably talking about the time that they turned on 'Real Sex' on HBO and saw Mark there in some sort of men's tantra workshop circle thingy. My crew boss marking timber for the US Forest Service told me that he had the episode on videotape.

For wild Middle Eastern circus music, and a tambourine.

Mark's sister Janay makes amazing clothing, window displays, and anything else. We painted flowers and peace signs on her VW bus before we knew that we weren't really hippies, or that hippies weren't really very cool, and drove it down Highway 32 to Chico to shop for school clothes at Pegasus, wondering why the guys in the big trucks were flipping us off or screaming at us. Janay is a master textile artist who gives me courage to sew in a stream of consciousness way - we share a love of the zigzag.

Making the bling/tag was its own project.

Real tree.

Time passes, and the meaning of songs change. Mark wrote a song about Westwood years ago that means something to any person who is from there. Trying to reconcile his love of the land with the hardship of the place and its baggage. I used to think that he whined too much about his life, that he was being a drama queen. Later I realized that he was just a few years ahead of me in trying to come to terms with, or express how you identify with (or don't) the important places in your life. As time goes by, I am glad that we have a place that we know is home, and stories to share about it.

Long may you run, Brother Mark.

Filed under // fire hose bags luggage messenger bags rants storytelling

Posted April 24, 2012

Wofchuck's Cattail Cojongo Case

Our friend Mike Wofchuck is a professional percussionist. He brought us a Cojongo (wooden box drum) and asked us to make a traveling case for it. This bag is made from a whole bunch of different materials.

Lid in progress - brown hemp from German Army duffel bag, yellow fire hose, scrap leather, grommets in lid/handle are from duffel bag.

Upholstery scrap, fire hose, old cordura from camo duck hunting bag.

Hemp base, army surplus brass D-ring padded with scrap leather to keep lid clips from gouging drum. Fire hose cattails, and Japanese crane motif inkjet printed on raw canvas.

Cattails - Old waxed cotton tarp, fire hose, scrap leather, and ripstop poly/cotton from old cargo pants/uniform at my last job.

Binding the lid with army surplus webbing.

Finished product - front view.

Lid and side - olive strip on the right made from waxed cotton tarps that were the roof of Lauren Kennedy's family cabin for several decades.

Front view.

My aunt runs a business in Kansas City 'Asiatica' that repurposes vintage Japanese textiles. The crane is from a digital photo that I took of one of her old fabrics. We inkjet printed it onto some raw canvas and then steamed it to fix the dye.

Lid clip and cattail detail

Lid detail

Handle is scrap leather wrapped around hemp rope that used to tie the German Army duffel bag shut (thru these same grommets).

Lining is recycled Chico Bags donated by Mr. Andy Keller himself, thanks, Andy!

Satisfied customer

Filed under // fabric fire hose bags leather luggage printing the shop

Posted January 22, 2012

The Estate of Robert Bruce. Auction Fever, and 'The Cyclone'.

We went to an auction yesterday on River Road, out in the almond orchards. I am an auction rookie, I feel the hooks of addiction already. All of that shouting, commotion, competition, posturing. It felt like poker tournament. Today, an auction hangover - we picked up the pieces.

It starts out innocently enough, a sign on Highway 32 on the way home from work, and a Craigslist ad. Then you notice the address - River Road. The Estate of Robert Bruce, (as in 'Bruce Road', and the family that owned the 1600 block of Park Ave, starting in 1860).

10 am, a respite from 4 days of North wind, and it is finally warm in the sun, but the action is inside of a cold metal building full of massive steel machines. A huge welder, ancient hoist, and V8 engines hang overhead from skinny chains. Someone next to me says "I have this same building, glad to know that I can hang 4 or 5 tons from the rafters". As we arrive - 10:00 on the dime - they start moving through the merchandise, quickly. A $1,500 air compressor sells for $65, a 1,000 pound drill press for $35. Lots of the auction-goers are regulars, and some won't run up the price if their buddy or neighbor is bidding.

Only a few familiar faces. 19 years in Chico, and I still don't understand - even as we enjoy the explosion of the 'local food movement' - how come there is so little crossover between us townies and the old school ag. community.

'You might not want to stand under that yellow welder, it weighs about 600 pounds'. My friend Jamie notices the two pairs of Chevy V8 headers and the bumper in the rafters and buys it all for $7.50.

We get there after the preview and it is hard to get in to see what was in each box, so there is an element of lottery to it all. For future reference, 'The Junker' is in dark glasses.

