Auction fun!

Even with pending fnu, I took today off to attend this auction: City of Marysville. The city had purchased the land and assets of a much-loved local sawmill and allowed the parent company to strip it of anything it wanted -- much of which was recycled to other mills they had. All that was left was a bunch of small stuff and the "big iron" machinery. The city will be using some of the buildings for shop space but will be converting the property over to parkland in a few years. The property is located on a riverfront and is a good choice for a park -- gorgeous views and as I was attending the auction, a Bald Eagle perched on one of the pilings just hanging out watching for the odd fish to swim by. I came back with two bandsaw blades, an older DELL PowerEdge server, a bunch of very nice chipper blades and some electrical components. Here is a photo of a bandsaw blade similar to the two that I bought: To give you a sense of scale, the blade is 12" wide and 1/8" thick. The blade is 31 feet long. My blades were located four stories above ground where the blade shop used to be -- they would hoist the blades up to the shop and then use trapdoors to lower them down to the various saws on the mill floor. Since the building had no power to it, I had no hoist and the stairwell had several 90 degree bends. My solution was to drop it off the roof. The security/safety officer from the Auction company warned people to stand back and I had quite the audience as I let these puppies fly. Each one weighed about 80-100 pounds and is made from high-carbon spring steel. They bounced a few times and then shimmied on the ground for a good fifteen seconds with the most wonderful sound. I wish that I had brought my camcorder to record this. The people below made the appropriate Ohhhh sounds... I will be using these as blanks for knife-making. The level of carbon is critical as too much will make it brittle and not enough, you cannot hold an edge. I did a quick test this evening and these blades are perfect -- I heated and quenched a strip of the metal in cold water and it snapped cleanly when bent in the vice. Properly quenched in oil and then tempered, it will hold an edge for a nice long time but still be able to bend and be bumped without fear of breaking. The chipper blades are much thicker steel and are an air-hardening tool steel. Tempering these will be a bit trickier. Also, they are much thicker and will need a lot more work to turn into a blade. The steel is superior though and these will be some nice pieces to grow into. A few more pictures: Overall view of the mill grounds


Logs come in through this debarker and are cut...


...by this custom cutting saw which is operated...


...by someone sitting at this console.
Quite the number of controls and it is
all intended to be operated by one person.
A nice low pressure,
entry level position.
All in all, a fun day, just don't anyone tell Jen about the speeding ticket I picked up on my way there. Was doing 70 in a 60 zone. So was everyone else, I was just the person he chose to pull over. Dang!