Slow progress on many projects
I havenât posted in a while, but that doesnât mean Iâm not still busy with something. Right now Iâm probably too busy with many things.
Mark and I have been working on a low-rider rack for his bike for the past many months. One of the last remaining pieces was to make these special fasteners:
If you click the link youâll see a slideshow of how I made this.
Iâve also been working on a generator headlight. It is using a couple of CREE XR-E LEDs and will have a built in standlight which uses a supercap. I figured out the standlight circuit with a lot of help from Steve Kurt and others on this CPF thread. Iâve built most of the circuits on that thread on a prototype board and came up with one that I like.
I made the housing on the lathe. It is a bit large (the outer diameter is around 55mm) and a little heavy, but it looks nice. Click on the link to see more (and Iâll keep adding to this gallery as I do more work, but I probably wonât mention this project again on the blog until it is finished).
Larry was visiting a couple of months back and asked if all of my lathe bits should really be loose in a drawer and knocking into each other. Itâs a good question, and the right answer is no. I spent a little while trying to find good tool foam online, then happned to find a nice package of it at Sears. An hourâs work later and my lathe tool holders were organized. I also found a 12×12â section of foam at Rockler Woodworking which has a hundred or so holes that lathe bits fit into very nicely.
We hired a landscape designer and company to overhaul our yard. The work started this week and so far the progress is awesome. I canât wait to see it all put back together. For now I just have a teaser of the plans.
Alex, nice photo sequence on how you made the stay fastener. I”d never considered holding a threading die in the tailstock. Cool.
The plans for your landscaping look impressive. I”m especially a fan of what looks to be a bicycle friendly ramp leading in from the alley.
I originally ran the die but hand, but had trouble holding it straight. My threaded bits just weren”t ending up even. My lathe came with some die olders, but none were the right OD for 1″ hex dies (the norm these days). It didn”t take long to modify one to work.
The ramp got cut (we couldn”t get the slope low enough), but the stairs will be wider and shallower. It”ll be much easier to get bikes in and out of here.
is that a ramp, and not stairs???
Ramp in the drawing, stairs in reality. That isn”t the final plan, it is just the one I had pictures of.
The stones down the right side of the house are turning into a gravel path too.
It’’s really great to see someone biting the DIY bit with such tenacity. One of the things Guy Lautard told me when we used to hangout was ”don”t take the work out of the lathe unless you must.” He would do a lot of the tapping/threading in the lathe and turned either the head or tail-stock by hand.