The stands I'm talking about make it easier to work on boards, you can lie them flat or turn them on edge to work the rails of the board. My last ones were made small and would be placed on my work bench, Nothing wrong with that concept, but they left very little room underneath to let me glass rails properly, so the new set has been made a wee bit bigger.
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| The Original stands I use. |
The new stands are made from plywood, foam and concrete ( Nightmare concrete.) I started off with 12mm ply ( plywood).Now this isn't thick enough to support the board properly, so I made a template and cut out 6 stand shapes, 3 for each stand, and glued them together.
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| The Template. |
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| Starting the mass producing process. |
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| One glued and screwed, and the remaining 3. |
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| The 3 glued and screwed. |
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| Pre-base stand. |
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| Completed stands. |
The concrete I used for the bases gave me a real hard time. Against my better judgment, I read the label on the back of the pack to see how to mix it. The recommendation was to place the water needed in the hole, then to dump the concrete in and mix. I had a couple of differences with the situation it explained. 1: I wasn't putting a post in the ground, just pouring it into 2 cut down bucket molds, 2: the instructions said not to mix first then pour into the hole, the reason for this being that it was quick set and would more than likely start setting before I finished mixing and 3: I wasn't going to use a whole bag.
My plan of attack on this was to mix it in thirds, that way I only needed a Litre of water for each batch, This was the easy part as my mixing bucket happened to have Litre measurements on the inside. It dawned om me at this point that I had no way of accurately measuring out a third of 25kgs, the size of the bag of cement. So, the eye-chrometer came into effect. Not wise. Not wise at all. In my haste and panic of using quick set cement, I poured in all the cement I figured I'd need, Mistake 1.
What I should've done is what I do at work when making Polyester filler, resin first, then slowly add the powders to make a consistency we find most desired.
So with a rapidly setting brew of cement that was a bit too dry, I poured it into 1 of the molds. This didn't go as well as I'd have liked, it was setting and hard to pour, also the stand itself was getting in the way, Idea!! take it out then place it back in after. This very nearly worked properly. I had to get the stand all the way to the bottom of the cement to ensure the same height was achieved on both stands, what was unknown to me at the time was that it had lodged itself on some aggregate and was sitting 15mm higher than I had anticipated.
Stand 2 went pretty much the same way only that I had help in the form of my Partner holding the stand for me, Thank You very much!!. With this help, the base was kept at the height I had planned, and when set and standing back to admire my work, suddenly realised the difference in height and could do nothing about it.
The next day I up ended the stands to see If the bottoms were okay. The first one was, the second needed filling, mainly due to the fact that when I picked it up a dry patch fell out. So after learning my lesson, I mixed the cement how I should've the day before, and made a perfect mix that didn't set before I finished smoothing it out.
This being done and left to set, I removed the molds and now have 2 stands ready for the week ahead, the week I am planning to glass the board up.
Well, I shall be off now, and hopefully won't be as long getting around to the next post for you all.
Nick.
