Against All Oddities: Car Storage Part 7

Things are gradually starting to come together out here at my industrial-foundry-turned-car-commune. The other day, my contractor friend, Bryan, walked in the door and said, “There’s a vibe in here now.” I too am noticing an emerging culture … and clean work areas with tools for my renters! So what’s changed since the last installment in the Troutman Foundry saga?

For starters, my wife, Dana had our baby. His name is August, but we’re calling him “Gusti” (pronounced goose-tea) or Auggie for short. I played merely a contributing role. Gusti’s arrival has completely reframed, well, my entire life. But if we’re speaking exclusively about the effects on the foundry project, it means I have to delegate. A lot. At this point, there are many people invested in the success of this little community, and we’ll all be damned if a little man in diapers stands in our way. (He is, it must be said, distractingly cute.)

On an artsy branding tagent, I hired a local artist (brother of my banker, Thom) to draw the place. Thom does sketches of historic homes in the area so I figured why not immortalize the foundry on T-shirts and work wear? Would be a fantastic conversation starter around town, right?

Needless to say, he did a phenomenal job. I did get to thinking though, what else could we incorporate that’s really unique to the foundry’s current life? How about a burning fork lift? Thom sketched something up, what you see below, and I absolutely love it. Before long, we’ll start spamming the town the town with burning-forklift merch.

Now, back to less cultured things … like drainage. There is a kind of hydra effect with a big project like this; fixing one thing merely spawns two or three issues, albeit easier to rectify. As soon as the gutters were installed and drain pipes extended away from the building, it rained a solid two inches. About a quarter of that ran through a wall with the force and stream of several urinating cherub lawn statues.

The main cause? Water couldn’t make its way down the slope thanks to a massive amount of coal and dirt buildup, further worsened by miles of Virginia creeper vegetation and dozens of century-old doors and windows.

The two or three problems, easily resolved, turned into five or six. In order to get to the dirt, a massive collection of left-behind architectural salvage had to be moved. To get to that, 40 feet of chain link needed to be Sawzalled down. Protecting that was a mountain of trash, rotten wood, miles of vegetation. Who knew project management could be so complex? Oh well, I started with the fencing to see if I could skip a step. As luck would have it, some scrappers popped by and we worked together to hack back all of the creeper and grape vines holding the fencing in place. Wanting to save my energy for taking multiple pickup loads to the county dump, I turned them loose on a mountain of scrap. In one very sketchily loaded truck and trailer, we piled in anything magnetic. Job successfully outsourced … mostly.

As far as moving the architectural salvage on to someone else, friend Thomas volunteered to move all 32 doors, 24 windows, and hundreds of tongue-and-groove boards and strips of molding off to the Historic Salisbury Foundation, which volunteered to take them! Job done.

That left me with the undelegatable task of shoveling rotten wood and trash into Fuggles. I typically try to pile high and strap, à la 1970s National Geographic. (After all, they charge by the truckload.) This questionable bending of the rules attracted the attention of a dump attendant, a nice woman named Frog. Initially skeptical, by the third visit, we exchanged phone numbers as she had interest in seeing the foundry … and she was a notary. (Saved for future reference.)

Now, with the fencing and large trash gone, that left me with dirt and small trash. I lined up 3 of my 4 municipal bins and started separating the wheat from the chaff. Shovel by shovel, I picked out all remnants of Cheetos bags, Styrofoam biscuit and gravy breakfast platters, and chunks of rotten hardware. We heaved the cleaned dirt down the hill.

After about four hours of that, a friend of mine (who also happens to be a tool company rep) dropped off a 3600-psi pressure washer. Sweep by sweep, I was able to rediscover the beautiful concrete under the good half inch of silt. Digging small channels to again route more of it downhill, the water finally started to run clean off the slab. All said and done, a far larger chunk of concrete appeared than I ever knew existed. So now what? Well, this looks like a good beer-drinking patio to me—with plenty of room for an air compressor that is out of shop earshot.

Ah yes, this all started with getting water from a higher place to go to a lower place, right? With such scope creep always a risk, I turned my eyes back to real drainage tasks. Channeling my inner Australian outback cattle station owner, I fashioned a large gutter out of scrap wood and corrugated steel to prevent puddling water at the base of a tree.

The delegating part was for how to remove said tree. Not willing to risk life and my own limbs at a time where I was arguably more valuable than ever, it was dutifully chopped by licensed and insured professionals. As a last ditch short-term-fix in the wake of Hurricane Helene, I jammed a bucket in a freshly dug hole at the worst of the back wall ingress, stuffed it full of Nissan sound deadening, and evacuated the remaining water from the foundation wall.

In other news, fixing The Towmotor aka Towmaybe forklift has been on the top step of our kanban board for quite some time. Thomas has been tasked with cross-referencing all the not-so-easily-found tune-up components. For some odd reason, the ignition system of this Continental N62 doesn’t match up with that in the extremely common (around these parts, anyway) International Harvester Cub.

After much trial and error (and apparent hammer breaking) the components from a Willys Go-Devil 4 seemed to fit. During my lunch break, I completed the restoration of the burned wiring harness and plug wires. With any luck, it’ll light off this coming week after the gas tank gets boiled at Statesville Radiator. Three cheers for old school businesses and someone who can cross reference parts! Hip hip!

The next big push? Electrical work by someone who is licensed and won’t shock the crap out of themselves. This meant getting two more exhaust fans up and going, as well as an attic fan in my office, plugs in the floor upstairs, three-phase plugs for the mill, a row of 220V for the welders, and even more lights. In total it was about six days of work for friend-of-the-foundry and licensed electrician, and now all dark corners are illuminated. A brisk breeze EVEN flows through when the huge three-phase fan switches are thrown. Bring on the fab shop!

As far as shop air goes, we now have the electrical hookup and have a few minor details to work out prior to getting shop air up and running. Once the electrical gremlins are chased out, the building’s central air lines can be gradually repaired.

Now, with a kid in my arms, the tiny scraps of work I’m able to do at the foundry (other than working in my office one day a week) is next to nil. The hard work is mostly done, though, and we’ve got a team of guys at the ready to carry on maintenance and car projects. If I did this right and proper at all, it should maybe leave me with some time to expose young Gusti to why I started this whole undertaking: enjoying the cars and enjoying the people.