Anyways, back to the ship. I think I mentionned this before, I'm now at a point where progress seems to be at a crawl, even when I spend a good day on the project. Case in point, hurricane braces. Never heard of them? That's cause I just invented them, so to speak. You see I was worried that once in a while, living on the sea, we do tend to get some pretty high winds. I wasn't initially planning to anchor this ship into the ground but as it got taller and taller, I reconsidered that decision and decided to put in to anchors into the ground on the side of the ship that people don't tend to see.
So I started by digging a post hole 4 ft deep.
Now this 4x4 is going to be encased in concrete so I got one of those cardboard tubes (I think they call them Sono tubes). Now one hint about buying these cardboard forms, although they have a whole shelf of them saying they're 6 inches in diameter, there are wide variations, at least I found, in what constitutes 6 inches, and I said "Pardon?". So I sorted through the various tubes on the shelf at the store and picked out the 6 incher that was the widest. The 8 inch I thought was overkill. These tubes were in 8 ft lengths so all I had to do was cut it in hal and one tube gave me my two forms for my anchors.
Now if any of you following the blog are certified contractors or whatnot, you might think that I do things sometimes that aren't really in the "book". Some of the things I do I learned but some things are just "logical" as far as I'm concerned. So when it cam time to put the 4x4 into the tube, I figured just encasing it in concrete wouldn't be enough if it was just fitted in like a sleave. I needed some extra grabbing power in that concrete so I cut some pieces of rebar, 4.75 inches long and Mathieu and I drilled some holes into the 4x4's section to be encased. My thoughts on this that although just small protrusions, they would anchor the 4x4 even more in the concrete. One inportant thing I remembered reading somewhere though, I had to make sure the ends of these pieces of rebar didn't poke through the outer edge of the concrete, other wise ground water might over time rust them and compromise the concrete.
So our postready to go into the ground, I attached the top of it at the right place in the frame of the ship, then we mixed up 2 bags of concrete.
I know it's hard to see but this 4x4 is bolted on the inside to many of the structural ribs and plates of the ship. it also serves as the top portion of the framworkfor the interior brig wall so this will provide some lateral structural integrity as well. One last thing on this task, I usually do not backfill concrete work right away like this but they were calling for 40mm or rain that night and following day so last thing I wanted was the hole to fill up with water.
So a few days ago the weapons system finally showed up. Let's just say they were worth the wait.
Oh and visitors are still stopping by to see the ship. Kids play during the day and I'm thinking of hosting booze cruises during the evenings.
So now that the cannons were here, I was able to figure out the right dimensions for some cannon doors.
I like this feature as it's the start of "dressing up" the ship. It's all the little details that'll make this stand out from other play sets.
I also put in the doors and some pull ropes to open the doors to get ready for attacks.
As you can see, I went with the black hinges again, matching the other hardware already on the ship. On the inside, I played with the idea of comlpicated pulley systems and winches to open up the cannon doors but seeing as they're really not heavy, I just went with simple poly rope (resists water) and installed some rope cleats to tie the ropes to and keep the doors open. Actually, Mathieu put in one of the cleats all on his own with the cordless drill. I don't think you can see the difference.
So that's it for this weekend. Our neighbour is welding some parts for the boom crane thingy this week and he said they'd be ready by mid-week so next weekend we'll be installing another fun feature.
Until then, thanks for dropping by.
A.
No comments:
Post a Comment