My buddy and intermittent partner rents space in the old Remington Arms factory for his shop. I keep many tools there and use the shop for some of my own projects and mutual projects. We have lumber stocked in 4 narrow target ranges with access to the central shop. Dave asked one day if I had been using any of the poplar from the hall range. When I said no, why, he said it had been shrinking lately. I accused him of old timers disease, whereupon he did the same to me. After lengthy mutual abuse had been shoveled out, I convinced him I had not used any, and he convinced me the pile had been up to the fluorescent arrow on the wall.
Of course, the lighting in the ranges is virtually non existant, so we navigated by flashlight primarily. One day, weeks later Dave told me he had solved the mystery. When I asked how, he said he installed tubes in the fluorescent fixtures, and amazingly they still worked after all those years. So he insisted I look at the evidence immediately. Expecting foot prints in tar (from the roofers occupying space near us) or something equally incriminating, I was naturally surprised to see this:
The lumber pile had indeed been shrinking, despite gallant efforts of the cardboard powder kegs or whatever they are, that we found abandoned all over the place, and had been using to stack lumber. This is obviously what happens when a uniformly distrubuted load exceeds the compressive strength of a cardboard keg foundation. Shame on Dave for not thinking of that in the dark, and jumping to paranoid conclusions. Though his estimate of the “missing” poplar was pretty accurate.
As can be seen here
When sitting on a powder keg, never be hasty and jump to conclusions.
Clampman
Replies
Too funny! Thanks for a late-night laugh, that was a good one.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Hope the piles still sat high enough for him to crawl under and hide!!!
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled