Tuesday, March 21, 2023

5 years ago the former armored 1950 Cadillac limo of President Einsenhower, was bought from a museum to be a wedding limousine, but ended up damaged on the way home with the buyer



According to police, the accident occurred on the A5 between the cities of Heidelberg and Karlsruhe. Two vehicles collided in the left lane, one of them was thrown onto the central lane, where the Cadillac were being towed. The trailer unhooked and overturned

every trip to Las Vegas is an opportunity for me to make a stop at my favorite pizza place

One's on my plate, the others are spaced out to cool down so I can eat them faster
Marghareta with pepperoni and mushroom, 16" is about 31 dollars
 


two locations, one in downtown Vegas near the Stratosphere, at 241 W Charleston Blvd

 and one just off the 215 at Ft Apache, between Russell and Tropicana at 5270 S Fort Apache Rd

It earned the 2020 Gold, AND 2021 Readers Choice Award for best pizza in Las Vegas 




this was cool and interesting at Con Expo... a booth where you could get your photo taken, wearing a hardhat, on an I beam, and pose either goofy, or like a hard worker

 



I haven't seen similar photo booth at the other 4 conventions I've been too, that allow attendees to pretend to be a worker in the industry (cosplayers have unbelievable photo ops at D23 and Comic Con, but that's not the same as a worker in the industry)

Black and Decker / Stanley - owners of craftsman hand tools, announced they are closing the only factory that made them in the USA.

We were lucky to have had the experience of good tools, with a perfect replacement system, for the little time it lasted. 

Your good tools in your toolbox are now going to mean something else, as less quality cheap imports might be taking over the industry. There won't likely be high quality, low expense, guaranteed replacement, hand tools made in the USA again. 

We were the last of about 4 generations to experience that, and unless you stock up at estate sales, ebay, and auctions, what you can pass down to future generations is out in your tool box. 

2008 (14 Years Ago) – Sears’ Craftsman tool catalogs proclaimed that “All Craftsman sockets and wrenches are proudly made in the USA.”

Some Craftsman and Craftsman Professional tools were not made in the USA; Craftsman pliers were made in Germany, and Craftsman hacksaw was made in Sweden.

2010 (12.5 Years Ago) – Sears started introducing imported Craftsman hand tools:

2012 (10.5 Years Ago) – Sears discontinued Craftsman Professional and many USA-made hand tools.

2013 (9.5 Years Ago) – Sears launched new imported Craftsman Professional tools, shifting from USA to import suppliers across many product categories.

Sears was replacing formerly USA-made Craftsman hand tools with similar-looking imported tools. The new versions were widely considered to be inferior.

2014 (8.5 Years Ago) – Sears describes Craftsman as “America’s #1 brand of mechanics tools.”

Many long-term Craftsman tool fans had grown very dejected about the brand.

2017, January (6 Years Ago) – Craftsman Brand Sold to Stanley Black & Decker!

2017, March (6 Years Ago) – Stanley Black & Decker Pledges to Bring Craftsman Tool Production Back to USA

2017, July (6 Years Ago) – Stanley Black & Decker Acquired Waterloo Industries, a USA Tool Storage Manufacturer. Waterloo manufactured most of Sears’ Craftsman metal tool storage products.

2017, October (5 Years Ago) – Stanley Black & Decker announced that they would “leverage existing & expand US manufacturing footprint” and drew focus on their “capability to build upon legacy.” 

2017, October (5 Years Ago) – Craftsman and Lowe’s announced a new partnership.

2018, April (4.5 Years Ago) – Under Stanley Black & Decker, Craftsman launched their first new mechanics tools.

2018, August (4.5 Years Ago) – Stanley Black & Decker relaunched the Craftsman tool brand.

2019, May (3.5 Years Ago) – Stanley Black & Decker announced a new USA factory for the production of Craftsman hand tools, a 425,000 square foot factory in Fort Worth Texas, where they planned to produce Craftsman mechanics hand tools, including ratchets, wrenches, sockets, and tool sets.
  
2020, March (2.5 Years Ago) – Craftsman teased that new USA-made mechanics tools and sets were “chroming soon.”

2020, December (2 Years Ago) – Craftsman announced that “more top-drawer tools are coming soon” and that they would be covered under a lifetime warranty.

2021, July (1.5 Years Ago) – Stanley Black & Decker had begun hiring machine operators in the region of the new plant.

2021, Fall (1 Year Ago) – Craftsman launched new V-Series tools at Lowe’s. These are premium (imported) tools that strongly resemble tools from Stanley Black & Decker’s Facom and USAG tool brands, which are popular in Europe and other regions outside the USA.

In late-2022, Craftsman said that the factory was open, operating, and producing tools.

Today a Craftsman executive stated that they expect for the factory to be closed by mid-2024.

