The Salvage Slaves won round two of the Boneyard Wars on Aug. 15, after the transmission on the Borass machine of Four Men and a Woman burned out.
The Salvage Slaves will meet Team Fubliant, winners of round one, in the Boneyard finals in mid-September.
Boneyard Wars is patterned after the popular Junkyard Wars television show, where two teams are given general requirements for a machine and told to put it together from spare parts.
For round two of Boneyard Wars the two teams from Whistler-Blackcomb were told to design a machine capable of boring a hole through any material from paper to concrete. The hole also had to be large enough for the team members to climb through.
The teams weren’t sure what materials they would have to face when they showed up at the GLC Aug. 15. The materials turned out to be bubble-wrap, plexiglass, wood, aluminum and concrete. After boring through each material team members would have to climb through the hole and then wheel their machine around to the next material. The team with the lowest total time would be declared the winner.
The Salvage Slaves, members of Whistler-Blackcomb’s snowmaking department, unveiled a special knife blade attachment on their boring machine which made short work of the bubble-wrap. Their regular serrated cutting head made it through the plexiglass, plywood and eventually the aluminum.
The team then took a break and let Four Men and a Woman try their hand.
The Four Men and a Woman had a larger engine on their machine, dubbed Borass, than the Salvage Slaves had on their machine, but horsepower turned out not to be the determining factor.
After cutting through the bubble-wrap and smashing through the plexiglass, the Borass transmission burned out on the wood.
That left the Salvage Slaves winners by default, but too prove their worthiness they took on the final material: two inches of concrete.
With the James Bond theme music blasting over the speakers the team unveiled a special water-cooled bit (probably designed by Q). The bit, salvaged from a Pipe Dragon, was attached to the machine and bore through the concrete – making and the Salvage Slaves worthy champions.
In addition to showing the ingenuity of the Whistler-Blackcomb mechanics and engineers, the Boneyard Wars series is raising funds for arthritis research. Allana Hamm and Megan Wastle have been raising funds through a 50:50 draw at the Boneyard Wars. The money is a requirement for their participation in the Dublin Run for Arthritis Research which takes place in October in Ireland.
