Objectophelia

I love my '56.  What can I say.   I remember the day I saw it's picture on Craigslist. It wasn't a good picture, not like the ones I was planning on taking, but it was enough to get me to drive  45 minutes and drop the $275 that was supposed to go towards feeding my children.  My plan is get a professional to come and take some pin up style cheesecake shots of it for the "Naked Tools Of '56" calendar I am planning on never making.

This machine was originally purchased by a general contractor but was apparently too heavy to bring to job sites so he kept it for his rarely used basement shop.  When he sold the house, the saw stayed in the basement.  The new owner hardly ever used it but respected it nonetheless.  I don't think the thing moved more than twenty feet in 50 years.  And now it is my responsibility and I am questioning my worthiness.

I bought it last year and moved it from the contractor's basement into my leaky garage, where it continues to rain long after the raindrops have stopped falling outside.  The result was a fine coat of orange rust.  It haunted me in my sleep.  The tip tip tapping of the Portland raindrops on the roof above our bed should have been soothing and relaxing but all I could think about was the poor saw that was slowly deteriorating on my watch after 50 years of being pampered.  

I had to sell it before I let it completely disintegrate, so I cleaned it up for the hoc block. I wanted to sell it to someone who was worthy.  I wanted to find someone who would be angry at me for the care I had not taken and just give it to them out of shame.  Someone cool enough to handle such a trophy saw.  However, in the process of caressing those solid state lines with naval jelly and rubbing the machined surface with wax, I rediscovered the attraction that originally hooked me.  So I cleaned it up, got a brand newly sharpened, used blade and a new belt and now it is sitting out in my leaky garage, in the rain, looking and working great.  It hums like a science fiction movie.  It is like having my own locomotive.  I love it. 

Please excuse the sloppy photoshopping on the above picture.  The teeth on the fence track are tedious and I am a busy dude.  My wife probably thinks I am looking at porn because when she walks up I close the window on my computer screen. It is really because I don't want her to catch me spending hours painstakingly tracing the details of a picture of an old rusty saw when I should be doing something important.