So after a long few days of getting things sorted I found some errors in my rod forms. The minimum depth measurements are all wonky. They reduce at an inconsistent rate across the forms making it impossible to make smaller rod tips without multiple resetting of the stations. Contacted the guys that made the forms and will have my meeting with them tomorrow.
In the meantime I decided to start a second rod. A three piece 5-wt. to give the multiple ferrule thing a try.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Building my Binder and Oven
So to build a rod there are two pieces of equipment in addition to all the other stuff; the binder and oven. The binder is required to bind the six hexagonal rod pieces together for heat treating and finally for gluing. The oven is required to heat treat and to set the glue as well.
So for the binder I decided to build a garrison binder based on the article by Chris Bogart called "Unlocking the Mysteries of the Garrison Binder" <http://www.canerod.com/rodmakers/tips/binder.html>. This article and some over engineering allowed me to put one together in a couple of weeks. I didn't quite keep the price as low as free, but close enough.
Me doing some test runs on the binder with a dowel rod.
The heart of the binder is the rod cradel. There binding drive cord provides strong clamping pressure and the thin thread off the spool is wound around the rod section tightly providing the staying clamp force.
Getting things all straightened out was a little more difficult than I was hopping. Had to keep moving the pulley locations around to get the right angles. But all stuff you just don't know till you try. I am still missing the last part I am looking for a thread tension-er to provide a smoother transitions onto the rod instead of the jerky application that my hand feeding was providing.
The oven was a pain in the butt solutions. Many experts build formal heating ovens with insulation and heating elements powered by electricity. since I didn't want to spend that level of time or money I went with the heat gun oven using some cut conduit tubing. One end has the hot air in and the other end is the hot air out. Unfortunately the problem with this is inconsistent temperature profile for the length of the oven so the rod has variable heating time. Initial bare metal testing indicated a 50 F difference in temperature from the entrance to the outlet. So I got some insulation tape and wrapped the inlet side once and the outlet half twice. This format of insulation resulted in a much tighter temperature difference of only 20 F form entrance to exit. Unfortunately it also raised the temperature of the whole oven considerable beyond my thermometer range and needs! Some dilution of the entrance air with a little block was enough to provide some stability and lower the temperature to the 300-350 F range that I am looking for.
So for the binder I decided to build a garrison binder based on the article by Chris Bogart called "Unlocking the Mysteries of the Garrison Binder" <http://www.canerod.com/rodmakers/tips/binder.html>. This article and some over engineering allowed me to put one together in a couple of weeks. I didn't quite keep the price as low as free, but close enough.
Me doing some test runs on the binder with a dowel rod.
The heart of the binder is the rod cradel. There binding drive cord provides strong clamping pressure and the thin thread off the spool is wound around the rod section tightly providing the staying clamp force.
Getting things all straightened out was a little more difficult than I was hopping. Had to keep moving the pulley locations around to get the right angles. But all stuff you just don't know till you try. I am still missing the last part I am looking for a thread tension-er to provide a smoother transitions onto the rod instead of the jerky application that my hand feeding was providing.
The oven was a pain in the butt solutions. Many experts build formal heating ovens with insulation and heating elements powered by electricity. since I didn't want to spend that level of time or money I went with the heat gun oven using some cut conduit tubing. One end has the hot air in and the other end is the hot air out. Unfortunately the problem with this is inconsistent temperature profile for the length of the oven so the rod has variable heating time. Initial bare metal testing indicated a 50 F difference in temperature from the entrance to the outlet. So I got some insulation tape and wrapped the inlet side once and the outlet half twice. This format of insulation resulted in a much tighter temperature difference of only 20 F form entrance to exit. Unfortunately it also raised the temperature of the whole oven considerable beyond my thermometer range and needs! Some dilution of the entrance air with a little block was enough to provide some stability and lower the temperature to the 300-350 F range that I am looking for.
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| The heat gun all balanced up on the inlet end |
The inside of the oven has to have some support for the rods so they don't lay on the bare metal. Used one of our last metal hangers to get this done.
Anyway I am ready to bind and treat my first set of strips before final planning and really am going to be hard pressed to wait until that last part comes in next week.
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