Zeeko Salvage

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

Making tools for toolmaking, a leatherworking press.

We are always on the lookout for old tools that we can repair or repurpose. We use our punch presses a lot, and I have been thinking that custom crafting tools like presses could be a good niche for us.

I found these 3 presses on a local auction last week. Two of them are for embossing paper, but I thought that the one on the right had potential to become a leather punching/rivet setting machine if I could make a new shaft to replace the paper punch that was in there.

Here is the workhorse of our shop - a 1937 Delta 17" drill press. I found it laying in pieces at the salvage yard at the 'Last Chance Mercantile' in Monterey County and got it for $20. It needed a chuck, motor, handles, and repair on the cast iron belt-guard, but I love the art deco 'helmet', and have been carting it around thru 3 moves. There are a lot of great old tool resources online, especially vintagemachinery.org (formerly OldWoodWorkingMachines.com). They have manuals for thousands of old tools, and some original parts are still available for these.

I measured up the existing shaft in the press and it was a hair under 7/16", so I got a 7/16" bolt at the Restore, cut it to length, chucked it up in the drill press, and used a mill bastard file to turn it down to the correct diameter. I tried to punch and center-drill it with the drill press, but it is really hard to center punch a starting point that is dead on, and the first try was off center and crooked. I want a metal lathe...

Well, no metal lathe is in the foreseeable future, but Erika's dad was a mechanical engineer, and we have some of his tools around. The small drill chuck on the bottom was in his old toolbox, so I bolted it to a piece of angle iron that I can clamp into the drill press vice. I chucked up the 7/16" bolt piece in the drill press, and put a sharp, broken bit in the bottomchuck. By moving the spinning shaft across the broken bit, I was able to scribe a divot in the center of the shaft. Then I chucked up my bit in the bottom, and spun the shaft in the drill press down onto it to drill it. It worked! Dead-center/straight hole.

I want to be able to use replaceable hole punch tubes in this press, so I tapped the shaft to the same thread that the punch tubes have (5/16" fine thread).

Here is the completed punch shaft with punch-tube in place - the hole on the side is for punched bits of leather to come out.

Here is the finished shaft assembly. There is a flat platform on the old press shaft that the handle of the press pushes down onto, and it sits on top of the spring that pushes the whole assembly back up after you pull it down. I folded a thin piece of flat stock over to get the thickness that I was after, and then brazed the tab onto the shaft.

Here is the finished product. The bottom anvil is another piece of 7/16" bolt. The press is pretty small - our main press (behind it) has a lot more leverage, but this one punches 2 layers of thick leather belt easily, and it will work great for punching and setting rivets.

Because the punch shaft is threaded, you can replace the punch tube with a normal bolt, and use it to set rivets.

Keep your eyes open for these old presses, and let us know if you see them around.

Future projects - got a lot in the same auction simply titled 'Heavy Stuff' = including 2 3' long wrenches, and these bad-ass old cast iron lockplate covers. Total lot weight was #130. Look for these in projects to come.

Filed under // inbox leather the shop toolmaking

Posted May 13, 2011

The [Inbox] - Found materials

We are adding a new feature to our website - the [inbox]. We'll be tagging any posts about our raw (salvaged) materials with the [inbox] tag - giving you a chance to see where our finished goods come from.

We finally found a reliable source for used fire hose. Fire hose has to be pressure-tested every year, and the lengths that don't pass are usually dumpstered or sold to construction companies. This stuff was salvaged from an old army base - most of it has never been used. We sorted through a couple hundred rolls and found some with a great weight and a black lining.

the new, dreamy, black-lined hose makes up 95% of our new totes.

this mad max miniskirt is made from a heavier-duty cotton-jacket hose. this hose is a little too stiff and heavy for most bags, but it works great for playawear, guitar and samba-drum straps.

samba drum strap - double wrap, and available in custom lengths. triangles are leftover when we cut for the mad max miniskirts. $40 - email us.

we find a huge variety of colors and materials in hose and in the different linings. this hose washes to a demin blue, and the clear lining takes on an almost watercolored look.

irrigation hose (dark blue) and the nylon hose (above) make up this duffel and makeup bag combo. the zippers are brand-new salvage, found in a lot of 200+ at our local salvation army.

score! we are committed to using only high-quality hardware in our goods. our zippers are either new (salvage), or pulled from used bags that have minimal wear.

Filed under // fire hose bags inbox the shop

Posted December 29, 2010

Salvage - new materials

Why Zeeko 'Salvage'? Because we love the thrill of the hunt, and high-quality supplies are everywhere! Just scored 3 unused bags at the Arc Thrift Store. Look for pieces of them in work to come.

This unused laptop carry-on has 7(!) beautiful high-quality zippers like this, and lots of extra-tough nylon cordura to rework.

(download)

Filed under // inbox the shop

Posted December 22, 2010

Where fire hose comes from - and some small bags

Today was a fine day to be in the woods.

I needed to go up to Chester to talk to a friend about some fire and forestry issues, and he was able to meet me half way, on Deer Creek. He needed to clear fallen trees from the roads after windstorms this winter, so I rode along, and we headed up to the Deer Creek rim.

