The first day of Spring was a bust.
I want to finish the basement, but it’s packed to the gills with … stuff.
Stuff we don’t need. Boxes of it. Piles of boxes of it. Stacks. Shelves. Surely we don’t need all of it?
We had a marathon sorting session. Mary sat on a chair, and I brought her dusty box after dusty box after dusty box that we sorted into piles called Keep, Give, and Ditch.
We culled a heaping truckload for a dump run, and on the way home, I finally bought some arctic char at the fish store. It was delicious.
A surprise in every box.
So it was in the spirit of downsizing that I took a hard look at the, um, last rusty motorcycle I’ve got taking up space. Right now, it’s just a chassis mounted on casters, 3 cardboard boxes full of parts, a drawer full of pieces, and a seized engine. It takes up a fair amount of space, and it’s fair to ask: Is it worth keeping? Am I rrrreally ever going to find the time to put it back together? Do I even want to?
It’s a pretty rare bike, but it’s in pretty bad shape. The answer is obvious.
Keep it! Put it back together! Make those cardboard boxes, the drawer, and the engine disappear! Close out my motorcycle era with a Hondamatic!
So I tore apart the engine.
But first, let me bring you up to speed. Back in 2017 (ish), I’d finished the Suzuki, and I was looking for another bike to work on. I hadn’t found the Kawasaki yet, and I stumbled upon a Hondamatic in a scrap yard. Hondamatics are the Edsel of motorcycles. They have a two speed transmission, a hydraulic drive, and no clutch. The concept was as popular as as the rotary engine, and not many were made.
Mine is an ’81 CM400A that must have been crashed not far from the lot where it was bought, because the frame was bent, and it still has the rubber nubs on the tires.
I couldn’t fix the frame, but I found a new one on ebay and, during the pandemic, I got as far as fixing the brakes before I lost interest and set it aside. And now that I’m trying to downsize, it makes a lot of sense to finish the job before I ride off into the sunset.
So stay tuned. You might be hearing more about this.
Celia came for a visit. The boys are adorable.
No idea which one this is.
I made another spiral dresser.
White oak, 7 drawers, 50 inches high, 18×18 id, 0.85 degrees per inch, with graded drawer heights from 5 to 8 inches. It validated my new math and put my rack and pinion cross feed to the test. Everything worked. I made way fewer mistakes than last time, and I can see that a powered z-axis, a beefier spindle, dust control, and better g-code are a must if I’m going to get this down to a dresser a day.
Working on it.
Serial number 3.
Sorry. Not much of a blog this month.