Back home from Bellevue, WA

Back home again after a long day. The auction was a lot of fun but it veered off the rails into amateur hour on some of the items. The power hammer I was looking at needed a full rebuild (bearings were shot, clutch was Bubba'd badly and stuck) and someone had tried running it with cold metal (this can dent the dies and a dented die will transfer its dent to any hot object you are working with -- dies are available but a set of two costs a couple hundred bucks.) There were a couple other blacksmiths and a knifemaker that were bidding on it with me; I dropped out at $800 and some poor moke got it for $2,600. You can buy a fully reconditioned one put back to as--new specs for about $3,500 so this was way too much money. The motor mount had also been Bubba'd -- the dies are rotated at a 15 degree angle so you can work standing to one side of the machine and you can have as long a work-piece as you want. The people who had mounted the new motor on the hammer had mounted it on the same side that your workpiece would stick out so you would always have to watch what you were doing. The original (and correct) mounting is to have the motor on the right side or at the base of the hammer... Arrrggghhh.... A couple of other pieces also went for way to much $$$. I did manage to score some nice storage bins and the hardware that went into them, a very good machining right-angle for milling, and some other stuff. All in all, a good day!