~~ME~~

The last week or so I have been cleaning/rearranging things in my shop for a new arrival. On Friday my wife and I drove to Provo, Utah to visit my friend Birk. Recently he had acquired a couple of Atlas shapers. One was complete and the other was parts. The complete machine was in pristine condition. It quickly replaced his old shaper. Birk had a friend that was restoring a old shaper. The parts machine had nearly every part the fellow needed. How lucky for him.
This left Birk with a "extra" shaper\o/ He told me he would like to trade me something for it. Something small and unique. I had an old clock that he was interested in and a deal was made\o/ My wife and I Left On Friday morning, for Provo. It's quite a ways. It took 3.5 hours to get there. We had a great day visiting with Birk and his wife. The shaper was loaded onto my motorcycle rack and strapped down. We hit Rush hour traffic in Salt Lake City and the return trip took 4.5 hours.
Yesterday I put a stand that I bought together. I wasn't happy with the bolts supplied so I went to the bolt store and got some stronger ones. Put everything back together and started cutting out some straps to make cross braces so the stand would be a little stronger. I drilled holes in the ends and rounded them so they would look nice.

Forgot to square things up. Loosened the bolts and racked everything back to square. Luckily the straps were too long and there was enough metal to work with. Got that all straightened out and started on the wood top. I cut and router'd all the edges and screwed the top to the table. I wanted the top shelf to be closed in. I tried a couple Ideas but weren't happy with how they looked. So I gave up on that idea for now. I cut out some Angle iron and drilled the legs to make another shelf 4" off the floor. I still have to get some wood for that.
Here is the shaper all loaded up.

A friend came over and we slid it down a ramp onto my little cart. Birk and I loaded it the same way.

Yesterday afternoon I hoisted it onto my table after moving some more stuff. I didn't get any pictures of that

I was tired and I didn't want to get my camera dirty. Today I'll get some more pictures. I need to make a wrench to run everything and mount a vice.
Birk assured me that this shaper was already trained and knew how to do everything. He had owned it for 40 years he said. I feel very fortunate to be able to take care of it now.
More later....