Splitting Alder Planks

Yesterday James and I cut down an eighteen year old Alder tree and then harvested two logs from midway up the trunk. The goal was to split out some Alder planks for the purpose of barbecuing Salmon over charcoal. So we wanted clear grain with no branches. I brought the two logs home last night and this morning I did what I could to split them using my fro and the club I made years ago from a log of Boxelder.

As you can see in the photo, I managed to get two good planks out of the center. I was stopped by a knot on one side and the other side began tapering too much and I had to split it again from the opposite end. I managed to extract a third plank from that, with a bunch of scrap remaining. My poor Boxelder club suffered the most as it broke into three pieces. I had to finish the task with a rubber hammer.

The planks have a slight twist in them since that's the direction of the wood grain. The fro is stuck in the remaining slab of wood but I was able to extract it by hitting the log with a one-hand sledge hammer. Afterwards I was able to split that slab again from the opposite end and extract a decent plank from it.

Quest Crank Boom Repair #2 Part 2

Spreading epoxy with latex gloves is a messy endeavor. The glass fibers stick to the gloves and tend to pull apart leaving a tangle of glass fibers around the edges of the patchwork. In desperation I grabbed some plastic wrap from the kitchen and put it on top of the glass/epoxy mess. Then I took off the latex gloves and used my bare fingers to squeeze the epoxy and work it into the glass cloth, and I could feel the air bubbles and extra epoxy shifting around. In the end I was quite happy with the results.

In this photo you see that I have removed the plastic wrap. The epoxy is still quite lumpy but it sanded down easily with 60 grit sandpaper.

While working on sanding the two patches I noticed that the center seam was opening up as shown here. So I decided to put a patch on that as well.

In this final photo I have added all three patches along with plastic wrap, and I have already worked the epoxy thoroughly through the glass cloth. All air bubbles have been squeezed out. I even discovered that I can slide the glass cloth around while squeezing the epoxy into it. I was able to get much better alignment of the new glass. This is probably the nicest glass/epoxy patching I have ever done. Now I have four layers of glass over the area where the bolts will go through. That should hold things together nicely.

Quest Crank Boom Repair #2

It was two years ago this week when I finished repairing the crank boom on the Quest velomobile. See my blog post of Nov 2, 2013. It turned out that I should have also reinforced the fiberglass where the aluminum connects to it, holding the front end of the crank boom in place.

As you can see in this first photo, the fiberglass has broken and the aluminum support has fallen down into the nose cone.

This second photo shows how the original construction contained two layers of fiberglass, and they were not bonded properly to each other. The two layers have delaminated.

The other side doesn't have two layers of fiberglass. I wonder why not.

Here you can see how the aluminum structure aligns with the fiberglass. I have two spring clips holding the aluminum structure up against the fiberglass. Not really a good match, but that would be because the aluminum crank boom broke at the weld and was re-welded two years ago. I think it came out about one quarter inch shorter than the original, causing this mis-alignment and some fairly ugly matching between the top and bottom fiberglass shells.

This last photo shows how the headlight, mounted on the crank boom, nearly aligns with the hole in the center of the nose cone.

I need to think about how I am going to build up that fiberglass again, without causing additional alignment problems, and correctly locate and drill some new holes for bolting the aluminum to the fiberglass.