# My Projects



## Taylor T. (May 23, 2018)

I have decided to consolidate all my projects into one thread to avoid filling up the whole forum with things that likely only interest a small percentage of the users on this forum. In this thread, I will simply post projects that I hope some will find interesting.

Past projects that I created separate threads for:

Ship models: https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/ship-models-i-have-built.164429/
Electroplating: https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/electroplating-metals-how-to.166333/

And, to start this thread, a project I have been working for some time on:


This is an old air compressor that I have restored. I unfortunately did not take a photo from before I cleaned it, but it was really quite nasty. It had been kept in someone's very humid basement for far too long, and even the gunk inside the motor had started to mold.



The entire piece, except for the compression cylinder itself, is solid milled aluminum. I don't really know what this compressor was originally used for, so if anyone knows it would be appreciated.

Things I've done to fix it:

Clean all the aluminum oxide off with fine steel wool.

Completely disassemble and clean the motor.

Paint the wooden base.

Restore all bearings in the assembly.

Replace the terrifyingly thin power cable with something safer. (seriously, it looked like it it was made for a small lamp, not a sizeable motor like this)


It now runs perfectly, and it makes a really great sound all the while. I'm also quite happy with the look of it.


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## Yvonne G (May 23, 2018)

It looks brand new. What do you use it for?


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## Taylor T. (May 23, 2018)

Yvonne G said:


> It looks brand new. What do you use it for?


It really did clean up quite nicely. I don't have any practical use for it at this point. I did consider using it for my airbrush that I use to paint my models, but the CFM that it produces just isn't really high enough to sustain good paint atomization. So for now it's just a cool little thing to have.


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## Taylor T. (May 23, 2018)

Just finished an airplane I've been building for the past few days:


I made the airframe out of foamboard that you can buy in large sheets from the Dollar Tree, for, well, a dollar. I then covered the foamboard in packing tape to make it stronger. After cutting and folding it into shape, I installed electronics. This is the first plane I that I have tried adding a true airfoil to the wings. It has a total wingspan of 52", and a weight of 635 grams.

It is powered by a 1800Mah lithium polymer battery, which feeds into a 30A electronic speed controller, powering a 2300KV brushless motor, which spins a 5in propeller, producing thrust. The control surfaces are moved with three 9-gram analog servos. To reduce weight, I have sacrificed a controllable rudder, so this plane will not be capable of complex turns. 

Sure hope it flies.


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## wellington (May 23, 2018)

Wow, nice to have a lot of different projects and interest.
We need a video of that plane flying.


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## Taylor T. (May 23, 2018)

wellington said:


> Wow, nice to have a lot of different projects and interest.
> We need a video of that plane flying.


Unfortunately, it did not work. It flew fine for about five seconds, but it then quickly rolled over into a dive. The roll tendency was too strong for me to counteract with the ailerons. I'm not entirely sure why this happened, but my current theory is that because the propeller is so close to the tail stabilizer, the propwash still had enough rotational energy to tip the plane. I'm thinking that adding some positive dihedral may help, but I'm really not sure.

I never took a video of them flying, but here are the two planes I've built that did work quite well:


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## Taylor T. (May 26, 2018)

So I made some changes to the plane:



It now has the propeller on the front, as opposed the the last one, which had it pushing back from behind the wing. This one actually worked quite well, at least until it caught on fire yesterday. You see, these lithium polymer batteries are incredibly powerful (you could jumpstart a car even with the one I have that only weighs 130 grams!) and have a lot of pent up energy inside.

Unfortunately, the ESC decided that it was done with life, and cooked itself and the motor in midair. This must have created a short inside of it, unleashing the full power of the battery. Immediately , smoke began to plume out of the airplane. I ran over and unplugged the battery, which stopped he burning and eventually it stopped smoking. The battery was fine, but the motor and ESC are completely destroyed. Here's a photo of the burnt ESC:




Those wires must have become so hot it melted the solder enough for them to disconnect. It smells so bad I'm not even bringing it into the house.


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## Taylor T. (Jun 9, 2018)

New project! I have decided to try my hand at making chainmail. I'm making the rings out of 14 gauge galvanized steel wire, wound around a piece of steel I salvaged from a broken printer. Doing this gives me a spring shaped object:



Which I then can cut into many small rings:




And here's the amount I've actually knitted together:




The weave I am going with is the European 4-in-1. This is probably the most common type of weave.

My end goal for this project is to make a hauberk, which is basically a chainmail shirt. This will take quite some time to complete, so I will post updates as I progress.



In other news, I recently fixed up an old electric drill that originally belonged to my grandfather. It has been sitting in a barn attic that gets insanely hot in the summer for about 12 years. I decided to open it up and see what was wrong with it, and whether or not it was fixable. When I opened it, I was greeted with gears covered in solidified grease. The high temperatures that it was in must have somehow baked it into the hard, brittle substance that it was. After scraping out all of the old, stale, grease, I re-lubed them with some white lithium grease. I then noticed that the motor bushings were completely seized. I used some 3-in-1 oil to get them working again. The part on the commutator where the brushes make contact was very dirty, so I cleaned that up with a pencil eraser. The chuck was also seized, but loosened up easily with some oil. After all that, here's how it looks:


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## Taylor T. (Jun 20, 2018)

Chainmail update!

