Today’s Run:  5.50 miles

We last found my husband winning the coveted Mass Spectrometer.  We brought that home a week ago in the back of our 1985 Ford F150.  The people from whom we won this gem loaded it into the truck using a fork lift.  Four fork lift loads of stuff.

Since then, to pass the time, my husband has been dismantling his beloved Mass Spectrometer.  He has had to take it apart bit by bit until it was light enough for me to be able to help him lift it out of the back of the truck.  He has been a busy beaver and the truck bed is now empty and the garage is now full of parts.

There are quite a few pumps, valves, etc that he has posted on Ebay.

We took 55 pounds of stainless steel to the scrap yard this past Wednesday.  He was given $22.00 for his stainless steel.  I called it his winnings.  He called it earnings.  Either way, we went and bought ourselves malts at Sonic to celebrate.  He has three more dollars to go to break even for what he paid for the Mass Spectrometer.

This has been a fun project.  When he has a break from work or in the evenings I will hear the power screwdriver going Bzzzz, Bzzzz, Bzzzz.  There will be a pause and I will hear a “clink” noise as he drops some screw, washers and whatnot into a bucket with other odds and ends.  This has been going on for a week now.

Tonight was different.  Instead of the Bzzz, Bzzz, Bzzz of the power screwdriver I heard Bam! Bam! Bam!!!  Puzzled, I went out the the garage.

There was my husband with a chisel and hammer.  He was pounding transformers in half!  I asked why he was breaking transformers and he handed me half a transformer and said copper.  Then I understood and got to work.

The lining/coils of a transformer are all copper.  Copper wire of different thickness and copper sheeting…lots and lots of copper.  Copper is valuable these days.

He finished breaking the transformers while I started separating the copper from the sticky stuff and paper linings.  We put the copper into a bucket.  We ended up only doing two transformers but accumulated one bucket full of copper!  Not too shabby!

So, next thing (probably tomorrow) we will head back to the scrap metal place and get some more money for our copper.  Maybe another trip to Sonic for malts?  We’ll see…