Frame Work and Painting

I finally got back to adjusting my frame. In an earlier post I mentioned that the quarter rings in the front of the frame were causing tension in the frame and wouldn't line up correctly. I took the frame apart and compared the positions of the cuts on the quarter ring to that of the middle ring and saw what needed to be done to correct the problem. So I pulled out the band saw and made a few cuts and voila! things looked good.

Frame with corrected quarter rings

Along with fixing the frame I also primed the bottom of the bottom ring since it will be visible to the outside world.

Bottom Ring Primed

I was also able to get the ankle wedges and cylinder holders primed and painted

Ankle Wedges Painted

Cylinder Holders Painted

I can't wait to be able to start putting a lot of this stuff together. It gets to be a little frustrating to do all this work and still not be able to see anything substantial yet. Need to keep going and keep my eye on the prize.

Ankle Cylinders

Wow, it feels like forever since I updated this. Things slowed down a little bit the last few weeks but over the last few days I've been able to get a little bit done. So I got a chance to continue working on my ankle cylinders. When last I left, I had notched out the inner section of the cylinder which sits on the leg. With that completed, the next step is to use the dado blade on the table saw to notch out part of the outer sections of the cylinder to get the trapezoidal shape on the end.

Ankle Cylinder showing the dado cut on the end

I made several runs on the table saw with dado blade and tried to get as close to the PVC as possible then repeated the cuts on the other side. Using the current configuration, you can only get the cuts made on the inner half of the cylinder so a new jig had to be made to make the cuts on the outer half.

Ankle Cylinder jig

I broke the wood guides off the end of the cylinders and slid the cylinder into the jig I made.

Ankle Cylinder inside of Jig

The jig is required to keep the cylinder from rocking when attempting to make the dado cuts. So after making a few passes to get the height of the dado correct, I went to work on the cylinder. Again, I made several passes and got as close as possible to the PVC. Once that was done, I used the band saw and cut the ends to the correct height and then made the angle cuts to get the trapezoidal look. I repeated this process with all 4 cylinders.

Once they were done, I primed them and did a test fit on the center leg with a few other details.

Center leg test fit

Then I painted them metallic aluminum

Ankle Cylinders being painted

The next step was determining how to attach the cylinders to the leg. I decided to use the same method I had used in attaching the shoulder horseshoes and outer ankle cylinders in that I will use the grille guides.

Center Leg showing grill guides

Using some of the blueprints from the club I was able to determine the location of the ankle cylinders. I then made a template from some polystyrene I had so that I could make sure the holes on the leg lined up with the ones on the cylinder.

Female Grill Guide Holes Countersunk

Grill Guides installed

Ankle Cylinder

I repeated the process on the other side and both lined up pretty nicely. So, at this point the ankle cylinders are just about done. I need to do a little bit more painting on them but otherwise they are done and I am happy with them.