It's becoming pretty large now, and already feels remarkably heavy. This piece of mail is probably about 150' worth of the wire that I start with, so having run out of the wire I got at a local hardware store, I have purchased a 1/4 mile roll of it from Tractor Supply. This should be enough to finish the hauberk I'm trying to make, or at least come close to doing so. Here's a photo of it now:


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## Jay Bagley (Jun 20, 2018)

Its looking good.


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## Taylor T. (Jun 30, 2018)

I haven't actually made any progress on the 4-in-1 mail that I have been working on, because I've been trying a new weave that I rather like. It's called the European 6-in-1, which has every ring connected to six others, hence the name. You can see the density difference between the two pretty well in this photo:

(this is with both mail types "stretched" as much they can be) Both pieces of mail in the photo weigh approximately the same amount, and therefor contain a similar number of rings. 6-in-1 is much stronger than the 4-in-1, but also a lot less flexible, and much heavier, making it somewhat unsuitable for things like sleeves, that require a fair amount of flexibility. At this point I'm thinking that I will make the main vest out of 6-in-1, and the sleeves out of 4-in-1. My only real concern about using 6-in-1 is weight. I'm currently estimating the final weight to be a little over 50Lb, but that's really just a loose approximation. 

Just for fun, and because I like the way it looks, I made a 4-in-1 chain. It's sort of a three-dimensional version of the 4-in-1 mail, and is surprisingly strong:


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## Taylor T. (Jul 29, 2018)

I wanted a break from the current ship model I'm building (1/700 IJN Musashi) so I decided to make a coastal gun model. It is a 16" diameter gun that fired shells weighing about 2700Lbs. It is still around as a museum exhibit, but was removed from service quite a while ago. I made the model from scratch, and I decided to build it as 1/700 scale. Here it is on top of a dime for scale:


I've also built a new airplane! It is still made out of dollar tree foamboard, but has a new motor and ESC after the old ones caught on fire (see post #7 if you missed that).


This plane flew rather well actually, and I will try to get someone to take a video of it flying for @wellington . It was a bit faster than I expected, and I don't think I ever used 100% throttle during it's flight.

Chainmail is continually growing, and the piece I have now weighs about 8Lbs


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## wellington (Jul 29, 2018)

Nice, hope you get that vid.


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## Taylor T. (Sep 14, 2018)

Update time! Unfortunately I have been unable to get someone to take a video of the plane, but it is still working well, by far my longest lasting design.

Chainmail is coming along nicely, as it is now in a somewhat wearable state. I still need to fill in the neck area, make it a bit longer, and add sleeves, but it is getting there at least:



I have also decided to try some amateur blacksmithing, because, well, why not? I made a small forge out of a bread pan lined with a 50/50 mix of Plaster of Paris and sand, with a tube with a slot cut in it going though to supply air to the coals:



I needed some charcoal to burn in the forge, so I made some in an old stove pipe that has some holes drilled in it: (the shiny stuff on the bottom is aluminum foil because I only had one stove pipe end cap, and needed to cap off both ends)



I already had a regular claw hammer, but it's way too light to work well for blackmithing. Luckily, I found in the basement of our barn a rusty old 2lb ball-peen hammer head. It was in pretty rough shape, and didn't have a handle, but since it was just laying around in the dirt, I decided to try restoring it. I cleaned it up with a wire brush, and made a handle for it out of an ash ladder rung. I then blackened the handle with some fire to make it more comfortable to hold. Here's the result of all that:



I then used a small section of railroad track that was in our house when we moved in as an anvil. I forgot to take a photo of it, but I think everyone knows what a chunk of rail looks like.

I was then ready to start forging! And I did, but it didn't work very well because my air source (you need a lot of airflow for a fire to burn hot enough) was a balloon pump. it did kind of work, but it was very tiring to constantly be pumping the darned thing, and then having to swing a pretty heavy hammer. I needed a better solution. So, I started thinking about ways to make a forge blower. You can of course just buy this, but they're pretty expensive, and where's the fun in just buying it anyways? I started looking at how ones that you can buy work, and tried to think of a similar thing that I already had and could put together into something useful. I came up with this thing:

I know, it looks pretty ridiculous, but it does work surprisingly well. It's a broken bicycle that I found for free on the side of the road. I took the wheels off, and replaced the rear one with a fan blade thingamajig. (Basically just a plywood disk with eight plywood rectangles glued to the disk like you would cut a pizza.) I then attached two larger plywood disks on either side, one with holes in it as the air intake, and glued foamboard (same stuff I make the airplanes out of) around them so create the housing to direct the air where I want it.(I ran out of foamboard near the end, so I had to improvise with some cardboard) So now when you turn the handle/pedal, air comes out the end! Once attached to the forge, this thing worked flawlessly. It's so much easier that using that horrible balloon pump.

After all this, I was able to make a few pretty nice hooks (so far I've only drilled a hole in one of them for the nail to hang them up, I still need to do the rest) :






Unfortunately I may not have quite as much free time now that I am going to a community college, (I'm finally old enough to go) but I still should have some time to do a few things. Hope you enjoyed!


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