That'l teach ya!

Hi all,
another successful session yesterday!
Lynbrook Danny, George and Myself started the day off removing the north side windows before being joined by Ronnie and Gerard. After the 17 windows were removed, George removed the inner wall panels from the south side and we all helped to remove the cowling from the upper window frames. We also removed all of the aluminum luggage racks which effectively completes the removal of everything inside of  the Ping Pong Coach.

All the while this was occurring, I had Gerard and Ronnie take all of the cross members which Fred had fabricated out of the Ping and clean all of the grease and grime from them and hit them with a coat of clean primer. This will ease the weld up and finishing when they are installed in a few weeks.

As if the day could not get any better, as I pulled up to the gate before 9am, I received a call from CJ of C&J Dustless Blasting who wanted to come up to do his test patches.
SO! Hell yes!!

I set up some scaffolding to test the roof and after he showed up and suited up, he began to measure out 1 foot by 1 foot squares on the car sides and inside of the car in order to time the testing. Shockingly, each square only took 27 seconds which he said was great!
Also shocking was the fact that the roof was NOT covered in a rubberized paint and was easily removed.
Everywhere he did test blasts, everything came off including the rust. When he was done, he took measurements of the car in order to formulate a quote which we hope to have this coming week. IF it comes back within our budget, he will be awarded the job.

For those of you who do not understand what sandblasting is, here is a short primer---
By using high pressure air to blow a media (sand, glass, metal) onto any metal surface, the media hits the surface and removes anything on it to leave just a slightly textured clean metal surface. Unfortunately, this also produces a ton of dust which is hazardous.

CJ employs a new technology called "dustless blasting" which is fairly new and catching on where the media is suspended in plain old water so there is virtually NO DUST and this method does not need tenting. Tenting the car could add $20-$25 thousand dollars for material and labor.
When the job is done the dry media can simply be vacuumed up with a shop vacuum.

Under "Normal" circumstances, an additive will be put into the water to keep the metal from rusting for about 72 hours. However, we WANT the metal to rust as we plan on painting on Loctite Extend Rust Converter which changes the rust to a stable component on which we can then paint on primer and finally a finished paint coat.
This product has been in use for many years in many industries and has a proven track record. We have, in years past, also used it and will attest to its functionality.

Next week, I hope to be able to continue working on the cab of #35 with Fred Rubin and get our electrician up to give me the final orders of wire for the Turntable. We now have most of the pulling tools and need to get this done!
We also will have Steve T picking up the balance of our steel need for the PPC at our supplier Acquel sheet metal in Harlem NYC.

Yours in spirit
Gary

PS-since this is MY blog, I want to shout out to my best friend of over 40 years who lost his life to cancer last week. Jimmy, I love you and miss you. The world lost a good guy and I lost my best man.

To anyone who may actually read this blog, if you smoke, at the very least, PLEASE get chest x-rays. If Jim would have gotten them last year when he saw a new doctor for a physical, the doctor would definitely have found something and it would have given him a fighting chance for a few years or more with his grandson.
I got to spend the last week of his life at his bedside.
Hoisting a Heine for you pal.

Now all we have are great memories.
R U in 82