As it has managed not to rain a bit I have done a couple of things that involved sawing and drilling outside. First up was the implementation of an idea I had for leveling the boards on the trestles more effectively. This involved drilling (very accurately!), 10mm holes in the top bar of the trestles, inserting one of the many spare M10 bolts and fixing with a nut. A wing nut was then screwed upside down on the tread an a large washer placed on top. Corresponding holes (12mm to give a bit of leeway), were then drilled into timber spacing blocks in the middle of the frames.

The boards are then placed on top and will actually balance nicely with just the one trestle in the middle until they are bolted together. Leveling is achieved by winding the wing nut up and down.

Having walked into the sticking out control panel rather too often I realised that a slight reshaping of the corners might be less painful.

Before

After

Even more brutal than this was my attempt to reduce the gap in the rails between the joint of two of the boards. Firstly, I removed all the screws (it is glued as well), knocked the patter makers dowel female bits in a bit further and then attacked the end of the board with my power planer. As I said, brutal! Haven't got as far as mating the two boards up yet so still not sure of the results.

Getting back to my mysterious shorting problem, I do have an idea now of what has happened. Not entirely sure as yet but there is a distinct possibility that I have been pretty stupid!