Trying is dying

Well.... I made it another year older and if you don't know I am 72 years old.... or maybe its 27.... either way I feel old in the bones...

Thanks for the birthday wishes...

I was standing around and I said to Gabe, lets build something really really rad that no one seems to think is a good idea or safe, something we can build in a day or two and take to Salton Sea to have fun with for my birthday and with all the friends from LA.

We thought about if for a few and we came up with a crazy idea to build a new flame thrower but making it powered by people to keep it more of a team builder and involvement...

Well, How would we tackle such a thing....

The more I stood there thinking the more I realized why not go backwards and build something that's suppose to put out the fire.... Like a fire pumper truck.... to shoot flames... now were talking....

But its just toooo easy just hooking up a motor to it and sitting back and shooting flames, one person can do that, and the idea was a team builder so the more I thought...

Got it!

Build something like a 1800s Fire pumper

With the fuel taking the place of the water

Some different examples of styles

It would take a full crew to make it happen back in the day, pretty neat to think of this beast throwing flames....

 

So we started with a new style of the hand pumper just freestyling...

I can't just build what has been built... that's no fun...

 

We decided what would be cooler then making it kinda like a engine and making the people the pistons and have it hand cranked as opposed to hand pumping vertically...

Heres what we tried...

First we did some sketches of what madness was in the brain...

Using some stuff laying around we made a fixture and started making a hand crank.

We used some laser drops from Seaport Stainless  = Free

 

Gabe is welding up some of the Brown and Sharp Cams we got from Edward Koehn Swiss Machining , these would be links to the tube we had left over from the Oakley Project = Both Free

Action shot for the ladies

We had these vertical steel tubes from a old Red Bull prototype ramp we built that never worked..

Free !!!!

Gabe did a sweet job cutting these holes in line...

Did you know hes in school to become a machinist now?

And is now CERTIFIED as a level 1 Machinist

I think I am a level 2 so I will watch the level 1 and ask questions....

Tacked up some sweet bearings and holders we got from

Performance Machine that get put in their motorcycle wheels, these were some leftovers from R&D

Ok... Well I didn't take many photos that afternoon because my camera went dead so heres where it went to next... A swiveling gunner seat and the Hawl Pump mounted..

Hes been waiting all year for photos like these so he can put them on facebook

He should have been a gunner in the Army...

That chair was in the trash.... so we welded it to a giant lazy Suzan bearing left over from a bar stool..

Both free 

Having a good stop for the swiveling seat I used the axle sticking out.  

Heres a side view...

 

Ok so that night I made some stuff on the gunner seat...

I was on one of the possessed fabrication nights where all I wanted to do is build... Wait... that's every night...  

 

That's some old garage door bearing rollers I cut apart and just welded the bearings on to make the gun have movement in 360 degs.

That pressure washer gun I found in the recycling at the Exploratorium because it had cracks in it...

FREE!!!

This is a shot of the wood chain guard which was a backup for a exhibit at the Exploratorium called Echo-Tube and the pump was found during the move out of the old museum, Dave Fleming and I found some really good stuff while packing up.

Close up of the brown and sharp gears that I got from the Koehn Machine shop and the big monster #50 sprocket was from when I did R&D work for Clorox, it got the wrong bore in it...

FREEEEEEEEE!!!!

Close up of that sweet pain job and pump....

Sweet 1" aluminum pipe over 1" steel tubing...

Perfect for a handle grip.

 

As you will see that's some left overs from Greg Minnaar's Bike Shop racks...

The propane tanks are held by a sample of an aluminum sail boat mass

You can see the sweet bearings in the gunner swivel at the top left of the photo.

both ----   FREEEEEEE

The seat was mounted on this giant Stainless Steel Gate Valve I found in the recycling at the Exploratorium.

I cut the back and shaped it so it didn't hang over - custom & FREEEEEE

Those are engine puller ( cherry picker ) legs at the bottom with wheels, Some one stole my cherry picker from my shop ( classic Oakland style ) but they forgot the legs.. so that week we decided it wasn't going to return so we welded the leg on the bottom, That engine puller was free so I can't complain... Making those Legs FREE too

Overall shes a sweet piece of scrap metal all welded together...

I can't say it was the best idea....

Gabe even painted his truck to get ready for the flame thrower... !

 

Then... I got a hernia and my intestines dropped in to my ball sack...

Fuck that.... I had to go get surgery for my birthday...

So much for going to desert...

and the dream of blowing minds shooting flames...

The healing process in California is styling... My titanium hand made pipe got used for a few days...

 

Well... I am resting these days but it was a bummer we didn't get to go to the desert and test.... Maybe soon...

Check out these videos to get a good idea of what we built.. 

 

This video shows us running the pump at full speed, its bypassing pressure and is not easy to pump...




We didn't have any water left in the tank for testing...

Enjoy - and don't get burned.... Until next time....