After finishing the jig in part one, I decided to carry on and make the first actual wind vane part (the jig I made is just to help in the construction).
I decided to start with parts 4A and 4B, as they looked fairly easyish and a good place to cut my teeth on working with stainless.
This is what the starting piece of stainless looked like
First I marked up the holes that needed to be drilled. It was very important to be exact, so I measured the ‘sideways’ measurement and then clamped the jig onto the stainless piece. This allowed me to drill exactly in the right spot.
I drilled pilot holes with my 3mm drill bit first, and then went back and drilled the correct sized holes. I ended up with a steel box full of holes.
The next part was to hacksaw the box into two (as both parts come off the same box section). To do this I clamped the box into the vice at an angle, this allowed me to hacksaw down the natural ‘V’ of the box
THIS PART SUCKED BY THE WAY. Once I was (finally) done, I had to file off the sharp sides and removed some burring from the inside of the box
I ended up with two pieces looking like this.
I wasn’t quite done, as one side of each piece needed to be shaped some more. So back to the hacksaw
Some filing to finish off the round corners and DONE!
At this rate it’s gonna take me roughly to the heat death of the universe to finish. Sigh. Hopefully I’ll start to pick up speed and Ralph from the dock has offered to help (he is a professional metal-worker) but that feels a bit like cheating (or I’m an idiot)
TIME TO DATE: 6 HOURS
