"Blessing" the lathe, and the fix-up
- Micha Strauss
- Nov 26
- 4 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Good fortune! For sure!
The story of how we got "blessing" the lathe is one I must have told you before, but just in case here is a short recap.
This lathe was thrown to the metal garbage back in 2012 because it was not good for metal lathing anymore, we saved her from the metal garbage clearing truck that was supposed to come and take her away by a few hours! Good fortune!!!
Then, we transferred it to our studio and made the slide-in fairly easy with the help of some good good friends!
After a few hours, "Blessing" the lathe was up and running!
It took a few thousands of $ to fix her up but it was worth it!
She has been turning prayerwheels ever since, day by day... with no complaints! What a blessing she is!!!
Day by day, she turned prayerwheels, but she had a clutch problem from day 1 but I was too afraid to open her up... there are no more parts for these machines and if we break something while trying to fix her, no going back... all prayerwheel production will stop, who knows for how long...
Yesterday came the day. We had no choice. We had to open her up and see why she is not preforming as good as she did before...
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"No worries! we will see what she needs and give her the best treatment!"
You all think that prayerwheel makers are these amazing people that are holy and benevolent, but you are thinking of Buddhist enlightened masters! We are just regular people... we deal with ordinary things… like money, machines, running a business, do accounting, website maintenance and so forth... making prayerwheels is much more than just the prayerwheel at the end... there is so much behind the scenes...
Yesterday i called up Ayelet's brother Tomer who is a master machinist after I told him what needs to be done.
"No worries! We will see what she needs and give her the best treatment!" was his answer and we decided to meet at 16:30 in the afternoon and take her apart and see what is the problem.
And so we did!
After much work and parts removed and cleaned we realized that after so many years of working, one part is worn down so much, it does not reach where it should anymore and now the clutch is slipping.
I need to find a way to "fill" this gap where the part has been "eaten" by time and use.
I decided I will make this part on my own.
I went to the factory in the community and went to talk with the technical storage guy and see if they have an old piece of brass.
My fortune was unreal! As I was looking for him in the aisles I found him in the last one, at the very end, sitting down and counting parts for end of year inventory... he was happy to see me and as I was explaining to him what I need, I could see that in the box right next to his leg is exactly the part i need !!!!!
"Can I have it?!" I asked him.
"Sure!!!" he replied...
And in less than 10 minutes I was on the scooter back to the studio with my new brass ring!
Now, I need to lathe it to the correct size...
Lucky me, I have a metal lathe!!!!
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How about that!
After the new part was made I put the whole machine back together and checked if it is working... it made some noises that it did not do before and the shaft was heating up (it should not do that) so I stopped, checked what was wrong, realized I put one ring backwards (always put everything the way it was!! hahahahaha!) turned it around and, Poof! The machine is working!!!
All is back to normal!!!
How about that?!
Tomorrow i will set the whole room back to its original layout and resume (hopefully!!!) the crafting of the prayerwheels!
I waited 13 years to fix Blessing the lathe, and now she is back to her "normal" self and will resume normal life tomorrow and craft prayerwheels once more!
So, hopefully, tomorrow morning we can resume crafting!
Much love to you all and always remember:
Make the most of this day, your life, this world… all of it!
It all ends so quickly… and we take nothing...
Micha
(and Ayelet of course)
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