Made a little progress today...

We had a break in the weather in late January, so I headed out to remove some of the suspension mount rivets from the frame.  All was going well.  I actually had on PPE (personal protective equipment) which for those of you that know me know that generally flip flops and shorts are as close to PPE as I get regardless of what or where I am working.

On to the story.  I had used my angle grinder with a cut off wheel to cut an "X" in the head of each of the rivets to speed the removal.  I didn't feel like firing up my compressor to use my air hammer so I had a BFH ( 3-Pound Drilling Hammer) and was making pretty good progress.  I had on thick gloves and was removing the stock front engine mount brackets.  Well the chisel slipped off the rivet head as soon as the hammer touched it and that changed the trajectory of the hammer head so that it attempted to occupy the same space as my thumb.  We all know physics, right?  Big steel hammer, soft squishy thumb....

 This pic was taken within a minute of the hit.  Honestly I thought I had mashed it good because I became oddly aware that the glove felt wet.  I was pretty sure that I had blown the insides of my thumb out!  Must be the old age, because I didn't scream and cuss and throw things, this time! So I was happy when it came out of the glove intact.  Needless to say the nail did come off. Luckily, or not, I spent about a month on jury duty so it had time to heal.

On to the progress I made today.  I got the old straight axle suspension out and got the frame resting on the Jaguar XJS front suspension.  I still need to box the front portion of the frame, build mounts, and adjust the axle centerline.  All in all it is looking better.