What’s been happening?

There is now more room in the ceiling cavity now that all the old air conditioning ducting has been removed.  All I need to now do is take it to the tip.  However there are many other objects that also need to go there which means that won’t happen until I’m confident my back is ready to do some heavy lifting.

The front lawn is full of weeds which meant half a day applying weed specific poison.

I’ve made a start on the modifications to the workshop dust extractor.  you can see the problem in the next two photos.

I’ve made a temporary repair with duct tape.

Scrounging around behind the shed I found some old pieces of 8mm plywood sheet that originally formed the lower shelf in the garage bench which I dismantled several weeks ago.  They were roughly cut to size before being glued and clamped.

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Whilst the glue was setting I dismantled the sawdust extractor focussing on the ‘cyclone’ portion.  This was laid on to of the plywood and the circumference marked with a pencil.

Then I measured the radius of the scribed circle.  Well the cyclone isn’t circular… it’s actually oval (Chinese made… of course!).  I then made a jig for the router using pieces of scrap timber.

A small hole was drilled in the jig away from the router bit.  The distance being exactly the radius of the circle oval.

Then all I had to do was spin the router on the template several times lowering the bit by increments into I had an 8mm deep groove in the plywood.

The next step was to do a test fit of the cyclone.

It fits!

I’ll now need to turn the plywood over and repeat the operation cutting a groove for the new sawdust container (when I buy it).

The Stone Stomper arrived from the manufacturer in Adelaide this afternoon.  All the components were laid on the lawn to check they were present.

To the left of the photo are the grey canvas mudflaps and rail which attached to the vehicle towbar.  The flaps will hang vertically when the vehicle is stationary but will be pushed into the horizontal position when the vehicle is at speed.  The black mesh fits between the rail and the underside of the camper trailer.  It actually looks quite simple to install.

When looking at the trailer I realised there would be a problem with the jockey wheel in the travelling position.  The wheel will press down on the Stone Stomper mesh.   I want the jockey wheel to travel in the horizontal position rather than the vertical.

The solution was to drill a 6.5mm hole through the Jockey Wheel shaft when the wheel is in the horizontal position.  The wheel can then be held in place using a ‘D’ clip which is inserted into the hole.

Right arrow to ‘D’ spring clip.

It was then that I realised there was another potential hazard.  The nut on the end of the bolt holding the jockey wheel to the shaft was on the underneath side.  The end of the bolt might tear the mesh.  The solution was to reverse the direction of the bolt thereby repositioning the nut at the top.