"Orange Crush" now lives in Montana!

[Ed Caffrey]

Cindy and I finally made the trip up to Jim and Bev Clow's in Alberta, and I brought home "Orange Crush", a rolling mill, and the power unit. For those who don't know, Jim is a master fabricator and welder. We met several years ago when he came to my shop for a Bladesmithing Class, and have been great friends ever since. "Orang Crush" is the 80 ton forging press that Jim built, along with a rolling mill, and a power unit that consists of a 4 cyl Kabota diesel engine, a great enclosure, and a huge fluid tank.

Cindy took a day off work, and we headed north on Friday morning. We made a brief stop to visit with Jay Kemble in Milk River, AB, then scooted on up ot Jim & Bev's.

Friday Jim forged out a few "cans", and on Saturday we got serious about loading things.

Here's a pic of the power unit without the covers:


After scooting things around, to level out the load, everything got strapped down and ready to roll:


When we took off from Jim's about mid morning on Sunday, I wasn't sure my ford F150 was gona pull the load! I finally got it figured out that if I stayed at 55mph, things went smoothly.....so 55 it was. Generally its a 4 hour trip, but with the load we took our time, and ended up home just shy of 6 hours later.

Everything is safe an sound at my place....


Now the "work" starts....gotta get it all unloaded, in place, and make a few mods to both the press and rolling mill. I suspect the rest of this month will be getting everything in order. Since I'm moving stuff around the shop, I'm also gona take the time to replace the oak ties under the air hammer.....THEN.......PAR-TEY in the shop!