Guys, I can report some progress, at last, on the rebuild of "Kilimanjaro Cloud". As some may remember, I live in downtown Paris, so I battle to make parts in my flat and damp cellar.
Well, I invested one working day into refurbishing the cellar. I put a wooden floor on top of the dirt floor, the biggest Neon (flourescent) light I could find, as many shelves as I could possibly fit, and a serious wooden table top as a bench. Man, what a difference! It still is ridiculously small (6 square meter, about 55 square feet!), but I now see what I am doing, can vacuum clean the dust as I go. Everything gets easier and faster, and I am nearly done with the last parts I need to complete the rebuilding, namely a new set of ribs (I call them "spare ribs", of course). Now, here is the tip. I am making foam ribs, about 40mm thick, with large lightening holes in them, and I needed to build a couple tools for that. First, I needed a sort of very deep hole saw. To make that, I took a 50mm (about 2") steel tube, cut it neatly with a large tube cutter. Then, I cut a thick wooden disk with a hole saw. The outside diameter of the disk matches closely the inner diameter of the tube. The disk has a hole in the middle to put an axle (in that case, a piece of threaded rod, washers and nuts). I made 4 small holes near the edge of the tube, so that I can insert some screws to hold the disk to the tube. I then aligned neatly the disk and the tube with an angle, making sure they are perpendicular, and screwed the screws. Voilà! I then experimented on a scrap iece of foam until I found the correct drilling speed setting to cut the extruded polystyrene foam neatly. Worked great! Second tool I needed was some sort of sanding tool to sand neatly the inside of the large lightening holes. All my pals at the homebuilder's club here seem to own what they call "une toupie" (a top toy, litterally). It consists of an axle bearing a large diameter aluminum barrel at the bottom, and a diameter washer on top of it. The washer free wheels, whereas the barrel is clamped to the mandrel. The barrel is either grooved, or covered with coarse sanding paper that is glued to it. They use this to replicate wooden ribs. They put the toupie in the drill press, and make a stack of plywood ribs roughly cut to shape, with one template rib at the top. The washer is aligned with the template rib, and the other ribs get sanded by the barrel. Without a lathe, there was no way I could build something like that, so I simply wrapped some sanding paper around my first tool in a spiral, and stopped it at both ends using electrical cable ties. Worked great, saved me a lot of pain! Serge Vidal KR2 "Kilimanjaro Cloud" Paris, France
