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...

I need a holiday! (by alaric)

This year, I've been alternating between bleak depression and enthusiastic elation.

Luckily, it's easy to see a pattern - the elation is when I let myself get distracted by interesting things; the depression is when I have to tear my attention back to what needs to be done rather than what I feel like doing!

It's been a funny year. On the one hand we've moved into a much larger house, with much better facilities, that's warmer and easier to keep clean and tidy. My work is great, and I've managed to catch up on some things that have been hanging over me for years - tax paperwork, terminating my limited company (that had become nothing more than a thorn in my side since I stopped freelancing), simplifying and upgrading my server setup, tidying up my home directory and organising my life. On the other hand, I've been so busy that the new home has mainly been a place to eat and sleep rather than something I've had much chance to enjoy, and I'm behind on the (small, reasonable) list of projects I wanted to do this year - with no year left to do them; I've so far spent only a handful of days on my own projects in the entire year.

I spent a whole day sorting out my workshop on my birthday in April, and ended that day with a few little things to finish off - which are still waiting for me. I've not finished the ring casting, which should only take a couple more days, nor rebuilt my furnace, which should take a few days more.

I've done a bit better on computer-based projects as I can do them wherever I have my laptop; I've done some work on my fiction project, and made progress on my organisational infrastructure to convert a huge pile of "things that need investigating to even begin to decide what needs doing about them" into a tractable TODO list, and done some writing for the ARGON project web site.

But, with my ability to concentrate on what I'm supposed to be doing rapidly waning, it's clear that I need some time off. So, I've booked the week before Christmas off of work, and I hope to:

1. Do what I can to fix the roof in the workshop.

   • It leaks. This will be hard to fix properly, as it'll require spending lots of money on materials; and possibly can't be done until there's some warmer, drier, weather to dry the decking out. But I'll see if I can improve on the current bodge somewhat, at least to give the decking a chance to dry properly without regular re-soakings.
   • There's great big gaps in the eaves, all round the walls, varying from a centimetre up to about twenty centimetres, through which an icy wind blows. All the warm air from the heater disappears, and ivy creeps in. I need to seal them up (minus a controllable air vent to let out humid air and fumes from welding - perhaps an air vent plus an extractor fan with a fume hood would be the way to go in the long run). I plan to saw some strips of wood to length so they can go between the rafters, nail them in place, and use judicious amounts of sealant to keep the tenacious ivy at bay and to account for my general inability to cut wood to exact lengths properly.

2. Run Ethernet to the workshop so I have an Internet connection there. This will involve spending some money on outdoor-suitable conduit and fittings, and trunking for the interior runs, then drilling lots of holes in walls and running cables through and sealing the gaps. But the result will be that I can actually do computer work at a desk with a comfy chair, rather than hunched over a laptop on the sofa with children tugging at me.

3. Start building the computer infrastructure in the workshop. I'm looking at a battery-backed low-voltage power system feeding a Raspberry Pi (which I already have, waiting - Sarah got me one for my birthday), bristling with sensors. Because sensors are fun.

4. If the weather and time permit, work on my ring casting and the furnace, although that somewhat requires dry weather. We'll see.

5. Chill out, play computer games, write fiction and ARGON prose.

6. Order the bits to build a chord keyer - I doubt I'll have time to build it by the time they arrive in the post, so I'm saving that for a project I can do at Bristol Hackspace in the new year.

But I need to take care that next year isn't like this one. Taking on so many responsibilities that I struggle to maintain my productivity means I get less stuff done, not more, and makes it hard to prioritise my effort sensibly. I'm going to book three weekend days each month, in advance, for my projects or simple relaxation, rather than just thinking I'll do them "when I get a free day" only to find that all of my weekends are booked up months in advance. I'll be open to rearranging them in order to fit around the days when Sarah or the children need me, or we're visiting people for events - most of the time, it doesn't matter what actual day I do things on. Sometimes this will involve getting a whole weekend, and then just a single day at the other end of a month; that's fine, just as long as it lets me keep making progress on my projects, and giving me a chance to unwind from the stresses of constantly doing what I must do, rather than what I want to do.

Alaric’s projects for this year (by alaric)

This year's going to be pretty busy with settling into the new home, but I have a few projects.

1. Finish the ring casting I nearly finished before the move. That's a priority.
2. Resurrect my aluminium foundry. In particular, it's our bronze wedding anniversary, so Sarah's going to design a pattern for a sundial, which I will cast in Aluminium bronze, a nice alloy that I can make myself from my scrap aluminium and bits of old plumbing...
3. Continue with minor stuff on Ugarit, but as a milestone, build the distributed storage backend, which will rock.
4. Work on my wearable computer project. No specific milestone for this, as it's currently a long drawn out research/prototyping phase as I sort out many details.

Wish me luck... I usually suffer from "all my weekends getting eaten up", but as my New Year's Resolution has been to spend at least one day every two weeks doing something fun with my children, I'm going to be booking weekend days in my calendar in advance through the year for that and my own projects. Before they get filled up!

Ring casting (by alaric)

A friend has asked me to cast her some silver wedding rings. So I am adapting my aluminium casting experience to silver...

The thing to use for silver moulds is cuttlefish bone, which is soft enough to easily carve into shapes, but can withstand the heat of molten silver. For a single pour, at any rate.

In order to get a repeatably round shape of the correct diameters for the two rings, and so I can quickly carve new moulds if my pouring fails so I can try again, I decided to make boring tools that carve ring shapes of the correct diameters.

As you can see, they're made from nails, hard soldered together, and ground to a cutting tooth at the end. The central spike goes down a guide hole I drill in the cuttlefish in advance.

The tool needs to come down exactly perpendicular to the flat surface of the cuttlefish (made by sawing one side off and then sanding it flat), so I made a special jig to hold them:

Then it's just a matter of fitting the tool in a chuck and bringing it down. I first tried rotating the tool by hand, but the result was a bit rubbish, so I bit the bullet and just turned the Dremel motor on, which produce a quite perfect circle.

I made a couple of moulds, each with a matched flat cuttlefish to go on the other side. I had to carve channels for the silver to flow in by hand, using a screwdriver for rough gouging and a craft knife for the finer parts.

The silver was heated by blowtorch, in a refactory cup called a scorifier:

But first I had to prepare the silver I was given - in the form of a coin, which I felt a bit bad about sawing in half:

I melted half of the silver and poured it into the first (roughest!) mould:

When I cracked it open, it seemed I'd not used enough silver, but everything had otherwise gone well:

So I pulled the incomplete casting out, crushed it up, and added the other half of the silver, and gave the second mould a go. Here's a picture of it with the channels cut, before I clamped it:

I put it all together and got ready for some melting:

But this time, as soon as I started pouring, the silver suddenly froze on me, so hardly anything went into the mould:

It seems that the larger mass of silver wasn't heated up quite as far as the first pour had. I need to rearrange my firebricks to make a better forge to heat the silver in, so heat loss is slower, I suspect...