Sealing up the workshop’s eaves (by alaric)

I keep moaning about how the workshop roof leaks, causing rain to drop down on all my nice tools and supplies. But that's not the only problem with the workshop roof!

The workshop is basically a set of walls, with the roof resting on top. The roof is a large, flat, box with the bottom open (exposing the rafters that give it strength), slightly larger than the outline of the walls. The rafters rest on the tops of the walls, and the roof hangs slightly over the walls.

As you may have guessed if you've been following that, this means there's gaps all the way around the edge of the roof. Howling winds blow through them. These holes are enormous at the ends of the building, where the roof overhangs further; twenty centimetres high and occupying most of the length of the walls (interrupted only by the rafters themselves), but I've pinned up sheets of plastic to temporarily block them until I get around to cutting lots of rectangles of wood to properly cover them with.

Along the longer walls of the building, the gap is more like a centimetre, but again more or less the entire length of the building (which is somewhere around ten metres).

And the worst part is, the rear wall is close to a row of trees, which are covered in ivy. And the ivy has found the gaps and keeps oozing its way into the roof.

And as well as being faintly disturbing, the ivy also drops foul grime down onto my stuff.

So, although stopping the roof leaking is a long-term project I work on when I get entire days to spend building the ladder to get up there, I've been fighting the ivy when I've just had a few hours here and there. I've been cutting bits of thin wood (left-over cladding) and nailing them in place over the larger holes, and then liberally applying left-over bits of sealant to all the edges (I suspect the ivy attacks a gap if it sees light, so hopefully this will make it lose interest). The black marks on the ceiling are damage made by ivy I've torn out:

There's no less than three different colours of sealant there - two different cartridges of brown "frame sealant", one light and one dark, and some leftover bits of white stuff from the bathroom! Unbelievably, it looks miles neater than the mess of cobwebby, grimy, ivy that was there!

I have to climb right up into the eaves to get most of the gaps, however. This picture is not particularly clear, but there's a thin plank of wood that I've nailed down to the top of the wall in order to cover the two-centimetre gap between the top of the wall and the vertical wooden beam at the back, then I've run sealant all around all the gaps and joints:

I quite like working with sealant (I've been sealing gaps in the bathroom, and replacing existing manky mouldy sealant - and doing it neatly, unlike the ghetto job I'm doing in the workshop), and it's nice to think that I'm keeping out all those draughts and grubby plants! I want to properly seal all the gaps in the workshop - and then introduce an extractor fan over the welding bench at one end, and an air inlet vent at ground level at the other end, with a small heater under computer control so I can regulate the temperature and keep the humidity down in here!

I've also started varnishing a bit of scrap MDF that, I have realised, is exactly the right size to make a shelf to go over my workbench (not the welding bench, the one where I have the column drill). That will give me a place to put loads of things that currently sit ON my workbench for lack of a shelf. Also, I'll be able to fit a decent light to the bottom of the shelf; right now, when I work at the workbench, I cast a huge shadow over whatever I'm doing.

Day 2 of making the ladder (by alaric)

Yesterday, I cut out all the bits required to make myself a ladder.

This morning, I set out on foot to visit Machine Mart and Screwfix for some supplies; a set of magnetic welding clamps, some white metal paint for the completed ladder, and these anchor bolts to attach it to the wall. As you can see from the diagram on the box, they just can't wait to be buried in a wall:

Anyway, it's been a long time since I last did any welding (and I've never been great at it), so I started by just tacking a few bits together to check they line up correctly with the wall. I started with the trickiest bit, the angled spacer:

Then I proceeded to drill correctly-sized holes for my anchor bolts into the mounting flanges, using my column drill (a very useful tool). This made a lot of pretty swarf:

Then I started welding the flanges onto the spacers. The new magnetic welding clamps (the red thing in this picture) came in handy here; their function is to accurately hold things at ninety (or forty-five) degree angles:

With all six of the spacers flanged, I could start tack-welding them into place:

My welds on the flat were OK, but my welds inside corners are still pretty ropy; I had to keep chipping the slag off and going over again to fill in gaps. Another problem was that the steel square tubing has rounded corners, meaning that when a spacer has to be welded onto the upright to make a T, two sides of the end of the spacer are to be welded to the curved corner of the upright, making a big gap I had to bridge across somehow. It turns out that surface tension causes the exposed edge of the metal to pull back when it melts, so I had to bodge little slivers of metal left over from the cutting into the gap to stop this happening, resulting in some ugly welds that I may have to grind flat before I paint it - or to make the surfaces I'm going to weld the rungs onto flat enough for them to go on straight! We'll see.

