Near future foundry (by alaric)

When we moved in, I was very excited about the prospect of turning the little garage into a foundry. Even thought it started off tidy and I optimistically hoped that I'd have finished my backlog of work by the time I had all my tools moved in, I ended up busy all the time and it slowly filled with boxes of stuff.

However, come the flood, we had to move much of the contents of our home out into storage. Then more, as the electrician needed to rewire the whole place, so we moved most of the large static boxes from the little garage (our vast crockery+cutlery+glasses empire, our Christmas decorations, our bulky garden toys, that sort of thing). And the nice electrician put many more power points around it (three double sockets spaced out, rather than one waaay at the back!).

And then at the house-re-warming party, my pyromaniac nerd friends got all excited about the fabrication possibilities of the foundry...

So, I've been clearing the place out, and tidying up the results of several years of things-being-shoved-in. And sealing up the gaps, too; after the garage was built against the house it seems to have moved several centimetres away from it. Somebody went around the outside sealing the gap with cement, but they missed a big bit behind the gutters, meaning that daylight shines in through the gap.

A few months back I went up a ladder and packed the gap with cement.

But there's still a bit of light peeking through, and some more up where the roof is (although, by some miracle, no sign of water coming in when it rains), and a large cobweb-infested dark gap around the inside.

So I've been going around the INSIDE sealing the gap up with expanding foam (a delightful material to work with).

The foam didn't go as far as I'd thought - I need to sort out some more...

And putting foam strips around the front door to seal the gaps there up, too, and putting a block of wood in to fill a hole in the door jamb, in the hope that the place will stop being a haven of creepy-crawlies.

Make your own spirit level! (by alaric)

You can easily spent £25 on a large spirit level. Even a cheap 60cm one costs £10.

Since I have some plans to build a wall across uneven ground, a long spirit level to check my footings are level is a requirement. But I didn't want to spend a lot of money.

So I went into B&Q and, for £5 plus a few tens of pence, picked up a two-metre length of extruded steel box section, a square tube about 1cm on a side and strong enough to not flex noticeably under its own weight.

And for about £2.70 I picked up a small hand-held magnetic spirit level unit.

Combining the two, voila - for under a tenner, I have a two-metre long spirit level.

And although there's only two vials in the magnetic level unit, it has the functionality of a level with lots of vials, since I can position those two vials at any point along the level I require. So I can have them in the middle, for traditional "is this rubble-filled trench roughly level" checking. Or, when nailing a series of pegs into the ground and wanting them to all be at the same height, I can bring the vials to one end of the steel tube, balance the other end on an existing peg (ideally with a helper to hold it there!), and easily read the vials as I adjust the peg I'm leaning my end of the tube on.

And when I'm sick of building walls, I can store the pocket-sized magnetic level away, and think of something useful to make with two metres of steel square tubing, an arc welder, and a brazing set...

Old-school brazing (by alaric)

Yesterday, my mate Seth was trying to fix his car exhaust pipe. It had a bit that was made out of corrugated metal tubing, presumably to allow one end of the pipe to vibrate with the engine while the other is fixed.

Anyway, in the way of these things, with all the vibration and heat, it had broken off at one end, leaving the fragmented end of the corrugated thin metal tubing; now without the straight bit of tubing that would nicely clamp around the next bit of pipe.

So we decided to braze it - and due to the scale of the job and the small scale of my supplies of silver solder, to old-school braze it with real brass. After a lot of angle grinder work cleaning the corrugated tube end up and preparing an extension tube made from a tin can (ground down to reveal the steel sheeting within), we smeared a load of flux paste on, heated it up to a orange-ish red, squirted MORE flux paste on, and applied some brass rod I had lying about. Read more »

Future Foundry (by alaric)

My father Lionel and stepmother Lynn were here to stay for a day again, so while Lynn took Sarah shopping, Lionel sorted out the little garage I am planning to make into my metalwork shop.

He did such a great job:

...that there's more space than I had hoped for, so I will instead make it into my full metal workshop. I was planning on just doing the forging and casting in here, and shouldering the metal machining into my grandfather's old workshop - but that can now stay as a wood workshop.

I just need to wait for the rest of my tools and the foundry stuff to arrive - hopefully not before I finish my backlog of work, because it would be frustrating to have it all there waiting to be set up when I don't have the time...

Lionel also found time to enjoy feeding Jean:

Whereas I, in an honest effort to (in one stroke) keep her warm, absorb any more partially-digested milk that should come out, and keep her sitting upright (which she likes, and cmplains if laid down when she's feeling inquisitive), managed to make her look like a Boohbah:

Future Foundry (by alaric)

Last weekend, we went to visit the Mill and take the first load of boxes up to the Bakery, which is now unoccupied (except for being used to put guests up) until we move in.

There is a single garage on the end of the Bakery that I'd never given much thought to, since it was always full of junk and for some reason I remembered it being made of wood. However, it turns out to all be very obviously made of stone (my powers of observation are just great!), and whats more, it had been used by the tenants in the Bakery and was, therefore, now empty. In fact, it's where we put our boxes of books we'd taken up there.

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