I made the journey up to Killeen and went to several Army surplus stores. Most of them had a bigger selection of stuff than I remember in stores I had visited before. Lots and lots of new/used clothes too. Army combat uniform (ACUs), battle dress uniform (BDUs), chemical suits, parkas, winter jackets, synthetic underwear, wool underwear, formalwear. Boots, lots of boots too. I like buying used military stuff for work clothes, it’s cheap and still durable.
The two stores that stood out to me were Surplus City and City Surplus. Surplus City was right off Ft Hood property and where I went first, the largest of the stores. They had a decent selection of used rope, netting and canvas that could be handy for Burning Man. Great deal on used hemostats, three for $5; at Fry’s they’re $7 each. Handy things to have for odd electronic projects. City Surplus was a small windowless building; I didn’t think much of it until I went inside. Floor to ceiling of clothes, it was packed! This is where I found and bought a traditional shemagh (keffiyeh).
Back in Austin, I went over to Nathan’s and started to work on the vise project. It took a couple of rods but I finally remembered how to SMAW weld. The comedy of the situation was that Nathan was working on fuel injectors on his fixer-up Subaru while I was welding and grinding a whole eight feet away. Drilling the 3/4″ holes for the pins was tricky. Whenever I’d try to sink the bit, it would wobble and try to walk all over the metal. We slowed the drill press down to 200 RPM, which helped some. The sheer amount of torque being applied was causing the entire drill table to vibrate. I had to ease the bit down while applying light pressure and either hold on to the work or the shelf to cut down on the vibration. It wallered out a huge chunk but eventually settled in a spot and drilled through.
I decided to weld in some bracing underneath the vise platform and make it removable. I figured having an upright piece would be useful somewhere down the line and keep my options open. This thing is solid and may be over-built. Its first test was bending the 1/2″ re-bar for the carrying handle. No welds broke, yay.
It needs to be disassembled and painted, but here’s the final product. I also need to round off the corners of the plate, I stabbed myself in the leg last night carrying it around. Outside of the Land Rover project I don’t know how much I’ll put it to use, but it sure makes for a great blog entry right?
