brainwagon

Okay, as part of my ongoing attempt to clean my garage (“Project Virtue”) I called up some friends from the Chabot Telescope Maker’s Workshop. I had a pile of telescope making supplies that frankly I’m not going to live long enough to use effectively, and I thought that I would try to get rid of some of this stuff. They ended up hauling away a bunch of tubing, some blanks (both totally raw and some ground) and various bits of hardware like focusers and mirror mounts.

Frankly, I was hoping they would haul away more, but it appears that I’ll have to do some work to get rid of some of the more “specialty” items. I’ll probably write up some of the others later, but today’s post will focus on this:

This is an Elgin Model No. 2-12, Serial Number 9120. What, you may ask is that? It’s a dual spindle grinding machine for making optical components. This machine was in the Telescope Maker’s workshop at the old Chabot Observatory where it sat mostly unused for years (I can’t remember anyone actually using it) and when the telescopes were moved to the new science center location, I decided to save this machine from the junk pile, and took it. My guess is that it probably dates to the 1940s or so, but I could be wrong. I’ve been unable to find any information about the machine (feel free to contact me or comment if you do know about them.)

It is amazingly, ungodly, heavy. When I naively said I would take it, I went over to the machine and have it a hard push on one corner. It didn’t budge. So, think I, “it must be bolted down.” Uh, no. It wasn’t. I never weighed it, but it’s got to be north of five hundred pounds. It is astonishingly heavy and sturdy. Luckily, when I took possession, my friend Ken welded some heavy casters on the bottom so that it was possible to wheel the machine around. I recall he also donated the use of his heavy pickup to bring it home. Where it has sat ever since.

It has two spindles, each powered by a separate motor and having a separate power switch. I hesitantly plugged it in and with some hope gave the switches a flip. First, the good news: the right spindle fired right up. The bad news? Not so much for the left spindle. I can hear a faint electrical whine, so I suspect it might be something as simple as a starting capacitor for the motor. I haven’t investigated further.

So, here’s the thing: does anyone want this thing? Realistically, I’m not going to invest the time and energy to get this thing tuned up in and in use, so I’m looking for someone to give it a new home. If you can spin me a good story as to why I should give it to you so you can make cool stuff with it, and show up with a U-Haul, some straps, and a ramp and some burly friends to help out, I will almost certainly let it go for free. I live in El Sobrante, CA, so this is probably of interest mostly to people in the SF Bay Area, but perhaps people farther afield might be interested.

Feel free to pass links to this post anywhere you see fit. Contact me via email, or my twitter handle @brainwagon.