11-04-11

It has been a while since I cleaned up my shop so after the destruction and kayos caused by the last several projects, I figured it was time. I spent most of yesterday cleaning, putting and throwing things away. The shop is still small and crammed with tools and parts, but I always feel better when it gets cleaned up. Kind of like taking a good dump.

  

Of course, the first thing this morning I was out there welding and grinding and generally making a mess again.

If you’ll recall, when I took the new bird thrower up to the cabin to try it out I mentioned that there were a few adjustments that had to be made.

One of the things that needed attention was the part where the front legs slide onto the short feet of the cross bar. These are the factory feet and are nothing more than angle iron that was notched and bent at 90 degrees. Originally I just slid the legs onto the feet, drilled a hole through both parts, put a bolt through the hole with large flat washer on each side and tightened up the nut. I thought that would be sufficient but in field I noticed that the bolt didn’t tighten fully because there was nothing to back up the thin wall of the square tubing that I was using for the leg. To remedy the problem I welded (after doing some creative metal carving) a piece of 1” square tubing to each foot.

Now there will be something for the bolt to tighten on.

The next project was a little more involved and consequently a bit more fun.

While we were testing the thrower the height adjustment locking wing nut kept getting loose. I decided to make something that can be tightened sufficiently to hold the setting even with my arthritic old hands.

The first thing I did was take a piece of 1” steel rod and cut off a 1” piece. This will be the nut. Next I put it in the lathe and faced off both ends to make it flat and even.

 

Then I drilled a pilot hole in on end.

After that I used progressively larger drills until I had a 5/16” hole all the way through the nut.

Now it is time to tap the hole for a 3/8 x16 bolt. Drilling and tapping something like this that is kind of long you almost need a lathe or a mill to get a strait hole and the tap started straight. If it isn’t straight it won’t make it all the way through the hole before it gouges into the side and jams.  I put the tap in the drill chuck in the tail stock of the lathe and got it started by turning the lathe head stock back and forth by hand until the tap was in the nut about 1/4”

then I locked the headstock, put a tap handle on the tap and continued turning the tap back and forth advancing a little more each time until after a long time I had a 3/8” tapped hole through the entire 1” nut.

The next thing to do was to make the “wings” on the nut. I decided to go with spindles instead of wings. I cut two 1 1/2” pieces of 1/2” hot rolled rod, prettied them up a little on the lathe

and welded them to the nut.

That aught to work!!

In the midst of all this productive work Patti and I took the Jeep and her car to get them smogged.  They both passed so now we are that much closer to leaving for Arizona. If everything goes according to plan we should be leaving here on the 18th or 19th of November.