Opening the road after winter storms, still a lot of snow up there.

Bear print

Checking out the area burned by the 'Onion Fire', in 2008, we found a place where a hoselay got burned over by the fire. The firefighters forgot about the hose, and left long partially-melted chunks of it in the woods. We dragged about 400 feet of it back to the truck.

Here is the same hose scrubbed, filleted, and sewn into a panel

Cut the panel into smaller strips, add some trim and hardware, and you have the makings of a tough little field bag.

The one panel made enough pieces for 6 bags. Straps are also fire hose.

Inner tube trim

From Deer Creek to you.

Filed under // fire hose bags inbox the shop

Posted May 14, 2010

Making textured fabric

We have this huge pile of coveralls that I got at the ReStore. Actually, we have two big piles of coveralls that I got at the ReStore. They got donated this huge bin of worn out coveralls from Wrex Products - a plastics manufacturer across the street from them on Myers, and it just sat there for about 3 months. Sucker that I am for cheap materials, I started scheming and dreaming of making grocery bags and bag linings from this nice, funky, tough fabric.

Mario, ReStore MANager.

Bin o' ghetto coveralls. I high-graded it back in November, cut some good pieces of fabric out of some of them, and then they sat on a shelf. Last week I got the idea that I could make market bags out of them, and bought another dozen. I made a couple of bags and they just looked too plain, saggy, and kind of sad - no posture, sloppy, gutterpunk. Not that gutterpunk is all bad, just that they don't spend money on these kinds of bags.

When we visted my Aunt Elizabeth in Kansas City last month, we saw amazing things that they are doing in her shop collaging vintage Japanese fabrics into new textiles, so I am trying a few tricks from her book, and I like how it is going.

I started off with a flat piece of twill from the coveralls. I cut strips and sewed them on in a woven fashion.

Running parallel stitching.

More parallel stitching

Finished effect.

The second piece was more freeform. We'll use these panels to make purses or some funky tool belts.

After washing and drying

Filed under // clothing inbox the shop

Posted April 20, 2010

New field bag design and story

ZeekoBag is an idea, a design project, a pursuit, and a philosophy. We sew because we need to - selling has been secondary.

That said, we want to sell these bags. Chronic dumpster-divers always need more space in their shop.

Talking to my friend and style consultant Quinn Comendant the other day, I figured out that if my bags were retailing for $100 in a shop, that I'd have to sew 12 hours a day, 5 days a week to pay my mortgage. They each take a long time to craft...

Quinn said "why don't you blog each bag, and give people an option at the end of the entry to click to buy that item?"

I like that idea. Each one of these bags has many stories behind it, and I like the idea of knowing where things that you put your money into come from. I like the idea that anyone slinging one of my bags could tell someone else a story about where their bag came from.

So here is a story about the bag I made today. If you like it, feel free to buy the bag - we'll throw in the story for free.

My buddy Tim is a firefighter in the Bay. He drives down there 2 days a week and works 48 hours straight. He says that if it is a rainy Friday, that they know that they will be out on the freeway. He doesn't like being out on the freeway. Tim hooked me up with the roll of hose, above.

The hose is double jacketed - the outer jacket is a tough, coarse-woven nylon, the inner is coated with rubber, and super tough.

I split the hose, and pull the layers apart, cut it to length, and wash it. Then I sew it onto a coated tarp. The tarp was cut out of a 'wildfire training shelter' - a replica of the tinfoil tents that you are supposed to crawl into if you are a firefighter being overrun by a wildfire. The tinfoil ones are delicate, and you are supposed to practice donning your shelter once a year, so they make 'training shelters' out of tarp. Anyway, the Forest Service invented a new kind of shelter recently, and they are throwing the old ones away, including the practice versions, so I scored this nice tarp...

It is waterproof, bonus!

After the hose is sewn onto the tarp, I trim it with webbing (army surplus bought by the roll). I trimmed the end of the hose with the end of the tarp, added some reflective webbing bought from an Ebay'r in Canada, and capped it off with a design cut from truck inner tube given to me by a local tire shop. I like using pieces with patches on them. I stitch a line around where I plan to trim to hold it all together, then trim it round.

I cut 1" wide strips of inner tube, and use this to trim the edge. Sewing inner tube is tough, as the needle gets so hot from the friction that it burns thru the thread. I oil the needle as I go, and this works well.

If you buy this bag or another one of our inner tube trimmed ones, you might want to armor-all the rubber it it starts to dry out, down the road.

I am trying out different ways to pad the strap - this one uses a strip of cotton-jacketed fire hose, and two layers of webbing capped with the Ebay reflective tape.

Main panel roughly complete, with flap strap attached. Next, I cut sides out of another kind of fire hose (rubberized) and trim them with webbing, rivet the strap and hardware onto them.

Now the hard part, which is sewing the sides onto the body of the bag.

Everything structural gets rivets - this bag has 32 structural rivets. This is much easier now that we have our press set up to punch thru all of this material.