| Today was a long, hard day of working on the track. I picked up right where I left off, making the third cut with this circular saw. This is not easy going -- everything gets hot (as you can see), the rubber puts up some pretty bad fumes, it takes a lot of muscle and takes a long time. This just isn't a fun job. That being said, however, it is going pretty well. |
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| With the completion of the third cut, I have the first strip of track that I'm actually going to use. It still needs to be cut to length, have the ends shaped and laced back together, and have the paddles trimmed, but the side cuts are done for the first track. |
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| Here I've gotten a start on the fourth cut. Yes, that's the jigsaw. After only about six inches of this cut, the circular saw smoked. I think it's just the brushes, but I'm losing the light and I don't have time to deal with it now. The jigsaw is actually doing a rather nice job. |
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| However, even though the jigsaw is making the cuts, it still is having some pretty major heat issues. I'm giving it time to cool off -- I really don't want to let its magic smoke out as well. While it cools, I'll get to work on the strip of track I cut earlier. I need to take the little ears on the metal clips... |
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| ...and make them look like this. This is fairly easy with the grinder -- I just grind them until the ear falls off. I have to do this because the gap is just slightly too narrow to allow for the wheels. Removing this metal bit makes it almost perfect. |
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| After grinding off some ears, it's back to the cut. One of the other problems with the jigsaw as opposed to the circular saw is that it doesn't cut as deep. That means that after I finished cutting, I had to go back and cut each of the paddles by hand because the jigsaw didn't cut all the way through. |
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| This isn't really a big deal, just one more thing I have to do. I'm just using a pair of hand shears to cut the paddles because they don't have any reinforcing material in them to make things difficult. However, it's starting to get dark, which makes this job a lot harder. |
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| There, the fourth cut is done. Now I need to pack it up and haul everything inside where I can actually see it to work on it. |
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| Of course, the second tread needs to have its ears trimmed off as well. |
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| There, I'm done trimming the steel clips on each of the track lengths that I'm going to do. I didn't really do anything to contain them, so now I've got these little jagged metal bits laying all over the shop. Oh well, it's not like I'm going to be walking around bare-foot in here. |
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| Well, I guess I'm not quite done trimming the clips -- some of them have to be removed altogether. It's hard to see in this picture, but I've taken my grinder to the clip that is over the part of the track that I'll be cutting. It's just easier to remove it now than to cut through it with the rest of the track. |
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| Here I've pried it off with a screwdriver, so it should be much easier to see. That makes it a little easier to cut, but not much. There's a reinforcing bar through the track under each of the clips, and they're a real pain to cut through. |
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| I was having a bit of trouble with the track moving while I was trying to work on it, so here I've just gone ahead and drilled a hole through some of the track that I'll be cutting off and bolted it to the table. It drilled fairly easily, but left a hole significantly smaller than the bit used -- that will be good to know when I'm setting up the pins for the joint. |
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| This thing that you're looking at right now was a tremendous amount of work. I really had to wrestle the track and jigsaw against each other to get this to come out even remotely close to how I wanted it. I've cut the ends like this to provide the absolute strongest connection I can when I hook everything back together -- this will give me a lot of area to bond together and shear planes to mount pins in. |
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| The ends fit together something like this. Of course, I have to do a lot of fine-tuning to get things to line up right, but this is the idea. There are a couple things of note here. First of all, the seam bisects a clip -- this was intentional (and a pain to implement). Now I can take a clip from some of my discarded track and use it to hold the track together very securely. Also, note that the tread pattern doesn't line up. This is because the paddles have a pattern that repeats every two perforations, and I have 39 pitches of length. |
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| Here's a shot that lets you see the whole length. Eventually, after I've evened up the fit and gotten everything to line up better, I'll permanently bond the track into a loop of this length. |
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| I've made a decision -- I'm sick of all the heat and the fumes and the noise and the sparks. I'm going to see if I can get this thing cut the old fashioned way. The cuts here were done with a hammer, chisel, hacksaw, bolt cutters, and an old hunting knife. So far, it's going pretty well. It takes a little more elbow grease and it's taking a bit longer, but I'm not catching anything on fire or reducing the life of expensive tools. I'm also getting pretty good results. |
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| Well, it looks like no matter what I do this is going to be hard on my tools. At least hacksaw blades are cheaper than jigsaws. Plus, this one still has some life in it, believe it or not. I turned the blade around to make this into a pull saw -- that should make it last a lot longer. |
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| My first chunk of track has been cut using hand methods. Cutting the rubber with a hammer and a hunting knife if working great. Getting through the reinforcing bar with a hand hacksaw is a little more rough, but doable. Time to push ahead. |
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| It works, but it's slow going. It's gotten dark, so I can't really do any more work outside, so I'm committed to finishing this cut by hand. However, when I do more work next build day, I'll probably cut the rubber by hand and use the jigsaw to cut the bars. |
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| Another bent blade. This probably is the end of this little guy, but I've got replacements. |
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| Bent blade number 3. This is starting to get old. I guess I'll have to ease up on this poor little hack saw. I've got a much better one, but it's too big to make most of the cuts I need. On well, I'm almost done. |
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| Here's the big hacksaw. It's much better suited to these kinds of loads. I've got this one big, vertical cut to make and this end will be all done. |
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| Alright, I got this end cut. Here it is next to the other one for comparison. It would make a good comparison, too, if I hadn't forgotten which one was which. I think the one on the right was done by hand, but I really can't tell. |
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| Here's my heap of extra track bits. It isn't quite done yet -- I've got a bit more to cut out -- but that's most of it. It sure was a lot of work cutting all of this stuff. |
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| Much as I'd like to start cutting the last end, people are going to bed, so I'm done making noise. I'll just take a few minutes to tap the pins that I drilled the other day and then pack it in. It has been a long, hard day, and I hurt all over. |
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