Murderer ----- Original Message ----- From: Dan Rossi To: BlindHandyman@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 12:06 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Death of a Shopvac.
In my last email, I made mention of my poor, undersized, thoroughly abused Shopvac. It was a rather small unit and I asked much of it. I vacuumed up tons of plaster dust and debris, cement debris, tons of wood chips and saw dust. It was starting to have issues over the last few months. It would occasionally squeal here and there, and rather than spinning down nicely when turned off, it would make some rather wretched sound and stop pretty quickly after power was turned off. During the cleaning out of the down spout, I knew my little Shopvac was on it's last legs. The bearings must have been going. It screeched and pleaded with me to stop, but I needed to get the down spout cleaned out before the next major rain. The little Shopvac even puffed out a cloud or two of smoke. After finishing the down spout project, I retired the Shopvac to the basement for a much needed rest. While cleaning up the basement over the weekend, Teresa said that she was going to use the Shopvac to vacuum up all the dust. I told her the Shopvac was dead and she should leave it in piece. She insisted it still had some life in it. She started vacuuming happily along. I could hear the tortured shrieks of the bearings and smell the smoke, but Teresa was going to get the last out of that Shopvac. I kept waiting for the dust in the bucket to catch fire, but it never did. Finally, the shrieking stopped. Teresa was vacuuming along one moment, then there was a final, rather short squeak, and then nothing. The bearings had seized solid. I laid the vac to rest at the curb last night. It gave it's all. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (412) 268-9081 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
