Secret Mens Business Pt3 - Waxing Waxy

After the tip run, and the stacking of bricks, Andrew and Noel set to the cutting of the 4 tonnes of wax in the driveway. Much frustration ensued, the stuff would grab and clog the chainsaw and cutting with a hand saw took ages.

After cleaning a few bricks, I decided to grab an axe and try to crack the stuff. It worked!

In this shot you can see two white spots above the firewood heap. They are airborne wax from the previous swing of the axe. This stuff takes flight like nothing else when it shatters.



Andrew and Noel tipping up a block to let Noel get a better angle to crack it.

Noel's therapy for the month.

Why was that block so hard?
Because the sodding thing was formed with this almighty bowl of wax, which only wanted to crack inline with the seperate cooling line.
An amazing effect to observe so clearly.

I had figured that we'd get one of the big blocks cut up, and that it would be a big effort to get that much done, but once the axe was in play we were able to bowl over two of them with time to spare. I'll wait a fortnight before tackling anymore, but then the driveway will be that little bit clearer... now what to do with all this wax...

Secret Mens Business Pt 2 - Dust Extraction and Compressors

So the dust extraction sytem is built entirely from 100mm and 40mm PVC tube, with 50mm ag-line to the individual suction points.

Bits:

The state of play as at Thursday night;


More bits! Friday night: Still More Bits!!!! Saturday afternoon:
Bits cut free from the old pipe they were glued to;

Martin burning the poo out of the fittings. We learned a lesson here, stay away from yellow fittings, the glue in them has a higher melting point, and it's much harder to reclaim them whole and un-melted.

The suction line from the router table (the grey hose going up), connection to the main workshop space riser, curving around to the very heavy particle drop out point. The theory here is that any particle too heavy to make it to the cyclone, will drop into a bin here and not cause a blockage in the line. It seems to work too.
The connections to and from the fan. Made with gaffer tape as they are completely temporary. The fan still needs to be bolted down, and a sound proof box made up for it to save my (and the neighbors) ears. The fan will be bolted down through high density engine mounts.
Me testing the suction line on the floor. God what a noise! When we fired up the fan, the ag-line lengths set up an unbelievably loud tone, at their resonant frequency. They absolutely screamed! Ear plugs all round.
This is so cool!! It works perfectly!!
The return outside the shed, where the cyclone will go, and then heading into the fan at the bottom.
The vent line from the fan, note the white soap stone dust that has shot out of the fan, and has covered the plants in the bottom of the pic.
While Martin made the holes for the return line and vent line, Andrew and Noel set to work assembling the new compressor. Again, this seems to work (two plans in one weekend!!!), but it needs a more appropriate belt. Andrew (expert in all things hydraulic, pneumatic and power transmission) sized and specced this. I will pick on up in the next few weeks. This will be going outside in a weather proof and sound proof boxed and will be plumber back into the shed. This will be the long running compressor, with a higher start and stop pressure, than the secondary direct drive unit.
The dust extraction project has so far cost me about $400, this will increase a little when I buy the perspex to make the cyclone, but it really is a several thousand dollar result for a stupidly low cost.

The compressor so far weighs in at about $60, but only because I managed to foreigner in the base for it.

Secret Mens Business Pt1 - Shed Cleaning

This weekend was a big weekend with Andrew, Noel and Martin, at the beginning of which the goals were to have the shed clean, the dust extraction system tested and to get a few bricks and cut a bit of wax...

Friday night the shed was filthy and Andrew and I spent a few hours cleaning and sorting...


Martin came over Saturday mornign and we headed to Launy to get bits for the dust extraction system. After this all four of us piled into the cleaning of the shed and preparing of the DES, The pile that went to the tip today looked like this:

And after the big cleanup, it looked even better than this:

The guys worked so hard to help me out on this one, we've all missed the working bee weekends, lots of blokey fun and playing with toys! And we sleep so well afterwards...

More Progress...

The last couple of weeks have seen marginal progress in the bathroom and a little more outside the house.
The Villaboard walls have started to go in but further work on them was halted until I got the pink batts for the insulation.


On Friday night Ang helped me finish off the waste line to the bath, which I can -just- reach through the one board I've left loose in the linen cupboard. This means that the tub can go in as soon as I buy the mortar for the mortar bed.

Yesterday I put the batts into the walls and blocked up all the drafty holes.

And made up the frame for the bathroom cabinet, and checked it's positioning in the space I made for it.

There was a small amount of brick collection and cleaning yesterday, but plenty more to do.

Work was also done last night on the shed dust extraction, in the form of planning and pre-preparing corners and junctions before mounting them up this weekend.

And this weeks cute is The diminuitive one getting cosy with Alpaca at Agfest. She now knows exactly what noise an alpaca makes, and has said hello to chickens, ducks, goats, cows (Belted Galloways, Poll Herefords, and something that looked like a jersey but wasn't), sheep (and lambs).

Tonight there shall be the making of the back board for the bathroom cabinet, and fitting it to the frame and making sure it's all square. I may also make up a few more joints for the dust extraction and a heavy particle drop-out point.

Other tasks this week are putting the villaboard under the bathroom cabinet, and brick cleaning and cutting and shutting the shower/bath plumbing setup.