Spent the day in the workshop today. From 9:30 am to 7:30 pm with a brief break to eat a bagel, and to zip by Lowes to get a few parts. I actually got my fill of workshop time this weekend, a lovely blissful relief from previous weekends where I got almost no workshop time. Ahhhh.
Didn't sit in the house and play with inductors like I planned, but that's okay. I'll fiddle with my Tesla plans tonight as I'm watching Zatoichi 18, where he gets caught up in rival gangs and/or is harassed by Yakuza, and he has to kill twenty or so people to get out of the hassle. Also, he'll meet and develop strong feelings for a girl or child and leave them so they don't get caught up in his horrible lifestyle. And he'll eat messily at least once. Yup. All 17 so far have been this story line. But I love 'em anyway!
Lesse, in my last post I think I forgot to mention I did some minor repairs on Marla's spinning wheel. Bought a cap nut for one part, and threaded another part to take the cap nut I bought for it.
My progress in my own project was excellent.
I made four rings (it took some trial and error to get the material length right for ring making) for supports in the fire pillar. I have two more "ring" starts that are scraps now really. These rings were loving welded into continuous circles, with decent size variation seeing as how they are 1/4" steel strap on a 4.5" inside diameter.
Making the rings, I used my roller-bender. I forgot, though, that when the wood storage (melamine-coated shelves that I use for various purposes) shifts behind the roller, the wood is JUST IN PLACE to cheese-grate the skin off my knuckle. My right index finger center phalange is now... skinless. Well, it didn't slice down to bleeding layers, but it still stings 'cause the nerve endings are all exposed. I wore gloves for the rest of the ring making.
Each ring also has three holes in it, equally spaced (more or less) for bolting onto the pillar.
The pillar itself has four pivoting doors on friction pins (one of which snapped off, as I mentioned earlier I think) and four narrow upright supports. I tack-welded the supports in today.
Fitting the bottom ring on the bottom of the pillar, I decided I would prefer to have it "C" shaped and not a welded circle, so I cut a 1/2" gap out of it, around the weld. Ah well. The welds were decent, but I'm not up to excellent welds in 1/4" material yet.
I drilled and tapped three holes for the bottom ring, and I have yet to actually fit it and clamp it on. Hope it fits. Oh, four holes. The first one I tapped as coarse threads, before noticing that all my bolts are fine threaded. Ah well.
I also cut the 4.5" holes in the top and bottom of my air chamber (e.g. a small metal trash can with lid) and rolled the edges to a tight fit on the pillar. Nice work, if I do say so myself (though not beautiful. Just nice). Also, cut and epoxied the air inlet (a lovely shopvac nozzle) into the side of the air chamber. It's ready for use!
The inlet cap is a 4" (trade size, really 4.5" ID) PVC cap which I cut about 1/2" off the end to give me more slack (what a pain! I may not want to do that on future ones). I then drilled a hole in the center of this and fastened a complex series of fittings into it, the end result is a 1/2" pipe rising up from the center of the cap and a propane quick-release fitting descending from the bottom. Once I figure how to make it less of a tight fit (file the cap, or sand the pipe? Decisions, decisions) I can drill and tap the locking holes for THAT.
What is left, is to drill and tap the holes for the top ring; to spin a (solid, certainly) ring as a leg support; cut three legs; weld the leg assembly together; and the assemble!
Hmmmm. I may want to make the leg ring separate from the air-chamber closing ring. Which means three rings per pillar and not two, which means I would need to make two more rings (for the second pillar). Hmmmm.
I'm about a half-day of work away from firing up a test pillar. That will be very cool.
Soon.
But now, Tesla notes and dinner!
Posted by Edwin at February 3, 2008 07:35 PM