A Sleigh Ride

   You have to know that my thoughts on Black Friday maybe shocking for some.   I wonder how one can be sucked in so by the commercial industry.   They create this idea that shopping is fun.   So much fun that one would stand in line at some rare hour of the night waiting for the doors to open so they can race in only to find that the item they wanted is already sold out.  (Since there was only one available at that price and it had already been picked up.)   What about Cyber Monday?   It's as if one desires to sit in front of your computer screen and look for items that you really don't need but maybe today they are on sale and you will buy one.   Why?   Because you think you are saving money?  Duh!    Who thought that one up?  
    I don't have the best of things, but I have to say that I pretty much have a lot of the toys that I want.  Once in awhile I dream of another tool or something, but I'm at a point I can get by with what I have.    When writing my maintenance blog a couple of weeks ago and I discovered that the micro adjuster on my Bosch router quit working,  I contemplated the idea that someday I might look for another router, but I can still make the one that I have work.  Then on Cyber Monday there was this Amazon e-mail.   I have never bought any tools from Amazon before, but I thought I would just check into the routers they had listed.  Hmmm.    They were listing a Bosch router that normally sells for $439.00 ($225.00 would be more like it) on sale for $189.99.    Also, if I ordered it today (Cyber) I would get a $20.00 discount.    Not only that - I would also get free shipping.     (At this point, I was starting to lose control.)    I clicked "proceed to checkout" just to show those cyber salespeople that I was in control and could easily walk away from this by hitting "Remove".    That was when I discovered that if I applied for an Amazon credit card I would get a $50.00 gift certificate  to apply towards my purchase.   Wow!  Do you know how bad I need a micro adjuster on the router that I will be using in the future?  Bad!   Really Bad!!!    (Sucked in. I can't wait till next year.)

    This was a fun little project for this week.   The picture to the right is after I had power washed the sled.   The sled was given to me in hopes that it could be repaired.    The sled itself was in good shape, but there was a built-on seat that fit into the back.   A seat that you could fit the little padded infant seat into.     I wish I had taken a picture before I had power washed the sled.   Apparently it had been in the family for some time and was stored in a shed somewhere.   It was a little dirty, but it also cleaned up very nice.

   The seat was in pieces and if you look at the picture to the left, the six pieces in the upper left hand corner were the only pieces that came with the sled.   The other pieces are pieces that I made from scraps from the old wood pile.   Since I did not have all the parts, I had to guess as to how the seat was built before it fell apart and pieces were lost.  

.      The picture to the right shows the new seat mounted on the sled.   It is made so that one can remove the seat if they want.   They can even adjust it so the seat will move back a little.    I did do a little touch up by spray painting the runners and the braces of the sled.   Also I put a little spar vanish on the wood parts.    I did not get real elaborate with the painting and the varnishing.   I did enough to hope that it provided some protection from the weather.  

   There we go!    The handle is such that you can use it to push the sled or it will flip forward and you can pull the sled.   I should have painted the handle as it looks a little rusty, but I did not.   I ran out of time.   The blue carrier is such that you could put a baby bundled up in there and take the infant for a ride.  If the child is too big one would have to remove the blue padded carrier.   Hopefully after all these years of being stored in a shed, some little grandkids will have fun when grandpa takes them for a sleigh ride.  I will have to get this back to its home before the first snow fall.