Announcing the Kempner POWER WAGON Museum web site

[Paul Cook]

A long time dream has finally come true. The Kempner POWER WAGON Museum display building is completed and I am getting ready to move in.



The Museum will be the focus of my web site and replaces the Texas POWER WAGON Journal.

Please visit the updated site for more information about the Museum. It's still at www.texaspowerwagon.com

[Gordon Maney]

Concrete sealer on floors

After several attempts to take care of new concrete shop floors with sealer, I conclude I would never use it again. Have you ever had any experience with concrete sealer, and are you considering the use of it?

That is a beautiful building.

[Paul Cook]

Concrete Floors

I just returned from yet another shopping trip looking for things to finish off the interior of the Museum display building. Rustoleum has a two-part concrete floor finish that costs just under $50 for a kit that will do 250 sq. ft. or $600 to do the 3000 sq. ft. in my building - plus cleaner. It has no specified life span.

When I built my 24' x 24' shop 7 years ago, I used a standard, high-quality garage floor paint on acid-etched new concrete. That floor looks good where it suffered no hard use. Chemicals and petroleum products have taken their toll. Brake fluid softened the paint and it came up when I wiped up the spills. Hard steel like floorjack wheels and jackstands chipped the paint. The floor now has the scars of an honest workshop. The workshop is young but it is not inexperienced.

Because this new building will not be the site of any extensive mechanical activities, the primary offender it will be scuffing of old tires and some oil drips. I have decided to leave the floor alone. I will have a few galvanized, oil drip pans to help with the most incontinent trucks.

Making the move from a pole barn with a dirt floor to the new building means I will be driven by my "old-guy" nature to move the vehicles frequently and clean them. While I'm cleaning them, I'll do the floor with my pressure washer. Several of the plain concrete sealers direct that you reapply at a minimum of six months. I'm sure I'll clean more often.

Besides, what credibility would I have displaying a POWER WAGON in a building that smelled of antiseptic? I may rig some old, oily rags in front of the ventilating fans just to give it some ambiance.

[Gordon Maney]

....and you once told me at the Iowa Rally that when you started reading my editorials, you thought I was an old guy.