Saturday 16 November 2013

Tinkering with Stuff


The scale on my tiller rig has been a source of mild irritation insofar as it is pretty unreadable in video.
I set about improving it by painting out the Kg scale... (we don't need no steenking kilogrammes). I used acrylic artists paint, which is about the same as ordinary emulsion paint.
I extended the scale line for each 10 pound line and put a blob every 50 pounds. I used a 'Sharpie' pen from Poundland.
The clear cover was pretty scratched and filthy so I cleaned that up with the buffing wheel I use on the horn nocks. You can see the improvement in clarity, not bad for a little bit of work.

I've also been making a steel tool to punch in or brand my bowyer's mark onto the warbow.
It's made from some steel tube I had lying about, it's slotted together, but needs brazing or welding before it's cleaned up and tested.
The problem was I couldn't braze it up as I just couldn't get it hot enough for the brazing rods I had. A new gas cylinder would brobably help but I've ordered some silver solder rods and flux from the web, it's handy stuff to have, dull red heat will melt it and the result is pretty strong. Soft solder just isn't strong enough, brazing needs too much heat, and it's too small for arc welding (well for a cheapo arc welder and an operator with rudimentary skill!)
Hopefully I'll get some nice video tomorrow and maybe I'll be able to plot a force draw curve, which will be of some academic interest.

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