Not much time today, but I did sneak some work in. I had a hand doctor appointment to arrange for surgery of an annoying Stenosing Tenosynovitis, otherwise knows as "trigger finger". I actually had this finger (ring-finger left hand) done many years ago, but the doctor chose to use a non-invasive approach using the chisel edge of a hypodermic needle. With it he cut the A1 pulley to allow the tendon with the nodule to pass easily under the pulley. I've also had two other fingers surgically released which have not recurred. The problem with the percutaneous (no incision) approach is that the pulley can grow back and recur, which it has in my case.
They don't know what causes this. It is not necessarily inherited, although I'm sure there's a genetic component since everything seems to have one. It is prevalent with people with diabetes, gout, or thyroid conditions, of which I have none. It does also happen with people who grip things strongly and often, and with that I do fit the profile since I play guitar and have been building models since I was 8 years old. The surgery's scheduled for April 25, so I will have a lot of time to finish the boiler house and maybe more.
My theory is, "Whatever you use most wears out first." I didn't play contact sports in school and therefore my knees and hips are quite fine, whereas my buddies, who were both avid athletes in football and baseball, have artificial knees and hips already. But I've used my hands intensely most of my life so that's where I'm showing wear and tear. My orthopedic surgeon son in law disagrees saying he has patients with trigger finger problems that have done nothing more strenuous than operating their TV remote. We agreed to disagree.
Enough medical talk, back to the project.
I started to do more detailing on the boiler faces. I noticed that the door is not fully circular and it is cut straight at the top so I trimmed it back. I then finish sanded the flue adapters and mounted them to the boiler face that's not part of the door. Lastly I added lifting eyes and the face clamps.
I had to trim the angle iron braces to trim the door facing. The glue didn't completely fuse the entire surface so it was possible to remove that bit of the door without completely destroying the underlying surface. The eyebolts were conveniently made by slicing off a bit of the formed stick I had originally created to make the operating mechanism on the Hybrid Circuit Breaker. You can find that original note on page 13 of this long thread. I drilled the stick and then set my Chopper to about a 1/32" slice and sliced off the eyebolts like cutting salami. To keep the cut from slicing a wedge, I start cutting one face, rotate 90 degrees and cut a bit more, and continue around and around until the piece is cut through. While there's still a little non-flatness to the cut, it's easy to sand it off.
The clamps are some 0.050" wide thin styrene drilled with a 0.032" drill to accept a Tichy Group NBW casting. Really tiny pieces and very finicky. I'm glad I'm not doing this in HO.
A few NBWs took off from the tweezers, but I found most of them. Following the image, the clamps do not go all the way around, and there are bare bolts doing some of the clamping. I spaced the clamps using a divider. Tomorrow, I'll make the hinges and work on the burner and the front grab irons. This view also shows the goose neck blowdown connections that I had to build to accommodate the foundation pieces that I built.
Last night I actually built a project checklist to itemize and schedule all the items left on the boiler house and upcoming projects after that. I estimated that I have another 25 hours of work to finish the boiler house. It sounds like a lot, but there's a lot of small items that need to be built. I know, for instance, that there's many hours in putting the shingles on the roof. There's also a couple of hours in building and installing downspouts. And I still have some hours left in detailing the boilers, painting them and then installing everything in the building. As my wife says, "Enjoy it, it's your hobby!"
