Learned listees,
HELP! HELP! I have created a HUGE MESS.....actually huge messes!
The school my 3 little boys attend has a late 1930's 37mmAT gun that they
use as a saluting battery for their drill and parades. It had been sitting
out in the Texas sun for a long time and was pretty weathered. One wheel
was rusted out. I decided it needed attention before some mother started
pressing for th"eye-sore" to be junked. Over the summer, I brought it home
and with the help of my 3 guys, removed little rocks and seeds that had
been lovingly placed in every hole and crevice on the gun by schoolboys,
got a new wheel, removed the old paint, re-primed it, painted it a WW2 OD,
put the school crest on the blast shield, fixed the traverse mechanism, and
finally GREASED IT! The only problem that I could not solve easliy was a
bushing on the traversing mechanism that would be driven out of place as
the gears turn in the traversing mechanism. The school had their first
parade of the year coming up and wanted the gun, so this problem was left
unresolved. We returned the gun on 11/3/00. AND IT LOOKED GREAT!
It turns out that the grease may have been an error...especially in
combination with the bushing..I had overlooked the the dangerous
combination of little fingers and grease. The little fellows naturally
traversed the gun in their play and thus pushed the bushing out. With the
bushing out, the grease that we packed in the traversing gears oozed out
when the guyscontinued to traverse the gun.....little fingers go to the
grease.....little fingers then are cleaned by smearing the grease all over
the blast shield, the barrel, EVERYWHERE!
I WAS AMAZED AT HOW LITTLE FINGERS HAD PAINTED THE GUN WITH GREASE!
Can anyone suggest a good way to get the grease off? I thought of
something like GUNK....but it takes the paint off.....
boys and their toys....live and learn,
dean
*****************************************************************************
Dean L. Kellogg, Jr., MD, PhD
Department of Medicine
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
7703 Floyd Curl Drive
San Antonio, Texas 78229-3900
(210) 617-5311 FAX (210) 617-5312 e-mail:kelloggd@uthscsa.edu
******************************************************************************
d
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 03 2000 - 20:29:53 PST