Chapter 6

Day Six - Saturday

Don't know why, but I didn't have a hang over, not even queasy. I made coffee and went out to the patio. I cleaned up the empties and put them in the recycle bin then sat down to enjoy my morning's coffee.

I was sitting there thinking of the previous night when J.J. came running over. "Good morning Steve. Mom wants you to have breakfast with us. Come on, she's making pancakes."

I went inside and refilled my cup then followed J.J. to his house. The kitchen was busy with four kids and Kathy fixing pancakes. When I came in, Kathy looked shyly at me but smiled real big. She was wearing her giant terry cloth robe. I went to her and gave her a hug and kiss then turned to see the kids all looking and giggling at each other.

Barbara was looking at me smiling then she closed her eyes and puckered up giving me a giant air kiss. When she opened her eyes she broke up in giggles. Kathy saw Barb's antics causing her to laugh and blush.

I sat with Kathy and the kids to eat. Kathy thanked me for last night and said she thought we might have ended our night a little early. Either that or we should have been more active in the tub. We laughed at that while the kids wondered what we were talking about. When everyone was done, they said they were on their way to the recreation building for the Saturday summer play class. J.J. took the lead and shepherded the other three down the street. Kathy and I cleaned the table and washed the dishes discussing the previous night.

When I said I needed to leave to help Charlie this morning, Kathy came up to me and hugged me then turned her head up to me for a kiss. The kiss became hot and demanding. Kathy pulled back then started tugging me down the hallway to the big bedroom.

Kathy's robe was on the floor instantly as were my clothes. We were quickly glued to each other rolling around fitting together like two pieces of a puzzle should. This time I fucked her good then made love to her. I kissed every inch of her, softly stroked her entire body, bit softly all the tender places that needed bit and poked fingers into all kinds of private places. Kathy was in orgasm heaven when we joined the second time. This time we just kept sliding together until the ultimate moment overcame us.

As we lay on our backs, Kathy rolled to me and hugged me, throwing a leg over mine. "Steve, I have to tell you something. Jake was really the only man to ever make me feel that special way until yesterday, you made everything click. You scared me. You scared me so bad I wanted to hide from you. When I woke up this morning, I heard your voice telling me we were going to be special friends for a long time. For whatever reason that comforted me, made me know you were the one to make me whole, more complete for whatever my future is. You just did it to me again. You brought me to my utopian feelings again and again just now. I love you and I don't. I want to be with you but I don't want you for a husband. I don't know whether I'll ever want a husband again. I sure hope you understand all this cause I sure don't."

"You just put into words everything that has been going through my mind. You and me baby," I said like an old movie star. "We're gonna be lovers. We're gonna enjoy each other for as long as we can. It's for life Kathy, we're best friends for life."

"Best fucking friends I hope," Kathy giggled. "Now get out of here and go help Charlie. Better watch out for that little red head or she'll be having you on her break."

I went home, had another cup of coffee, showered, and drove my truck to the bike shop. Saturday must be a good day for them as the parking lot was full of cars, trucks and bikes. Jan and Dell were busy helping lots of customers as they were opening boxes of merchandise. Shawna saw me and waved me back to the shop.

I asked Charlie if today was going to be too busy for me to work on his stuff he told me what I was going to do was more important.

Charlie had a workbench cleared for me. I walked over to the oven to turn it on and found it hot. "The cracked head is already in there. Set up your welding equipment the way you want then we'll pull the head. I asked for some pot metal to test my flame. First I heated up the scrap cast aluminum with mostly gas and no oxygen. When I could tell the metal was getting close to melting, I started trying to make some drips run off onto a metal plate I had laid there. This was going to be tricky.

I pulled the head out of the heater and set it up sideways on a stand so I could get at the crack. I put the flame where it needed to be, gradually working closer so I could get the weld to meld the crack. Since the metal was hot, I was able to work it pretty well. I turned the head over and discovered the weld had almost gone completely through. With very little effort I was able to finish sealing the cracks and then recreate the ridge on the head where a new hole had to be tapped.

