Page 21 - Abraham Lincoln Hearse Narrative

SECOND PROGRESS UPDATE ~ SEPTEMBER, 2014 ~ ERIC HOLLENBECK

Barry, “Look what I found!” Anthony & Johnny having fun looking.
to the scrap yards it was all steel. Mountains of steel and
somewhere in a corner would be a little aluminum pile.
Today it’s mountains of aluminum and very little steel.
After a couple of wide eyed hours seeing “COOL” stuff
everywhere we found just the ticket for our needs; buckets
of aluminum pistons. These were perfect and our luck was
changing.
The next day we decided to melt the pistons and just
200 lbs. of pistons.
pour ingots rather than fight the patterns quite yet.
While the boys poured ingots, (200 lbs. worth) I called the train buffs and talked
with a fella who was doing some casting for them. He came down to the shop and we
talked. He had brought one of his patterns with him to show and it turns out we were
casting far more elaborate patterns than he is and we were all about at the same stage
of expertise (i.e. EXPERIMENTING). We told
each other we’d keep in touch and he left. Later
that night it came to me. His wood pattern was
all painted and very smooth where our patterns
were raw wood. Holy crap, we’ve been fighting
the wrong end of the dog ~ it wasn’t the sand, it
was the patterns sticking as we removed them!!!
After shellacking the patterns we were once
again on a roll. I have to give it to the boys and
their military training, for through the darkest
hours the words “give up” were never in their Our Ingots.
vocabulary. They had their position and they held
it; we did prevail.
We have now cast all the corner finials
and the half finials, complete with their bases
and saucers, and we have started on the column
capitals. We now have all eight saucers and seven
first sections done, including their leaf “hats”. You
go guys, we’re doing great.

Here is our progress.

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