Roselea

Category: Equipment and Tools

The Tools we are using on this Project

  • Ordered new Nail gun

    This morning we did some research looking for a nailing gun which will allow us to nail metal plates onto timber as well as the usual wood joining plus the ability to take different sizes of nails. There is one particular model that seems to fit the bill so after reading various reviews on it we ordered it along with boxes of nails including hardened nails for firing into metal plates! Another advantage of this nailing gun is that these nails all have full sized heads on them which offers better fixing properties when nailing panels! It is nice to see that the price of the nails are very similar in bulk!

    It is good to have a second major nailing gun on hand, just in case our older (coming up to 8 years now) big gun stops working again!

  • Chop Saw & Bench

    We are using our old chop saw setup which includes three 4foot benches to hold and guide the timber into and out of the chop saw. It is getting old and the benches suffered for being outside in all weather for a couple of years! We are planning to make a new setup inside the Garage when it is built. But in the meantime it is doing a grand job of chopping up our timbers into regular lengths for building the walls.

    Saw bench and some cut pieces

  • Glue Dispensing Machine

    Stephen has designed a glue dispensing machine using an old pressure spray bottle. He made an adaptor using thermal plastic (you can soften this plastic in hot water and mould it into anything you like) with a high pressure compressed air connector. We then connected a length of garden hose to the outlet and a quarter turn valve to control the flow. With further moulded plastic modules shaped into a broad nozzle to the width of various timber (38mm is the most common) and drill a couple of little holes to allow the glue to come out in a constant stream!

    It is working in tests but we haven’t tried it for real yet!!

    Glue dispenser

    Glue Dispenser - Connections

  • Air nailing gun not firing!

    Our big framing nail gun has stopped working! The trigger works and we can hear air coming in but the piston is not moving with the usual loud thump and of course the bang as the trigger is released to fire the nail!!

    Stephen took it all apart and greased and oiled the various moving parts but it took two tries of fiddling around to get it working again! We are not sure why it is working again! But we are not complaining or least not yet!

    That took a couple of hours in the morning!

  • Dumper Truck is down in the Dumps #2

    Yippeee! We managed to jump start the dumper truck! We tipped the load and drove it back to the house to connect the battery charger!

    Phew! That is a great releif and thanks to our cousin Neil over in Blackpool for his 20 years of expert knowledge of heavy machinery and everything with a engine in it. Cheers Neil!

  • Dumper is down in the Dumps!

    OH GEE WIZ!

    Our truck is broken! The starter motor is making a horrible crunching noise! Oh Blimey!

    We phoned our cousin for his expert opinion and listening via our mobile phones, he recommends checking the battery charge level! The noise reminded him as if the starter motor is not quite engaging fully. The battery level was 12.2V which is rather low! We do have a solar panel mounted on the dumper truck to keep the battery charged up but we have been using it many times in the last couple of days and it has been very cloudy too! So we are not surprised that the battery is flat!! We are trying to jump start it using the mini digger to just get the truck going so we can finish emptying the load and drive it back down the slope!! Yes we are stuck half way up the slope!

    We have our fingers crossed !!

    Stephen sitting on the dead dumper

  • Mini Digger & Dumper truck Maintenance

    Stephen spend the morning doing the regular maintenance, pumping grease into the joints and bearings including doing the dumper truck as well. But Stephen decided to tackle the longer running non working sideways control of the arm which we will need when we start digging the trenches. He traced the wiring from the switch on top of the joystick and to the solenoid that operates the pump that controls the rotation of the arm side to side. It was another similar problem with a power interruption to the switch so he repaired it with a clean new wire. It now works!!

  • Started and stopped concreting the tank.

    Started mixing concrete and pouring round the base of the tank but we were stoppped by the mixer breaking down. Took it apart and found the motor start capacitor has blown up.The capacitor with the electrolite boiled out the side.

    Ordered a replacement so hopefully will restart the concreting tomorrow.