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« Last post by vtsteam on November 16, 2025, 05:40:27 PM »
I dunno, I guess because I've been saving so many things like that over the last 25 years or so, that I've come to realize I will never have time to make even a tenth of it into something useful, and so now am in the process of getting rid of stuff. Also, I've reached the point in making things that I have all of the tools needed to make anything I could imagine, right up from melting raw metal, to casting, through any kind of welding brazing soldering, blacksmithing, fabricating, operation to get to whatever it is going to be.
So the question is, what am I going to make with all this stuff? Well, probably continue on down the line of hot air engineering I've started already -- winter seems to be the time I return to metalwork, and that time is approaching again now. But I have no imagination left for tools -- which Bill, your scanner guts look like prime materials for. But in my present dull state, I can only see a lathe in it, which doesn't seem like a score of 10% on the imagination scale.
Now if I were starting out again with no tools, I'd be very excited about that possibility. I still have a little bit of wistful envy re. a gear hobbing machine, having long ago wanted to build a Jacobs after reading an old set of ME articles on it. But little about your scanner cries out "gear hobber", but maybe I'm too mentally lazy to see it now.
Things I'd really like to do, but may never achieve at the rate I'm going:
A steam powered wood splitter (nope, your scanner highly unlikely material for that)
A wood powered steam or hot air engined outboard motor
A "kitchen sink" Henry Ford engine, belted to a generator, running on wood gas
A highly roadable portable tiny houseboat
A small sailing Cape Cod style catboat
Before any of that--- get a working shop in order. And heat for it....
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