Postman Pat knows our names

The postie has made so many deliveries to our address we are now on first name basis.  Today he delivered the computer hard drive mounting brackets I’d ordered from China after deciding the $12 price from the Australian seller was too high.  They were $1.49 a pair from China with free delivery.

The brackets were mounted to the four hard drives using the M3 machine screws also purchased from China.

This is when I hit a snag.  The threaded holes in the side of mounting bracket where it connects to the computer case were smaller than M3 (smaller than 3mm).  Fortunately I had that Tap & Die set purchased from Aldi whilst in Bumble Hole (The Black Country).  I enlarged the existing holes and then used the M3 Tap to make a thread.  The drives were then fitted into the case

You might notice in the above photo that I’ve numbered the drives 1,2,3 & 4.  I then cross referenced the number I marked on the drive to the unique internal number.  The reason for this is to enable me to remove the correct drive should one fail.  I want to avoid any future probability of having to remove all four drives in an attempt to find the one that had failed.

After that I tidied all the internal cables.  Leaving a birds nest of cables inside the case looks messy and prevents good airflow.  The inside of the case can get rather hot so I’ve added an extra two fans to push air rapidly through the case.  The next step will be to start installing the software.  I need to make a decision about the file system.   Ext4, RFS or BTRFS.  I’m leaning towards the latter as it has the capability of enabling additional drives to be added to an existing RAID array.

After lunch I headed to my brother’s house where he has a bench and engineers vice.  We also have a vice, but it’s in a container travelling to Perth (I hope!).  Anyway, I used his vice to hold the eight long bolts I purchased.  I needed to extend the thread on the shaft of each bolt all the way to the head.  Again the Aldi Tap & die set proved to be a good purchase.

  

With all eight bolts threaded it was time to return home via the hardware store and do more work on our new bed.  Whilst at the hardware store I purchased a metre of 19mm Tasmanian Oak dowelling.  I wanted 20mm but they didn’t have that size.  The 20mm steel dogs for the Assembly Table haven’t arrived and I’d decided to make some.  The shaft of the dowel was increased to 20mm by wrapping insulation tape around it.  Now I had some dogs and could complete the assembly of the four bed side frames.

There was still some daylight so I commenced making and assembling the latitudinal frames.  I don’t want the bed to rock from side to side and to avoid this I cut a 4mm groove in the 42x19 pine framing.  The plywood panel is glued into the frame and acts as bracing (well that’s the theory)

I managed to complete six of the eight panels before running out of plywood (and daylight).