Second lift

Last week saw the second lift of the concrete action started and noticed at reference 1. It was to have been the second and final lift, but in the event I thought that discretion was the better part of valour and settled for three lifts.

One of the sides of the construction was angled and to make the shutter I needed to cut a twelve inch piece of four by two in half, lengthwise and diagonally. I started out by sawing, but my hard-point saw which has served well is now starting to get blunt, and the sawing was a slow business. So I elected to chop instead, only actually needing one of the two halves. Out with serious chisels, chop it down roughly to size and then plane down to the line. 

On the way breaking the plane stop which has served intermittently for many years now. The breaking taking the form of its retaining screw snapping in half, with the stop being pretty much useless without it. Visible underneath the flower pot top left in the first snap. Ebay had sold the identical spring loaded plane stop from Priory for £22 plus £3.85 postage earlier in the month, probably more twenty times what I paid for it in a tool shop in Norbury, in south London. The sort of tool shop which was reasonably common then, now more or less extinct, with the nearest one that I know being in Guildford, quite possibly now closed down. Will I keep an eye out on ebay for something more reasonably priced?

The next bit of heritage was needing to use a sash cramp to pull up a joint, probably bought at about the same time at the plane stop. I had forgotten how fiddly it is to fit a sash cramp with its wooden pads - needed to spread the load and to stop the irons of the cramp from marking the wood in an unsightly way - single handed. But the knack has probably come back and if there is a second in the near future, I will be much less cack-handed.

The bits and pieces of fibre board recovered from a nearby skip have done very well. Half an inch thick, soft enough to saw by hand and plenty strong enough for the job in hand when backed up with a bit of framing.

While the fine heritage rip saw visible right has not been sharpened for a long time now and is very blunt indeed. Will that knack come back if I have a go? Got the saw setting tool and plenty of the triangular files needed, but these last might be a bit blunt too. Maybe a project for the winter.

With these preliminaries out of the way, the second lift itself went well enough. Making the concrete rather wetter helped. The small amount left over was put in a plastic flower pot and is now curing, in the approved fashion, in a bucket of cold water. It remains to be seen whether I will be able to get the concrete out of the flower pot without damaging either. Probably for installation somewhere near the one noticed at reference 2. For the entertainment of some future owner.

Bricks top right being those which are carried up and down the garden as part of isolation exercise. For some record of which see reference 3.

Reference 1: psmv4: Concrete.

Reference 2: pumpkinstrokemarrow: Compost.

Reference 3: psmv4: Bricks and other matters.