Secret Underground Laboratory Recovery & Salvage

08/11/2026

This week marks the 7th anniversary of the Lab in our present location. For the first five years, my Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon held its place by the door, a beacon better than any neon Open sign. The Lab's regular hours are Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, but customers know the wagon by the door means Bron is in the Lab. It became a Government Street landmark.
It was March of 2025 and I had picked up some work at a customer's home. On the way back the engine caught fire. For the morbidly curious, the oil pressure sensor sprang a large leak and sprayed the exhaust manifold. I was on Interstate 10 and all I knew was the engine had died. I coasted to an exit and popped the hood. It was bad. There's a lot of plastic under a hood and all of it is flammable. The first thing I did was get the customer's stuff out of the back. Looking back, that was a bad move. It cost me precious seconds. I had two gallon jugs of water in the car and I poured it on the flames. Just as I ran out of water, two construction workers appeared with fire extinguishers. For me, it was like a death in the family.
I have always discouraged emotional relationships between people and machines because it's always the human who gets hurt.
I had it towed to my house and it sat for a couple weeks while I considered the options. For all purposes it was a total loss. But, that only applies when you are dealing with ordinary people.
However, I have the knowledge and the skills needed. It took a while to decide to accept the challenge. It started with driving to New Orleans to strip the wire harness out of a 91 Caprice. It wasn't a perfect match, but close. I spent a month checking every wire was in the proper position in the main connector . A few had to be moved. Most of the connectors that attach to the various sensors and controls had to be replaced. Forty year old plastic gets brittle and few could be reused. I found all at three different online parts suppliers. It was frustrating. The distributor, air filter, generator, and master cylinder had to be replaced. Between weather and work at the Lab, time was limited.
So, after a year and three months, I turned the key and it started. Everything works and it drives.
Yesterday, my son asked why I spent so much time and money on an old car. He has had several cars I advertised him to junk, rather than repair. I told him, I was probably the only person in the world who could do it and I had to know if I could.
In another life, I worked on cars. This was the last car I knew thoroughly before I made the mistake of going into management. I'm happy with the results of my efforts.

08/07/2026

https://youtu.be/mIjr7WjJzHg?is=SlGO4Tkz-RcYlrpZ

No French Regency candlesticks were harmed in the making of this vi...

07/25/2026

What's on the bench at the Lab today?

It's called a server/sideboard/buffet. It's a piece of dining room furniture made to hold dishes and dinnerware. This one has four front legs and the feet were falling apart. The legs are made up of blocks and many years of mop water loosen the glue and parts fall off and disappear. There was enough left to get a good pattern for the replacements. One good thing about making all new feet is they don't have to be identical to the originals, just identical to each other.

07/03/2026

What's on the bench at the Lab today?

I'm not sure, but it is unique. Every antique dealer collects a box of lamp and chandelier parts that they'll never sell, too good to throw away and too valuable to scrap. Every once in a while, they find themselves with too much time on their hands and decide to finally make use of some of it. Then they bring it to me.

I've installed one socket in the top and bottom rings, with 3 on the middle ring. This requires welding a nut to short pipe ni**le. A brass screw holds them in place. Everything in life is a hardware problem. The candle cups on the outside are reserved for real candles. When the wiring is complete, I'll make adjustments to the chains so it hangs straight. Then, I'll hand it over to a Lab minion to get the crystal chains as symmetrical as possible.

06/21/2026

When someone brings you a delicate ceramic vase and asks if it can be a lamp by Father's Day, it's exactly the sort of thing we do. This always means making holes in the ceramic. Drilling glass or ceramic requires a special set up and the more delicate the ceramic, the more special it has to be.

Building a lamp from a delicate ceramic vase.

06/18/2026

What's on the bench at the Lab?

Today it's an unfortunate fallen soldier.
This is a 5 foot tall Nutcracker. In his prime, he had 2 dozen lights of different colors on his uniform, including the tip of his lance. The base is made of multiple layers of particle board, which gives him a very low center of gravity.

Water is the natural enemy of particle board and it's no friend of the tiny wires that power the LED bulbs. Corrosion has gotten inside the insulation and made the wire so brittle another one breaks when the harness is moved. Because of the way he is constructed, there's no practical way to restore the lights.

The base can be rebuilt and since he's half of a pair, that will probably be in his future.

06/05/2026

I'm calling this the Sweeny Todd shadow box. A customer brought in a collection of straight razors and other barbershop items that were used by his father and asked if I could make a shadow box. The razors and other metal pieces are held in place by rare earth magnets. The glass is in a frame that slips over the box.

05/30/2026

What's on the bench at the Lab today?

This was an interesting project. I had to pick up where someone left off work, but really never gave up. The customer brought a small chest to the Lab. This family heirloom was empty except for a cabinet lock and a key. The inside of the box showed the scars of two attempts to install a lock that was simply the wrong piece of hardware. Once again, Lab magic was able to finish the job.

Sometimes a project hits a snag and gets put to the side. Sometimes...

05/25/2026

What's on the bench at the Lab?

This is a mahogany laundry table, or at least, that's my best guess. It's definitely mahogany and when it came to the Lab, it had folding legs and weighed about 40 pounds. Its likely origin is India, where I suppose a mahogany laundry table might be commonplace. The customer wants to use it as a kitchen island. It needed to be 6 inches taller and a bit more solid than expected of a folding table. This called for leg extensions, knee braces, and a lower shelf. The original folding hardware is fastened to the table top with carriage bolts, so I followed a carriage bolt motif for the added parts. If sometime in the future, anyone wants to restore it to its original condition, everything can be unbolted and removed. There will be a dozen or so bolt holes, but they can call that character.

05/13/2026

A "basket case" is usually considered a hopeless situation, but the Lab never loses hope.

The Basket of Pearls style chandelier is a hemisphere of crystal chains with the lights inside. It's an invention of the gas light era. Early gas lights were a small improvement over oil lamps. They flickered and made just as much smoke. The invention of the gas mantle saved gas lights from the "nice try" trash bin of history. The gas mantle is a science lesson in itself, but if you've ever seen a Coleman Camp lantern, that's a gas mantle lamp. It's a bright white light and it was a great boon to the crystal industry. The mantle light extended the gas light era until electric bulbs became bright enough and pushed gas lamps out of common use.

Most gas lamps used the same pipe threads that are still used in electric lamps today, but some European fixtures used a metric pitch threaded pipe that's close, but not compatible. This is a problem when rewiring with modern sockets. Fortunately, Lab magic has a solution.

A Basket of Pearls Chandelier come to the Lab in a basket of loose pieces and the new sockets dont fit the old pipes.