Anyway, having checked the fit against the wall, I could then finish off the welds on all four sides of each junction, completing one side of the ladder. It's intentional that the flanges point in different directions, by the way - they mainly point upwards so the weight of the ladder isn't pulling them away from the wall, except that the one on the angled spacer has to be underneath so I can get in to fit the bolt, and the top one is underneath so the anchor bolt hole isn't too near the top of the wall:

At that point I ran out of time. It won't take me too long to assemble the second side as I already have all the flanges welded onto the spacers (which was quite time-consuming), and I can clamp it all onto the existing side to get the alignment correct without all the cross-checking and measuring I had to do the first time.

After that, I'll need to weld the rungs in place, tidy up the welds, scrub it down with a wire brush and sandpaper to clean off all the welding grime, degrease it with white spirit, and paint it.

Then I need to figure out how I'm going to get it into the wall! I'll need to somehow hold it in place while I mark out the drill holes, which might be tricky without an assistant. Then I have to try to drill the holes where the marks actually are (the bane of my life is carefully marking out a wall, starting to drill, and the bit hitting a stone and suddenly meandering half a centimetre off centre - then having to try and jam a screw in nonetheless, as whatever I'm screwing to the wall has holes in places that can't move to match).

After that, holding it up to the wall and slipping in the anchor bolts should be easy - then tighten them up and I'm done! They have a tightening torque recommendation on the box, so I'll finally get to use my torque wrench, and not be left wondering if I've tightened them enough or risking cracking the wall by over-tightening (which has been a concern with previous anchor bolt expiditions).

Continue to day 3...

Day 1 of making the ladder (by alaric)

This weekend, I am attempting to make a fixed ladder, mounted to the wall of my workshop so I can fix the roof more easily.

First, I had to tidy up in the workshop to make room. I bought a set of four folding chairs for guests which are rather in the way (the chairs, not necessarily the guests), So I screwed a few bits of scrap wood up between the beams to store them:

See all that damp on the ceiling, by the way? That is the enemy! Eradicating that is the long-term goal of this whole mission.

With the chairs out of the way, I could get on with the task at hand. Here's the bit of wall where the ladder will go:

And here's the pile of steel I ordered from Hindleys to make it from:

The ladder is being made mostly from 1" square steel tubing, which needs to be cut into bits of various lengths with my trusty angle grinder. Here's the rungs (longer parts) and the spacers that will join it to the wall:

However, for extra strength and extra not-having-a-sharp-corner-ness, at the bottom it will be joined to the wall by an angled spacer on each side. The spacer will be at forty-five degrees to the vertical (and to the horizontal, thanks to the magic of maths), so I need to cut twenty two and a half degree angles onto the bottoms of the ladder uprights, like so:

Also, I needed to cut out two spacers with twenty two and a half degree angles at one end (to mate with the uprights) and forty five degree angles at the ends which will mount onto the wall, bringing my pile of various lengths of steel tube up to this:

Where the tubes need to attach to the wall, I'm going to weld them to flat steel plates, which will be drilled for the bolts that join them to the wall. All of the tube ends I've cut will be welded, so the fact that they're rough angle-grinder cuts doesn't matter, but these edges will be exposed, so the fact that they are nasty and burred offends me:

But a quick run along the bench grinder each has given them nice clean edges:

Sarah turned up and took a picture of me, just as I was finishing. Check out my lovely protective clothing - I take my safety seriously when dealing with forces that can make metal flow like honey:

Finally, I measure out the layout of the angled spacer, to check I'd done my maths correctly to make it the right length to produce a 30cm spacing, to match the straight spacers, and that the angles were right:

Tomorrow, I will go out shopping to buy some anchor bolts to mount it to the wall (I can't drill the holes in the plates until I know the diameter required), welding magnets so I can make sure the angles are exact as I weld it together (I don't want a wonky ladder), and some metal paint so it won't rust when it's installed - then it's time to start welding. I plan to start by making the sides with the angled and straight spacers so I can check they align perfectly by placing them one on top of the other, before welding the rungs in between them.