There are a lot more industry magazines in the construction trade than I would have guessed, from used equipment sales, to how to improve businesses and increase expansion and better methods

 








there were a lot more kids at Con Expo than I thought there would be, but Volvo was ready, and had excavators of 3 or 4 various sizes for them to test out

 obviously, NOW, I realize I should have got photos of the other ones... they were all smaller than the 250, of course, but only this one was MADE for the convention - the others were production line models that Volvo sells 

the industry choice award winner of the 2023 the Innovative Product Awards, a cement mixer automatic washer


because the truck needs to get really clean so concrete doesn't dry on it, decreasing the pour rate, and creating concrete adhering to places you don't want to chip concrete out of




sometime rare occasions I meet great people and see they are doing good work making good stuff and just want to do what little I can to help get the word out about their company and product. 

mobile and self erecting concrete plant.. who'd a thunk it was even possible?



there was a big variety in booth draws, from a photo op lifesize bucket to a platter of cookies


interesting way to put the schwag out to lure attendees into a booth, put the company name on squeezy toys, that are supposed to look like boulders, in the dump bed of a scale model of mining dump truck

well said


To celebrate the end of the recent, and likely the last muscle-car era, Mopar is selling the 1,025 horsepower Demon 170, the world’s first 8 second factory-production, street-legal muscle car


It will not have a black key fob.

In 2015, Dodge shocked the world with the 707 horsepower Hellcat. 
Then in 2018 they did it with the 840 horsepower Demon
now they are doing it again


 
Improved Supercharger: Modified 3.0-liter supercharger upgraded with a larger snout with 105mm throttle body, and 3.02-inch pulley increases boost pressure 40 percent over the Challenger Hellcat Redeye Widebody 

Fueling Horsepower: Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 achieves full horsepower output through high ethanol fuel blends: horsepower levels are determined by sensing the percentage of ethanol fuel content

Driveline Upgrades: All-new driveline with 240mm ring gear, 53 percent stronger differential housing using aerospace-grade metals, rear prop shaft 30 percent stronger and stronger half shafts 

Massive Drag Radials: 315/50R17 Mickey Thompson ET Street R drag radials — never offered before on a production car — and Mickey Thompson 245/55R18 ET Street front tires deliver extra force on the strip or street

Production will begin this summer and will be limited to at most 3,300 units, with 3,000 for the U.S. and 300 for Canada. 

Current owners of the original 2018 Challenger SRT Demon who secure a dealer allocation for the new 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 will also be given the unique opportunity to match the same vehicle identification number as their original Demon when finalizing their order.

airplanes vs trains, 1929

 Flying magazine July 1929, https://books.google.com/books?id=H0TpzoIY71wC&printsec=frontcover&rview=1&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

The Wall Street Journal just did a nice look at how Bring A Trailer got started, and how it rose to it's current eminent status as a fixture in the car auction business, and a great alternative to the Arizona auction tent events




Hearst bought BaT in 2020, and doubled it's sales in the next year, probably due to people stuck at home shopping online

Roland Stickney was the premier illustrator of luxury automobiles in the early years of the Classic era, during the 1920s through approximately 1932, and was staff illustrator for LeBaron, Brewster, Judkins, and Rollston






it seems no one is sharing them online that I can find so far though, the above I've verified, but not the below. I'm pretty sure it's Stickney's work











https://www.ebay.com/itm/285092827276

1927 Lincoln Model L, English Coaching Brougham by Judkins



For the 1927 New York Salon, both Locke and Judkins built carriage replicas. Locke's offering was the Louis XIV French Brougham, while Judkins was inspired by Abbott & Downing’s famous Concord Coaches.
Built for Lincoln on a 1927 Model L chassis, it was called a "English Coaching Brougham", and was without a doubt, Judkins most famous vehicle.
Built for exhibition by the Ford Motor Co and was based in part on an old horse-drawn coach that was on display at Henry Ford's Wayside Inn. 
Designed by John F. Dobben in cooperation with Edsel Ford, the car was also shown at the 1927 Chicago and Los Angeles Salons.

Dobben remembered visiting the Wayside Inn at Sudbury, Massachusetts, to see the old coach that was on display which Ford stated was the one "in which George Washington and Lafayette rode." Dobben also remembered traveling to the old Abbot-Downing plant in Concord, New Hampshire with John Judkins to get a photo of an actual Concord Coach to use as a model for the Lincoln commission. Four or five pencil sketches of similar designs that used both the Concord Coach and the one at the Wayside Inn were presented to Edsel Ford, who picked his favorite which became Judkins' English Coaching Brougham.

The interior followed the pattern of earlier coaches, with seats and doors cov­ered in tufted dark green morocco leather, and headlining of red plush. The ceiling had an additional coverlet of lace, which could be detached and washed. Small hammocks of hand-knotted string, like fishnets, were provided to hold the passengers' odds and ends, as on horse-drawn Concord Coaches. The exterior was finished in coaching yellow and black, with coaching vermillion striping.

It was much admired by Mrs. W. C. Fields at the 1927 New York Salon but remained unsold until the wealthy father of Ethel Jackson, an aspiring movie actress, purchased it in 1928 for publicity purposes. Unfortunately the car didn’t help her career – she appeared in only three movies, 2 1935 Bill Cody B-Westerns and un-credited in 1936’s After the Thin Man.

In 1931 it was sold to the MacMillan Oil Company for use in promoting the Beverly Hill Billies, a popular radio vocal group unrelated to the stars of the 1960s TV show. W.C. Fields did get to ride in it later, when it was used to promote one of his movies, 1932’s Million Dollar Legs