I'm not sure that I should buy anything heavy, but then I spot Dave Richer, and he tells me that he'll have a trailer here to pick things up on Sunday, that he'll help me load.

100 years of hoarding to sell in 4 hours. Wind-thrashed clattery tin outbuildings hide Model T Ford parts, pieces of a windmill (with motor, stand, blades, and a disassembled redwood tank), elegant 30's sedan fenders, and dusty bicycles. Out in the open, piles of rusty bed frames and galvanized barrels with sloshing mystery juices, minimart coke dispensers, orchard sprayers, piles of old tires, and conveyors sink under heavy orchard dust and moss. Dave buys a big log-sized stack of rough-cut walnut slabs and rat shit. The body of an old International Scout rots into a heap of grapevines. Someone buys it for $12.50. The auctioneer's kids are keeping track of each sale, they are busy.

Most of the stuff in the machine shop is custom - hacked together, and built with an awkward balance of extreme thrift, indestructability, and minimalism. This guy was a hell of a designer, and the things that I buy are lighter than I was afraid they might be. Mr. Bruce knew how to pick the right size materials for each job. I buy a gas welding cutting stand made from two truck brake drums for $12. The top drum still turns on bearings, so you can spin the piece that you are cutting with one hand.

I find a 4' welding table with 1/2" thick top. After the sale has moved on to another building, I discover that It has a tractor seat mounted on one of the legs that pivots out from underneath so you can sit and weld at the corner. Also couple of old bench grinders attached to a handmade stand of angle iron mounted on a 90 pound pump flange, a toolbox (hiding bonus prize of 10 blacksmiths tongs from Old Chico and a mess of lathe tooling and end mills), and a handmade steel-rolling machine (traded to Dave today for a handmade propane blacksmiths forge).

But by far the goofiest Auction Fever purchase is the Cyclone.

The Junker and his daughter - who have the scrapyard on 20th Street - buy everything heavy. Nobody else wants to try to move the 2,000 pound milling machines or piles of rusty metal. One of the lots of rusty metal and bedframes includes this sheetmetal 'Cyclone' - a dust collector from a nut dryer - The Junker buys it all 'same dollar' (one bid for all the items) for $15.

After a few hours, I poop out. Before Erika goes home to rest, she tells me that she wants to get a box full of vintage fabric, but I am burning out, and need something more than a hotdog to keep going. She returns just in time to bid on the items herself. We grab the few lighter purchases and peel out.

Erika at 40 weeks pregnant, is bidding on a box of Indonesian sarongs from Mr. and Mrs. Robert Bruce's 1950s trip to Asia (according to memorabilia in the box).

Today we returned to survey the damage.

Dave had thought about buying the Cyclone yesterday to make a hood over the forge in his blacksmiths shop, but he didn't want all of the junk metal that came with it.

I thought about it last night and realized that I could use the super funky snorkel bottom to make a Dr. Seuss inspired exhaust hood over my welding table.

When we went to pick up our other items this morning, Dave asked The Junker about it, and he said 'Fifty Bucks'.

Is that a Cyclone you are towing?

"That's a lot of sheetmetal for not much money", says Dave.

Dave's daughter thought that this was pretty cool. She wanted her dad to cut a door in it for her.

My half. Stand by.

Filed under // inbox salvage adventure the shop toolmaking

Posted December 4, 2011

Consew Dealers

We now have a commercial account with Consew USA. If you are in the Chico Area and need your industrial sewing machine maintained or repaired, give us a call.
We can get parts for all major brands of industrial machines, and order bulk notions, thread, and hardware.

530-966-8186.

Sent via DROID on Verizon Wireless

Posted November 19, 2011

Vests and Jackets

Last minute additions for 'Prepare for the Playa'.

Retooling a few firemens turnout coats, and finishing a few oilcloth and mesh vests.

We'll be on the street at 650 Indiana, SFO - Sunday 12-7pm

Fire coat backpatch with art from Dragonboy.

Firecoat bling

Oilcloth vest with hemp

Mesh vest with firehose

Mesh vest

Oilcloth vest - only new materials in this are the zipper, trim and thread.

Dragonboy backpatch on mesh leftover from commercial printing job.

Filed under // clothing shows

Posted August 12, 2011

Dragon Man Vest

Onward, into our last 3 days of sewing for the Prepare for the Playa Street Fair in SFO.

Our friend Lauren gave us a big old canvas tarp that has got a waxed finish and 40 years of character. We are using it to make vests and pouches. This one features patches from David Dragonboy Sutherland's ink drawings, and pockets from a duck hunting coat found at the Chester Thrift.