Or, "How life got behind me in an instant".
Many of us have a diverse set of hobbies and pursuits apart from amateur radio and electronics in general. For as long as I can remember I've been involved with making things. Metal and woodworking, welding...creating from raw materials. Before I got involved with radio communications on a whole-scale basis, most of my leisure time was spent crafting fine-scale models. The lion's share of these were railroad oriented. Rolling stock, structures...one needs tools to build this stuff.
One of the favorites of the 70s era was a Dremel "Moto Shop". This saw and accompanying accessories were also sold under the Montgomery Wards "Powr-Kraft" and Sears trademarks.
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My mother got the Ward's version of the saw for me for my 14th Christmas. The (coincidental) birthday present was the accessory kit - flexible shaft, extra blades, grinding and sanding points, a buffing wheel. The kit was back-ordered from Wards' warehouse and literally took three months to finally arrive at my doorstep. Every day I'd run home from school and check the front porch to see if the postman had dropped it off. It was around this time of year that the long-anticipated package finally showed up. I could finally get to work.
A lot of models were made with the help of that Moto-Shop. When I began playing with electronics, the outfit got pressed into making the odd component, cutting and finishing PCBs...it even saw duty doing some motorcycle-repair activities.
Alas, "commercial duty" it isn't. Eventually, the coupler on the flexible shaft broke and the sanding arbor froze itself to the PTO, rendering the saw useless as anything but a saw. When its motor finally gave out - around the time I began to reconfigure my workshop in the late 2000s - the saw was thrown away. The remaining bits, points, collets and other useful items were kept and stored with my newer Moto Tools, of which a decent collection had been acquired.
'DSG's father passed away in 2011 and I "inherited" his Powr-Kraft saw along with a lot of his other power tools. Same as mine but an earlier - possibly a little more robust - model, and in excellent shape. But no related accessories save the sanding arbor and disc were to be found in his old workshop, and Dremel has long since discontinued the kit.
eBay's your buddy, though. In searching for blades for the saw (also discontinued) I came across a Sears-branded accessory kit from an estate sale.
Walking around the house this morning, I spotted a package left on the front porch. As when I received the first kit, I opened it up and took careful inventory of the parts. And like the first, none of the various drums, discs, bits and points have ever been used.
40 years passed in the blink of an eye. Or so it would seem.
Maybe this is why we like our old radios, cars and similar items: They take us back.
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Originally Posted by n0km