Now the real tricky part. I put that head back in the oven and took out the other. Charlie had some old pieces of head lying around that I was going to use for brazing material. The first thing I did was to get the junk metal near melting then get the area where the seat was to built up starting to melt. I was actually recasting the heads. I didn't know how well it would work but if it did, I will have saved some fifty-year-old equipment to have another life.

It took me two hours and four different heating intervals to build up the valve seat area enough so it could be machined to accept a commercial seat and guide. It looked like it might work.

I heated up the pan head cases and welded the cracks. I was getting pretty good at doing these. It was still scary as a cast case could explode any second. Completely destroying some salvageable equipment.

I finished and cleaned up the welding equipment then swept up all the debris and dust from welding. When I was done I took off my gloves and stretched. I was hungry.

Dell was looking over the work I had done on the heads, "I didn't think they could be fixed. If this works I'm going to start looking for old heads. Those things are worth a fortune."

He came over to me and shook my hand, "You are one damn good craftsman. That is some fine work. Hope you stay around cause I can never find anyone to do the delicate stuff. Can you wrench? I could use another guy."

"I'm not a mechanic Dell," I said honestly. "I'm just a welder. A welder on vacation."

Jan came back to the shop and said there was a couple pizzas up front. Come and get it. They had probably twenty pizzas out there with canned coke and beer for all the Saturday customers milling around. Charlie and I ate our fill then Charlie announced that he and I were going to Billy's, whoever Billy was. The others understood so Charlie packed up the heads and the cases and told me we would use my truck to go to Billy's.

Ten minutes later we were in a shop within a group of shops in what was kind of like storage buildings. This one was a machine shop, with some classy looking equipment. The oil company's all had excellent machine shops so I was familiar with good equipment. There was a skinny guy with a gimpy leg named Billy that was working on making some molds for plastic injection.

When he finished what he was doing, he turned to us, "Okay Charlie, introduce me and let's see this special project you were talking about."

Billy looked over both heads very carefully until he finally lifted one up and said, "I think this is the one that was cracked."

Charlie grinned and said he was right but was glad it took him so long to figure it out. "Do you think you can grind out the seat area so new seats can be pressed in tight?"

Billy inspected what he needed to do and finally answered, "I don't see any problem. When I start routing the hole and seat, I'll know whether the metal is good or not. That will be the test." Billy started clearing his big computerized machine. "Hang on, I have the program ready for this. Let me set it up and we'll watch it for a few minutes to see how the metal cuts."

Billy flipped switches, installed bits and routers at various places on his machine then set the head in place with multiple clamps using micrometers to measure miniscule movements. Billy squirted a little oil on the metal and then the drill bits before pushed the start button. The big machine delicately touched the area to be cut with the various tools cutting tiny slivers with each pass. A human would not be able to do it. This computerized machine could and did.

After almost a half-hour, Billy pushed the stop button then started measuring the cuts that had been taken. Next he took what looked like a kitchen measuring spoon of the slivers of metal over to a microscope and spread them over the viewing slide. A couple of minutes later he raised up smiling.

"Perfect, absolutely fucking perfect. This is going to work," Billy exclaimed. "If the other head tests out the same, I'll have these for you Monday morning. You have my cases?"

Charlie pulled the pan head cases out and handed them to Billy. He went over them with a magnifying glass, then used his micrometer to measure the main bearing seat. Billy looked up at me and asked, "You do this?"

I nodded.

"Good work. I'll have some more for you to do soon. What do I owe you for the cases, will two fifty be okay?" Billy was pulling out his big wallet on a chain.

"That's too much. How about giving me fifty and give Dell fifty for the use of his shop and stuff," I said thinking that fifty should be plenty.

"Dell owes me too much for giving him money to use his shop. You take the hundred and I'll owe you. Need something machined? I'll do it for you."

"Okay, thanks Billy. Actually I was helping Charlie out and wasn't trying to get commercial on you," I said shaking his hand.

Charlie and I headed back to Tampa V-twin with him lecturing me on the way, "You know that was too cheap. Two fifty for as good a job as you did on those cases would have been a bargain. Next time, just take the money."

I just shook my head, "Charlie, I'm on vacation. I'm doing a couple of guys favors, that's all."