Continue to day 2...

Volunteering (by alaric)

I've always wanted to change the world for the better. I'm not sure where this impulse comes from, but it's probably something to do with reading a lot of science fiction and adventure stories as a child. It's always seemed natural to me that the world is a place full of problems, and that they can be solved with a mixture of ingenuity and dtermined hard work.

You can do a lot of world-saving on your own; indeed, that's often the most satisfying kind, as you can see the direct results of your actions in isolation. But it's hard to find opportunities to do so. Problems that have a chink in them a single person can exploit and solve them are rare. Most problems are large and don't have an easy fix (even a cunning one), and a single person's effort against them would be like trying to divert the wind by waving your arms.

So the most immediately rewarding means of improving the world is to join up with others who have a similar idea on what to do, and volunteer to work together with others as a group. This might mean forming a loosely-coupled team, like the contributors of an open-source project; or it might mean joining a more formal organisation.

As it happens, I do both.

On the loosely-coupled team side, I'm involved in the Scheme programming language community, and the Chicken Scheme sect within it; and I have a bunch of open-source projects I publish on my site, Kitten Technologies. Ugarit might help to save the world by helping it to keep better backups and manage its files better, Tangle might help the world not get confused with its cabling, Simple Graphics might make a tiny contribution towards teaching future generations to do awesome things, and if I ever have the time and money to really put some effort into it, ARGON might provide the world with a vastly more awesome platform to build software systems upon.

And on the formal organisation side, I'm the Cub Scout leader for the Cub pack in the village I used to live in. During school term time, every Wednesday I spend an hour in the village hall with two dozen kids aged eight to ten inclusive, trying to broaden their minds and teach them useful life skills. They are a lucky lot, in that that's all I do for them; some Scout groups give children an escape from abuse at home or other terrible situations like that, but my lot come from relatively secure backgrounds, and are well loved, well fed and well educated. Once a year or so I organise a camping weekend, too, where they can learn a bit more self-sufficiency, and have an exciting adventure with their friends.

All of the voluntary stuff I do is very rewarding. When I think about the sorts of things I'd do if I was rich and didn't have to work, a large fraction of it is voluntary work. When I had more money in the past, I actually hired somebody to write open-source software for me, and I'd do it again if I could. I suppose my interest in wearable computers is driven more by my own interest and desire to sharpen my skills than in any benefit to the rest of the world, but I'll still be publishing my designs for others to take inspiration from or to just build their own copy! Volunteering is also a great way to gain new skills, gain confidence, and meet new people. It's my default suggestion for people who feel lonely, bored, or stuck in a rut.

I'm under no illusion that I'm some saintly figure laying down my own interests in order to help others, either. I just happen to enjoy making other people happy, and also enjoy tinkering with certain kinds of technology that happen to be very easy to share, thanks to the Internet. My contributions to the world have generally been insignificant compare to many others, and I often feel sad about that - I feel I am spending too much of my time just keeping my family safe and fed (which is my first priority), and that the kinds of things I'm good at are unfortunately only useful in narrow niches (distributed data storage technology isn't going to solve world hunger on its own). But such is life! This year I am setting aside two weekend days every month for my own projects - for January, this is going to be spent on my infrastructure rather than anything directly useful, as I need to repair the roof of my workshop as part of the ongoing process of making it into a more usable work area, but if I have any time left after that I'm going to work on Ugarit some more (on the sofa in the house - getting an Internet connection down to the workshop is a project for next month).

Volunteering can become unhealthy, however.

