Sunday, November 25, 2012

Guide



The tidying and sorting that has been a big part of the activity over the past few weeks is gradually beginning to throw up some serendipitous fortune. Todays main effort was to carry on with the chainsaw guide that will hopefully be of service. One of the many tidyings was to remove the glass from a bunch of aluminium windows scavenged from demolition sites. A few of the frame parts went into the solar panel mount and today I put two more into the chainsaw guide. They are old and much more meaty than the skimpy high tech extrusions of today, but they still keep the weight down. They were they have a kind of hand grip that runs the whole length that should allow them to skid along smoothly and the channels to house the rubber seals for the glass panes are exactly the right size to house the head of a 10mm bolt, which made attaching them to the support bar frame comparatively simple. It will also allow easy attachment of handles and other accessories. I still have a few bits to add, like locking bolts, size markers and threaded rods with handles to make adjustments easier.
Yesterday I went with my daughter to pick up some timber for another batch of benches. Two sizeable logs of Zelkova, which will be the first customers for this set up. Their delivery involved the use of the crane truck and prompted a major shift around in the yard to allow a clear run at them. The actual width of cut looks to be exactly one meter, but with all the bits poking out and the saw body itself the device needs about six feet of room to run. I may attach the plastic tank down the end to feed oil to the chain, I think the thing may run dry without it. If it works well I will also attach an additional gas tank to allow it to run longer without refilling and maybe even some kind of cable fed hand winch system to make it easier to run through the wood.There are many versions of this type of guide on the web, both homemade and commercial, and this is a bit of a mixture of several of those using materials on hand.