thibaultron

2/18 Today I glued the corner strips to the bottom of the spray booth. The booth will ultimately reside on a table with casters, so I can move it around. I have an old table top, that will be used for this. As I mentioned before the plywood is warped. I don't have deep enough clamps to get to one of the internal corners. So I decided to screw the bottom to the table top, in the position it will be at. This flattened the ply. In addition I temperarily screwed the corner pieces down also. I'll remove all the screws when I go to assemble the booth. Here is the bottom screwed to the table. I'm left handed, thus the offset to the right. The left hand area will be for storage of the airbrush equipment. Next I laid down the sides in alignment with the bottom, so I could position the internal corner pieces correctly. Then I glued and screwed the pieces in place. I found that even with the bottom piece screwed to the table, the screws in the corner pieces were needed to get them to lay down without a gap. Here's the bottom finished as far as I want to go for now. I still have to put in the piece for the bottom of the blower bulkhead, but I'm going to do that after the sides and bottom are assembled. Less chance of having it in the wrong spot, if the sides are not perfectly aligned. A good seal here is essential. I stopped here to let the glue dry overnight.

2/17 After going over my drawings one last time, and finding a few errors, I started construction on my Spray Booth. I've cut out all the plywood, and ripped a 1 X 6 into 3/4" strips. The strips are for the corners, to strengthen the joints. Here is a picture of the sides, with the strips glued and nailed on. The ply is warped a little, so all the clamps are to hold the glue strips on solid, until the glue dries. I'll let them sit overnight, and do the rest tomorrow, when I the clamps are free. The glue strips are sitting over at the left of the ramp. The rectangular arrangement of strips are for the filter mount and blower bulkheads. Most of the case is 3/8" ply (I would have preferred 1/2", but I had the 3/8"). The blower bulkhead is 3/4", as I felt the 3/8" was too thin for this. The notch on the larger end of the one side is a lap joint in the plywood. The ply is 3/8" exterior siding.

2/16 After looking at a few spray booths, and plans, here is what I'm planning on building. The top has a cutout for a light, I'll put plexiglass in the opening. The top hinges up so I can have more access to the top of the model, or to clear masts, if needed. The front lip will also be a plexi piece. I think I'll use plastic wrap as an inside cover to both clear parts. I can strip it off and replace it, when it gets coated.

2/15 Today I had an epiphany. I've been shopping around for a fan to use in a spray paint booth. I'm going to be using acrylic, so "explosion proof" is not a neccessity, even if I could find one. The internet sites say 500 CFM. Seems a bit high, but start there So, I've been looking at the squirrel cage type with the motor outside the case. Non explosion ones on Ebay with ~150 CFM go for about $60 US. I next thought of using an old dryer blower and motor. Used driers are about $100. I stopped and asked about broken ones at the local places, $35 or more. Then I remembered the old electric leaf blower that has been dragging around my shop for 6 years, that my wife bought at a yard sale. Squirrel cage, motor outside the blower housing, and lots of CFM. I think I have a volunteer!! I'll probably end up building an outside box to house it, to cut down on the noise, but for now construction can begin. After some discussion, about 500 or 600 CFM being way too much flow, I found a 250 CFM blower on Ebay, and bought that. The leaf blower idea, though, did get me moving on construction. 2/15 The trouble with the regular hood and bath fans is that the motor is in the air stream, and the vapors (if solvent type) can deteriorate the insulation. The squirrel cage hood fans run about 30 to 50 CFM, too low. You can get new SC fans with about 130 CFM for $60, but if that is not enough, I've wasted the money. The leaf blower is rated 600 CFM. If that is too much I can ramp it down, to find the right value. A 500 CFM new fan runs about $150. A drier runs about 130 also, if I can find a free one, I can try that later.

Started a new thread about the construction of my spray booth. I started detailing it on the “What have you done today” thread, but figured that that was to much info to clutter it with. I’m going to put the earlier postings in with the date I posted them, then continue in this thread. So the beginning may be somewhat choppy, stick with me.

Very nice boats Bob!! Great workmanship.

You've done a nice job!

Out to the shop to find some scrap hardwood!! Thanks!

To Walmart we will go. To Walmart we will go.

They are also quite nice for storing rolled plans.

Nice setup for the mast drilling, think I'll use that setup.

The only solution I personally have been able to do to fight this, is to specify "North America" only on my Ebay searches. Doesn't solve much of anything, but at least blocks them from one customer.

In the model railroad world, there is a standard, open source, program, universally used in programming the digital locomotive controllers, of all brands. Some SOB programmer copied the code, changed a couple areas, and copyrighted the whole thing under his name, then sued the open source group for infringment!! it took a couple years and a lot of bucks, to get it overturned.

Just noticed this thread. Nice work Bob, I'll be following it now.

Yes, call them.

The other question is, even if we can find the orentation of the wreck, how long did she drift after being cut loose, did she drift? They would have cut her loose well before she endangered pulling the Washington down with her. With being down a the bows, the wind would have pushed the stern downwind, as she sank.

Epoxy finishes are the standard for garages. Mix two parts and spread like paint. That would be my choice. The problem I can see with laminates is moisture buildup between the floor and the laminate. I doubt that there is a vapor barrier under the garage floor. Under the house proper they generally do have one.

Yes, the accuracy of CAD can be to distracting, sometimes. I draw my plans out full size, then reduce them for printing. I have to keep reminding my self, that no one built a wooden ship to 0.001 inch accuracy! I leave the CAD set at 0.001", just because I do make some drawings that need it, and I'm sure I would forget to change it back and forth.

Here is an example of a 3D drawing of a boat I am doing. The plans showed the frames forward of the break fairly accurately, but the drawings of the aft frames were garbage. By drawing everything in 3D I was able to work down to these final lines, by taking what accurate data I could find in other sections of the plans, and adjusting the aft frames over several iterations. By doing this I can also readily see that all the lines are fair in all 3 projections. I used a function of my CAD that draws a curve between several points. If all my data is good I get smooth lines. If not, I can see what points are out of line. Then I redraw the line, skipping the bad point(s). Now if the lines is good, I can take measurements, and redraw the frame(s) with the new data. I can also select each window, and make it full screen, to see finer detail.

After I get my initial frames done I lay them out in 3D and check the flow of the lines. I can't show an example, my main computer power supply died, and it has most of my files on it.

As an example, I took a section of a plan showing the drawing imported as a graphic, and the traced results. (Yes a publicly distributed plan). The drawing shown is fairly course, I normally scan the plans in at 300DPI. As you can see, the traced drawing is not in any case, in any way useful. This is the type of result any of the Tracing programs, free or purchased, will give you.

On a safety note, for those who don't know: Never use oil or grease of any kind on or around the O2 bottle threads!!! Learned this in a welding class. The teacher said it would go Boom!

Stop!! For all intents and purposes, NO, tracing software is usable for drafting! None! Later today I'll show you an example, I have to go out for the day now. The only viable way to go from JPG, PDF, etc. is to import the drawing and trace over it.

I called them, then as they requested emailed the info on the parts I needed. Took only about a week to get the replacement parts.

I'll have to look into the danta. I have several kits that use mahogany for the original mahogany parts, and the grain is way too course for the model.