Another distraction

Entry posted by KH1 May 12, 2020

340 views

With progress on the little Ruston on hold until a suitable battery and motor arrive and having got fed up of jigsaws I started on something else that I have been meaning to explore for a long time and just to add a little more audience participation I shall let you try and guess what it is!

I had assumed that getting the bends correct would be no problem with the little bending jig that I got from Metalsmiths I think, quite some time ago. Getting a nice bend no problem but in the correct place AND perpendicular..... After some thought I came up with a little mod for the jig which involved drilling through a metal square and attaching it nice and flush via one of the threaded holes in the jig. Result a nice, solid 90 degree guide. Next problem was getting the bend in the right place. A little basic maths and a bit of trial and much error resulted in me finding the precise amount of metal that had to stick out from under the bar. The gauge block set again came into it's own as I used these to butt up against the bar and just pushed the metal up to be flush.

Next problem was that the drawings I was using from the xxxxxx book - whoops nearly gave it away - say they are 10mm to the foot but the printer (of an otherwise impressive book), seems to have had other ideas. There is a definite lesson there! I eventually managed to scale them to 7mm and 'flatten' them to take the corners into account so as to make my customary 'sewing patterns' for getting the rivet detail correct. I used the GW press again but this time just used the stop to set the distance of the line in from the edge and just used the dots for spacing which I found to be a good compromise between time and sanity.

I know it might not look like much but it has been a significant leaning curve to get to this point and there are still a few more lock down days of experimentation in store too until I manage the next stage.