Cookout in Indiana

What a great day. The kids had some really wonderful (and patient) girls to play with. We had some great food.

I got a chance to talk droid with some experienced builders.

Dream about parts.

 And more parts....

All in all it was a great day we had a lot of fun, good food, good talks, and got to meet a bunch of really nice people.

We are glad we made the trip.

Packing Up... Driving to Indiana

Today the family and I packing the car and driving up to Indiana Dunes to meet some builders. This should be a fun and interesting weekend as this is the first time we have packed the kids in the car for a longer then 2 hours drive.

Horseshoes Part #1

Once the kids got sidetracked I decided to assemble the horseshoe leg details. It is hard to see in the picture below but some of the holes in the plastic did not get cut all the way. So I grabbed the drill and fixed the three holes that were blocked.

The horseshoes were layed out before any glue was applied being careful to ensure that the pieces were correctly laid out to ensure I had a left and right horse shoe.

Once glued it was time to clamp everything down. As you can see from the picture below I am quickly running out of clamps and deskspace. If you look closely in the picture below you will see my IPad... Which I think is a builders best friend.

Leg #2 Assembly Part #1

The boys and I got up this morning and decided to work on the other leg a bit this morning. So we cleaned off all the parts, broke out the JB Weld and clamped the parts together. I used the same dowel insert technique I did for the first leg. The only difference is I also installed piece #8.

I am a little nervious that I stacked the pieces in the correct order so that I have a proper left and right leg. Time will tell.

Leg #1 Current State

Once I removed the clamps I tested the bond and it worked fairly well. I then reinstalled the #12 screws. Since I drilled counter sink holes the screws poked out just a bit on the underside. I then grabbed the Dremel and grinded the screw ends until the underside of the leg was smooth. Later I will fill in the holes with some bondo and sand it flat (Although this will not be until later).

I am going to have a fair amount of cleanup work todo on the leg to get it in prime condition as seen below.

Leg #1 Glue Results

Tonight I am going to re-glue the white pieces of leg #1. I will be using Goop and Gorilla Glue.

Glue Experiment

Results of my initial glue tests were as follows:

Gorilla Glue - Worked well, bonded tight easy to clean-up but I get the feeling that if I pulled with some pliers hard I might be able to separate the pieces.

Gorilla Glue 2 Part Epoxy - This epoxy did not mix as well coming out of the tubes and did not bound very well.

Amazing Goop - This worked very well, however it was hard to cleanup the run over.

Permatex 84101 General Purpose Epoxy - This did not bond to the white material at all.

I think what I am going to do to re-secure #9, #11, #11a, #11b is use the goop on the center of the components and the gorilla glue on the near the outside of the pieces. This way the cleanup will be a lot easier.