Tag: Windows

Bits and pieces

March 13, 2011

The weekend so far has been one of bits and pieces. I’m not 100% finished yet, but I’m taking a break so I thought I’d post this. I’ve gotten a couple of important pieces of work done, and plan to get a couple more done before the end of play today.

First up is the overhead shrouding. The front section beyond the vestibule needs some kind of covering, to keep the light out. I’m not doing any form of eyebrow windows a la Boeing, so all I needed was a simple cover. But the angles involved make that far from simple, and while I could probably sit down with a 3D CAD program and / or my vague memories of 3D trigonometry and work out the exact sizes of plywood or MDF to cut, I decided to go for a slightly simpler solution. Cloth. Read More

Slow going

October 10, 2010

Not much to report this week. At the moment I seem to be able to get about 4 hours work done every weekend, and that’s about all. For one thing, I respect my neighbours and don’t start work until 10am earliest, 12 noon on Sundays, finishing all loud work involving power-tools by 6pm. For another, I often find I need to pause between parts of  work for glue to dry etc, and I’m not quite organised enough to have other things ready to go when this happens. This weekend I didn’t do any work on the project on Saturday as I had other plans, so all I’ve managed to do it finish up the footwell frames I started last weekend, plus a couple of trimming jobs elsewhere in the frame. Read More

You’ve been framed again

August 11, 2010

UPDATED 12/08/10 (update here)

Earlier, I set myself the goal of replacing the existing window framing, which was both ill-fitting and full of holes where parts had been moved and re-moved. Rather than fill and bodge the frame further, I decided to learn from my lessons and re-do the frame, measuring in place for extra accuracy.

I set to the task this morning with my trusty tape and mitre saw at the ready. I took down the existing frame, measured up the pieces and the gaps, and re-cut all the parts. This took a while because there are some tricky angles. Read More

Fun with routers

August 5, 2010

Today I got to play with my new Dremel router attachment. This turns your Dremel tool into a basic plunge router, capable of cutting grooves, edges and various other neat things. While I could of course have just bought a basic router, this course appealed to me, and a small router will come in very handy when I’m making the panels later on. Read More

Tweaking the frame

August 4, 2010

(On a brief aside – WordPress is normally a great blogging system, way better than Blogger where I started off, but every so often it goes a bit wrong and eats my copy. Thus what appears below has been re-typed, badly, from memory. WordPress admins, take note and sort it out!)

Today was a bits and pieces day on the project. I spent the morning cleaning up the build room a little, getting rid of offcuts and bits of wood and hoovering up all the sawdust. This takes a lot longer than you think because sawdust takes up a suprising volume and there was several weeks’ worth to clear. So a few empties of the dust hopper later, I was nice and tidy. Well, as tidy as the build room ever gets. Read More

Shell update 3

May 31, 2010

Some progress this weekend – albeit, as ever, not as much as I’d hoped. After initial and crappy attempts to scratch-build a window frame in place, I applied some science this time and diagrammed the thing up in Visio to scale. This gave me precise measurements and angles which, with my new mitre saw, were a breeze to cut. Read More