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Saturday 1st September 2001Not much has happened
recently due to the summer holidays, but I did manage a bit of work on the
chassis over the weekend. I cut the aluminium plates on the axle side brackets
to fit against the chassis cross members, and then bolted the four brackets
onto the chassis. These will be what the wheels axles bolt on to.
The next job was to cut out two holes for the bearings. The
job would have been a lot easier if I had a tank cutter large enough for the
job, but unfortunately I hadn't, so I had to do it the hard way. I drilled a
number of holes and then cut between them with an open ended hacksaw to end up
with a pretty ragged large hole. After a lot of filing I eventually ended up
with two nice smooth holes ready to take the bearings. |
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The next thing is to cut another hole for the motor, and then
repeat the whole process for the other three axle brackets!
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top |
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I met up with an old friend of mine, Simon, who was a
farrier, and who said he was happy to make me a couple of tusks in his forge. I
gave him a rough sketch of the size and shape I wanted, and then let him do the
rest. He gave me the opportunity to make the first couple of blows with a the
sledge hammer, but after that, I had to let him do the skilled bit so that the
tusks ended looking like tusks rather than twisted bits of scrap metal! Below
are pictures of the tusks as they took shape. |
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The bar is heated in the forge |
The conical form
takes shape |
The cone
is complete |
A point
is filed on the end |
The tusk
is bent to shape |
The end is hardened |
The tusks are complete except for cutting into two
pieces |
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