Three Projects

Where Are We Today

Park Place RV Park

Quartzsite, Arizona

For those of you who follow Pat's blog, you know of our daily activities, mine generally is around my hobby of RC airplanes.

However, occasionally, I have little projects to do, so here are three little ones that I have worked on in the last couple of weeks.

The first was a repair to the tonneau cover on the truck. It is a tri fold hard cover made of Styrofoam sandwiched between thin aluminum sheets. Each section has a bar that goes from side to side with a latching system to hold it down. The bar is held in place with 4 rivets on each side. Just before we left home last fall, yes, I procrastinate, it came off, so I tucked it away in the box to fix it down here. This is the second tonneau cover this has happened to, so I knew how I was going to fix it.

Top-rivets removed, bottom left- bar bolted back on and bottom right - mechanism slid back in.

First, I removed the latch mechanism by removing screws and sliding it out one end of the bar. Next, hold the bar in its place and drill 5 holes through the bar and the tonneau cover to accept the bolts that I was going to use to re-fasten it. The bolts being long enough to pass through the tonneau cover and bar to accept lock washer and nut, but short enough to allow the latch mechanism to slide back on.

Top- you can see the new bolts holding the bar in place.
Bottom - the under side 

Sliding the latch mechanism back in place, put the screws in and its as good has new.

The second project was to replace the padding and material on our dining chairs. We found some padding on Amazon and Pat had picked up some material along the way to do the job.

Top - before removing the old, bottom left - removing the staples, bottom right - the flattened old foam

First was to remove the 200 staples holding the material in place, along with the old padding. Next was to cut the new and thicker padding to size and I glued it to the board that made up the base of the seat. Now the fun part of wrapping the new material around the padding and stapling it to the bottom of the board. It turned out well with the second one better than the first. Pat is happy with it and that is what matters.

Cutting to size, gluing to seat, finished and Gibbs approved

The third and last project was at the flying field. We have a bulletin board under the shelter for putting up notices. Someone vandalized it by breaking the plexiglass cover back in December.

The club purchased a sheet of plexiglass, hinges, and a couple of latches to make a new one. Using a 2x4x8 left over from the new flight stands that we built in the fall, I ripped one down the middle, run each half through the table saw leaving a 5/8 inch deep saw blade width cut.

New Plexiglass in frame

Next, the plexiglass was cut to size, the 2x4 cut to size for each side along with the ends cut at 45 degrees so the corners would meet neatly. Each side was slid onto the .100 of inch plexiglass, screwed at the corners, angle brackets added for strength and silicone caulking applied inside and out. The hinges and hooks were added and then hung on the bulletin board. Looks good and will protect the notices for a long time.

There you have it, thanks for stopping by and taking time to read about what I have been up to, other than flying. Until the next time.