• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

RE's top rack thread

IMG_20130824_135744_335_zps96e0c7df.jpg

IMG_20130824_144528_870_zps3d987508.jpg
 
fairbanksak's rack in progress:
IMG_20130826_143100_897_zps3e4f0d2f.jpg


and bluegopher's:
IMG_20130826_144843_173_zpsb4e49f08.jpg


I bet I'm about out of Argon gas today... I drove my damn diesel an hour to Deming to pick up a bottle that the welding store claimed to have. Got there, paid for it, pulled around back to load it on the truck and then was told 'I guess we don't have any argon... the computer lied".
I'm never going back there.
 
After the debacle, I'm never going to the Airgas welding supply in Deming anymore. I drove 2 hours to Las Cruces, and got a big bottle of argon today. $325 to own the bottle and filled. The cert on the bottle is good until 2015 so I'm sure I will have this bottle emptied by the end of the year and trade it off for a new one.

IMG_20130827_220527_333_zps8bf6d8b6.jpg


So 2 weeks ago I placed an order on the USPS website for some flat rate shipping containers to send these racks in since the local post office didn't have any. I placed an order for 10 boxes.
Well they arrived today:
IMG_20130827_121031_092_zps74b02c0c.jpg

What USPS failed to inform me was that there were 25 flat rate containers in each 'box'.
So they delivered to me 250 shipping containers. Wtf.

I gave 25 to the welding lab at the university, 25 to my bro-in-law. Now I'm down to 200.
That's a lot of racks.
IMG_20130827_215943_471_zpsb669d20d.jpg
 
Clete said:
It sure looks good
Click to expand...

Thanks! Abby's is done and will be shipped hopefully tomorrow or the next day.
I will finish fairbanksak and bluegopher's racks hopefully this weekend and get them shipped.
I'll give them a few weeks to tell me how difficult the install was, and see what kind of torture they will take and if anything breaks. If no serious changes need to be made to the design, I will come up with a final price based on materials (specifically the cost of argon), and shipping.
During those few weeks I need to get going with some projects of my own, which include finishing construction in my shop, shelving for storage, and helping the wife finish the nursery.
Hopefully I can get that done during the few weeks Abby, fairbanksak and bluegopher are testing the racks for me.

So far I've invested $850 into the construction of these racks with purchasing equipment (TIG torch, gas cylinders, gas, amperage pedal, consumables and a regulator). It will take me a few racks to offset that cost then I'll probably be done with building them for a while.

I have a lot of catching up to do with gunsmithing, reloading, motorcycle,auto maintenance and my somewhat understanding wife who doesn't see me for days on end, so I imagine probably around 12 of these racks will be built this year, or ever.
 
RuggedExposure said:
After the debacle, I'm never going to the Airgas welding supply in Deming anymore. I drove 2 hours to Las Cruces, and got a big bottle of argon today. $325 to own the bottle and filled. The cert on the bottle is good until 2015 so I'm sure I will have this bottle emptied by the end of the year and trade it off for a new one.

IMG_20130827_220527_333_zps8bf6d8b6.jpg


So 2 weeks ago I placed an order on the USPS website for some flat rate shipping containers to send these racks in since the local post office didn't have any. I placed an order for 10 boxes.
Well they arrived today:
IMG_20130827_121031_092_zps74b02c0c.jpg

What USPS failed to inform me was that there were 25 flat rate containers in each 'box'.
So they delivered to me 250 shipping containers. Wtf.

I gave 25 to the welding lab at the university, 25 to my bro-in-law. Now I'm down to 200.
That's a lot of racks.
IMG_20130827_215943_471_zpsb669d20d.jpg
Click to expand...

Well then, I think your math is a bit off. The way I see it is you only have 198 more racks to build.
 
RuggedExposure said:
I can't imagine building 198 more racks... I'd need a bigger shop.

But a bigger shop means more tools... :thinking:
Click to expand...


More tools, LOL. I was out looking for an "L" set of torx yesterday. They don't seem to exist in Tucson. I saw some online reasonable, and my BMW Dealer has a custom tool kit that has a nice set in it.

I just got my sandblaster nozzle yesterday, so now I have to go dig out some dirt, so I can expand my garage, to have a place to set up my sandblaster. More tools=More work play.
 
Looking forward to beating the hell out of this thing.

How much do these weigh, anyway? They appear to be a perfect mix of built-but-not-overbuilt.
 
RuggedExposure said:
fairbanksak's rack in progress:
IMG_20130826_143100_897_zps3e4f0d2f.jpg


and bluegopher's:
IMG_20130826_144843_173_zpsb4e49f08.jpg


I bet I'm about out of Argon gas today... I drove my damn diesel an hour to Deming to pick up a bottle that the welding store claimed to have. Got there, paid for it, pulled around back to load it on the truck and then was told 'I guess we don't have any argon... the computer lied".
I'm never going back there.
Click to expand...

I do not see where your hose clamps attach :excuseme:
 
I hope to get fairbanksak and bluegopher's main hoops welded to the mounts this evening, then rotopax straps and tie-down hooks welded on tomorrow evening. Paint Sunday and hopefully mailed out Monday.

As long as I get out from work on time the next few days!
 
Allen said:
What is the going rate for these beauties?
Click to expand...


Not exactly sure yet, it all depends on if they make it through testing without any hiccups.
If nothing needs to be changed, I'm thinking the base rack will be $180 + $10 for shipping.
And it will go up from there depending on if you want the Rotopax straps, and how many tie-down hoops.

I'm not setting anything in stone yet until I see if these things can handle the stress.
 
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