MadModder

Tom, it's surprising how fast sand will come back into condition. I hadn't used the sand for this last pour for a very long time and it was completely dry. This is my non-ferrous sand. The iron sand has been in use for the last several months.

Anyway, a couple hours before I was going to pour the angle plates, I remembered the sand was all dried out, so I added a little bit of water at a time while using a small flat mason's trowel to condition it -- I had about 70 pounds in a rectangular plastic storage bin. It took me about 15 minutes of cutting and shifting the contents and about 2 cups of cold water to re-condition it.

This sand was old stuff. Just sand and fire clay, not even Bentonite (which would have probably needed less water). Leaving it for a couple of hours always seems to improve it. By the time I needed it it was ready to go. I didn't have finer facing sand ready, so the mold was just made up of ordinary old molding sand.

It would be good to have some company casting here, if you get the chance!

Thanks Tom. Have you been casting anything lately?

I'm glad to say that the pond dredging is at last finished apart from skimming the floating weed off the surface.

I did a full circuit of the periphery with the JCB 3CX this morning moving the vast majority of the silt and weeds to the 'berm'. This leaves a rather rough finish SO.....


.....  this afternoon did a full circuit again with the JCB 803 which being a '360' allowed me to put some shape in the banks. Overall it's not come out too badly - be better when the banks 'grass up' which they undoubtedly will in the next few weeks.

Glad that this is out of the way - I can now concentrate on the re-laying of the outfall from our Klargester private sewage system, which is totally blocked with roots. The pumped 'clean water' outflow has been run in 2" plastic pipe by the installers (probably 18 years ago) with just the last couple of feet in 4" underground soil pipe with no provision what so ever for rodding. The plan is to re-lay the entire pipe in 4" soil pipe with a rodding eye to avoid this issue in the future. About 10 metres of trench about a metre deep.

I've had a young lad digging a trench for the last couple of days. I suppose I can buy replacement handles for the pick axe and spade that he's broken 

It might be easier to use 5 out of 7 coils, as that way the connections would be at one end - although running a bare wire down the broken coil would be fine too.

Russell

The speed controller could be modified to prevent too high a voltage being applied….

Usually these things are just a phase angle triggered thyristor circuit, so by adding a value to the charging resistor will effect the output voltage at max output….you can try by using a filament bulb as a load and measuring the max voltage developed across it….