I'm struggling with running the Cub pack right now; I am the pack's only leader, and it's more normal for a pack to have two or three leaders. I have helpers who come along on the Wednesdays, which is invaluable as I couldn't safely run the meetings alone, but I still need to organise something every week, and then be there to run it. If I need to take a week off for some reason, I still need to either organise somebody to take over and prepare the required information for them, or contact all of the families to tell them I'm having to cancel an evening (which I really, really, don't like doing). I skirt the edge of a vicious circle - doing something because I feel I have to, and fearing the consequences if I don't, takes the fun out of it; and after executing all my other responsibilities of the day, I often lack the energy to do things I'm not fueled by enthusiasm over, so put them off. That in turn increases the unpleasant stress and pressure the next day until I end up rushing it all at the last minute!

Volunteering where you sit down and do something you feel like doing is safe. Taking on a responsibility is a little more dangerous. I am under no real obligation to keep running the Cub pack - there's no contract - but without a backup leader, if I leave, the pack will collapse, and I don't want that to happen to the lovely kids. Not to mention that I'd miss the little blighters! So I press on, providing a rather less exciting programme than I'd like. I think that it's not a good idea to take on an ongoing voluntary responsibility alone; it should be done as a group, so that the workload can be shared more easily, and when a group member is overloaded with other pressures, they can temporarily or permanently reduce their contribution without major disruption - and otherwise tedious planning and preparation can be fun when it's done as a group. However, sometimes you start doing something as a group and end up doing it alone, or (as in this case) start something with the expectation that others will join you once it picks up some momentum, but they always want to join as helpers rather than taking over from you to some extent - or, alternatively, that you're bad at delegating because you're scared of putting too much pressure on them and losing them.

Speaking of which, I need to go and prepare something for the Cub meeting tomorrow...

...actually, I can do it in my lunch break tomorrow, and go to sleep now instead, as it's forty minutes past my bedtime already. A MUCH better idea. Surely.

A day of drilling (by alaric)

Last Thursday, I had my safety induction for using the laser cutter at Bristol Hackspace, and as my test piece I laser-cut a name tag for Jean. She likes that sort of thing.

However, she requested that it have a hole in the corner, so she can attach it to her school bag. So today we went down to the workshop and I helped her to drill it out.

But I had more drilling to do. A friend asked me on Facebook how she could drill holes through pebbles. It just so happens that Sarah owns a set of diamond core drills, so I borrowed them and had a go, so that I could offer some advice.

I set the bit up in the column drill:

The challenge was in how to hold the stone still while it was being drilled. Irregular shapes are tricky to hold. First off, I tried a simple clamp:

The drilling has to happen under water, to help cool it and to wash away the dust that the stone turns into. I put some scraps of cardboard underneath so that I drilled into that once I was through the stone, rather than the bottom of my box, which would lead to it leaking all over my cluttered workbench:

As soon as the drill cut in, dust whooshed out into the water and made it impenetrably murky, so after a short drilling session, I took the stone out of the water to see what was happening:

It looked good so I tried again, but this time the stone pivoted in the clamp. I tried to clamp it back again but it wouldn't go back at the same angle and kept shifting, so I tried a new approach - gluing it to a piece of wood that was large enough to not be able to rotate inside the box, so I just needed to hold the box steady while drilling:

That worked quite well, but the vibration shook the stone loose after a while, and I had trouble with the wood wanting to float and the stone wanting to sink causing it to flip over in the water. so I glued it more thoroughly (making sure glue came over the side of the stone so it was held in place rather than just stuck in place), and glued a bit of scrap metal to the bottom to stop it floating over:

That worked; now the stone was steady, it was easy to press on all the way. I had to drill a millimetre then back out (with the drill still spinning) to clear the dust out into the water, then press on again. Progress was slow but steady, taking a few seconds to do each millimetre:

Once I felt it go through the bottom of the stone, I had no trouble in peeling the rubbery hot-melt glue back with my fingernails to free the stone. Job done:

So, to conclude:

• Use a column drill.
• Use a diamond core bit.
• Hold the stone steadily in something that conforms to its shape. An ideal technique might be to use something like Plasticene to firmly secure it to the bottom of the box before pouring the water in.
• Drill slowly, backing off to clean the bit every millimetre or so.

When I came back, Sarah was asleep on the sofa:

Aww!