"Well," Charlie said as we were pulling into the bike shop, "Shawna, Kathy and I may convince you to stay here instead of going back out on an oil rig. If we do, you're going to need to make a living. You're talented enough to do it, you just work too cheap is all."

Inside the shop Dell had some big blue prints out and was checking over some metal bars laid out on the floor. "Hey Steve, you ever weld magnesium?"

"Yeah, we use that stuff on oil rigs because it's strong but extremely light weight. You don't usually have to re-weld anything on magnesium as it melds so well. Hardly ever cracks or breaks," I said looking at the blue print.

Dell pointed at the blue print then said, "Look at this and tell me how much you would charge to make this."

"Looks like some kind of motorcycle frame," I said.

Jan had walked up at that point and said, "It is a motorcycle frame. A dirt drag bike frame. I'm forever killing frames and I'd like to have a tougher, lighter weight frame to win some races with."

I stared at the print for a bit and asked Shawna if she had a pencil and pad. I wrote down all the pertinent numbers then measured the raw material he had. He had plenty so I took a piece to his pipe cutter and cut off two, two- inch long pieces. Going over to his Mig machine I checked over the equipment then set up the two pieces of pipe with vice grips. I turned the machine on then pulled down my hood. I slowly drew a bead around the two pieces in a continuous arc, keeping the ridge to a minimum.

I shut off everything and put it away then took a hand file to smooth the ridge. I took the solid piece off the stand then went to a vice and tried to compress it. I couldn't do it, so I put one end into the vice and tightened it down then took a four pound hammer and hit it as hard as I could. Nothing happened. I had Charlie hit it a couple of times and he couldn't break the weld.

Turning to Dell I said, "You bought some good raw material but you don't have any raw flat metal to make up these other parts."

"You can't make those out of the pipe?" Dell asked.

"You just saw what we were doing. Do you think I can hammer it down? I could try your metal brake to see if it will flatten but I doubt it. Those tubes are manufactured to not flatten or kink. As it is, we're going to have to use some intense heat to bend the bars where it's needed," I explained.

Dell sighed, "Okay what size, how thick, and how much do I need."

I took my notes and wrote down the size of the blank plate that would be needed saying there was just one thickness used on the print throughout. Dell said he had seen that and figured a flattened pipe would work. I told him, I didn't think the plate we would need should cost more than forty dollars. He was saying, "Yeah sure. Those pipes were like two hundred a piece."

I was staggered, "Dell, can get your money back on the pipe not used?"

He looked at me, "I think so, let me call."

"Let me call the distributor I know and make sure of the price before you ask for a return," I said thinking I was correct but wanting to make sure.

Ten minutes later Dell was gladly paying a twenty-percent restocking fee. My supplier was twenty-five percent of what Dell had paid. My guy also threw in a new pipe bender he had that was used in conjunction with heat to bend the mag pipes. He even included the freight.

Dell came back and looked at me, "Okay, again. How much you gonna charge me to put this together?"

I looked at the prints again then thought about it before finally answering. "Dell, I made twenty-seven hundred and fifty dollars a week plus clothes, room and board on the rigs. Of course that was for seven days, twelve hours a day. This is probably going to take at least a week but I'm not going to work twelve hours a day on it unless you want to give me the twenty-seven hundred. You're not going to be giving me clothes and probably not feeding me three times a day so I think I would do this for you for about fifteen hundred."

Jan was smiling, "Deal. When can you start."

"As soon as we get the raw material. I need another copy of this print before it gets messed up so we need to take it to one of those blueprint copy shops.

Dell was sitting on a shop stool, "That's pretty high, fifteen hundred. Can't you do it cheaper than that?"

"Sure Dell, I could but to make it perfect, no. To do it right, no. I'm on vacation. If I wanted to make money, I could go back to the rigs and make twenty-eight hundred a week. Probably more now that my rating is up and my longevity has increased. Have you priced this with anyone else? Someone else might be cheaper."

Charlie was laughing his ass off. Shawna was sniggering and Jan was shaking her head with her hand over her eyes. Jan looked up at Dell and said, "Tell him Dell, tell him the truth you cheap fucker before I do."

