Here is an interesting summer project that Arthur Shealy has roped me into helping him with!
He has acquired an old Cane press that he is going to rebuild this summer. He plans on having it ready by the fall harvest season.. for what, you ask? He has also planed a quarter acre of sorghum! So, if all goes as planned this fall, we are going to have a sorghum press and boil this fall at the Shealy plantation. It sounds like it will be a regular down home party! It is an old press, one that needs to be powered by a mule.. Arthur has said that he knows someone with a mule, so we should not only have the press, AND the cane, but also a power source for the press! It really sounds like some old fashioned fun.

Here is what it should resemble when it complete.




Below is a picture of the second step of the rebuild.. (the first being the disassembly) We are removing the rust from this antique! And doing it in a interesting fashion if I say so myself. A scientific method! We are going to use electrolysis to convert the rust back to steel! This process does not actually add steel to the rusty item, Rather it makes the (former)rust easy to remove, without doing any more damage to the desired piece of rusty metal. This is a picture of our setup. all those items in the back are pieces we need to rehabilitate.





I also have some video of Arthur explaining the process.. I will add that later, I have to edit it first.

Isn’t this interesting?
OK, now all I have to do is get my wife Kathi to understand why I want to plant a couple hundred square feet of sorghum in our back yard.. 🙂

Posted on 7 May '09 by , under Uncategorized.