Since last posting on this blog I've gotten very involved with a new Makerspace here in Mobile. This article is intricately related to "making" and what I expect the Makerspace to mean to myself and many others in my area.
Mobile Makerspace
A legacy of Making
My grandfather was a maker.
I
went to my grandmother’s house this afternoon. I used to live there and
never got a chance to move my workbench after I married. I’m hoping to
move it and start using it again soon. I built it for versatility,
hoping it would useful for metalworking and woodworking and lots of
other tasks. It was built to last using 1 ½ inch steel angle.
My
uncle helped me make it almost 10 years ago. He taught me how to prep
and weld the angle, how to measure and make sure the angle was straight
and right after tack welding it, how to manage the heat and warping.
Welding requires a lot of processes, discipline and prep work to come
out right. You can tack any old steel together (in general), but making
it straight and right is the real trick. I fully believe the welds in my
workbench are 100% fused and hitting the bench with a train wouldn’t
break the welds (ok maybe my uncle’s are 100 and mine are 95).
- Workbench in use. I was attempting to build a motor driven spotlight for a friend.
- My CRX engine resting on my bench as I installed the flywheel and clutch.
- These
four pics show a very ambitious woodworking project that involved
bending wood. The bending setup resting on my workbench..
My uncle learned to weld from my grandfather.
My
grandfather passed away when I was 11. I wish I could say I really knew
him well, and that he taught me all these things. That wouldn’t be
true.
Which brings me to what reminded me of him. In my
grandmother’s yard my grandfather used to have a HUGE workbench. He had
built and modified the workbench. It rested underneath a huge tree, one
of the particularly large branches had a chain and winch block chained
to it. It’s not there any more. My grandfather would spend all day out
there mainly working on lawnmowers and doing odd welding jobs. He had a
van that had tools and parts in it. He had a huge engine driven welder
that was too powerful to use. He worked on his own cars, lawnmowers,
Tvs, appliances.
Before he got injured he worked in the shipyard
climbing the ranks of welding and pipe fitting like many men in Mobile,
before that he had worked in factories. Before that he was a sniper in
Italy in WWII helping American forces retake the Italian peninsula. He
lost his little toe in the war, he would never talk about it. My
grandmother loves to tell the story about when he was a kid, he and his
brother took apart his mother’s sewing machine and put it back together
successfully with no manuals or instruction. At the time a sewing
machine was the most complex item in any given home.
In my
childhood I was very inquisitive. Very very inquisitive, constant
questions about everything, everybody hated this. Everyone still does.
So I would go out to “work” with my grandfather, then get sent back
inside because he “didn’t have time” to answer the continuous stream of
questions. So I would go inside and make paper air planes and draw ships
and engines and air planes and inventions. My grandmother being very
patient while she worked on her sewing jobs. So I learned a lot more
from my grandmother than from my grandfather.
All the same his
genes passed down to me. I love to weld. Making a car work is something
that I relish. Making and modifying tools is a continuous obsession for
me.
“Making” and Makerspaces never existed during my grandfather’s
life. I’m certain that given an opportunity he would have loved playing
with CNC machines and arduinos and blinky LEDs. Having a makerspace
would have meant getting into a shared shop with more tools (for that
matter: a roof) than he could provide alone, and access to learning what
other members know more about.
I
looked at my bench for a few minutes working on it some with a wire
brush. I came to find a lot of the rust was just surface rust stuck on
top of the paint, a few strokes of the brush made it fall off and
revealed the paint. The bench is not pitted badly or structurally
compromised (if you see the pics, the bottom portion was made from
crappy bed frame steel, I should probably rebuild that portion). I had
big plans for this bench, and still do.
We also have big plans for Mobile Makerspace. Stay tuned.
If you are interested in learning more about our Makerspace please click the links below:
Mobile Makerspace
Mobile Makerspace Google+