"The race car shop here in town said they could do it for about four grand but it would take at least a month. They said there could be over-runs because of how precise it needs to be," he said this a little red faced.

"You're right Charlie, I'm too cheap. I need an agent if I'm going to do nothing but specialized work," I said getting ready to head out to my truck.

Dell jumped off his stool and asked, "Where you going?"

"Home," I said. "I can't do anything else here till the raw material gets here. Is there something else you need?"

"I guess not," Dell said. "I just didn't want you to leave and not come back."

Charlie jumped in, "And he's only going to charge you fifteen hundred, right?""

"Well it's Saturday and I'm planning on relaxing a little. See you guys later. I'm going to the store for some steaks," I said walking out of the shop.

As I was getting into the truck, Shawna came out and asked if she could come along. I said sure and she jumped in. We drove to the Kash and Karry which was the closest store. I bought a bunch of veggies and the steak along with some milk and another case of beer. Shawna had grabbed a cart and was busily filling it up with regular groceries.

Shawna was commenting, "I never get to grocery shop because we're always on the bike and I'm usually at the shop till late except when we plan on doing stuff like we did last night so we always end up eating take out something or getting a microwave dinner. With some food in the house, we can eat a meal for a change. Are you good at cooking a steak?"

"I like what I cook," I said.

"How about you cooking our steaks and I'll make broccoli and some baked potatoes and we can eat together. How about it?" Shawna asked.

"Sounds like a plan to me," I said smiling at the thought of all my new friends.

On the way home we went by the bike shop so Shawna could tell Charlie to be home by six for steak. He assured her he would be there before that.

I took Shawna's steak and put it with mine. I doctored it up with my special seasoning and Worcestershire sauce and let it marinate. I showered, put on some shorts and a T-shirt then went out to get the grille ready. About five fifteen, I started the charcoal so it would be ready for the steaks by quarter to six. I dragged my table out to the patio along with three good chairs. I set the table and put wineglasses out for a surprise. I had a real good bottle of red wine for steaks. I pulled a bunch of lettuce for salads and got that ready and popped a beer for my reward.

At five thirty, I heard Charlie roar in. Five minutes later he was walking over dressed like me in shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops. His hair was still wet from the shower. I gave him a beer and he plopped into a lawn chair. Charlie said that Shawna told him the veggies and potatoes would be over in about five minutes so I put the steaks on the grille and covered it. Just as I was about to flip the steaks, Shawna showed up with her stuff. I gave her a beer and put the salads on the table. We both told Charlie to come to the table for his salad.

By the time we had eaten the salad the steaks were ready. We stuffed ourselves with big steaks, baked potatoes, veggies and drank our wine.

"Damn, you'd make somebody a good wife," Charlie groaned rubbing his belly. "That's the best dinner we've had in months. Take lessons Shawna, so we can do that again."

"We don't have a grille Charlie," Shawna said. "Get one and I'll try. But why get one right away with Steve over here. We'll just buy the meat and I'm sure he'd be willing to cook up what we brought as long as he gets a free meal."

"I can do that. I don't think I want to eat steak every day but I know how to barbecue ribs and chicken too. We'll have to get some chicken soon as I love hot wings," I was saying wistfully.

Martin and Glenda came over and sat in the lawn chairs. Glenda commented, "It sure is good to have a neighbor with a covered patio. We all seem to congregate over here."

I got up and brought out five cans of Bud for every one then quickly picked up the dishes and took them into my sink. When I sat back down I said, "Shawna, we didn't think about desert. We should have bought something."

"I have just the thing," Glenda said and got up to go to her place. When she returned she had a big chocolate cake, plus a hand full of paper plates and plastic forks.

"Oh Glenda, I love you," said Charlie drooling over the cake.

Shawna was equally happy, "I love chocolate, especially chocolate cake."

Glenda cut and served everyone, which required another round of beer.

Shawna said for the rest of us to sit and relax, that she was going to wash the dishes real quick. When I told her not to worry, she said she was going to make helping fix supper worth my while and went in. Glenda followed her and us guys could hear the dishes being rattled around inside.

'I heard how Glenda and Shawna made up last night," Martin said. "I'm glad those two got together. They're both a little kinky and they will enjoy each other."