Step by step

Small steps in varying areas are being made at the moment. Most of my money is sinking into the sewing machine at the moment with more and more improvements being planned throughout the weeks of it sitting on the garage floor. Since my last post the machine was serviced and cleaned up by "Hamilton Sewing Services", followed by bills that bankrupted me for the week as work underpaid me which put back buying parts some of the equipment required for the construction cost of the balloon.

This week with pay day only one sleep away i have a set list of items and a budget for the week ahead which will be a novelty compared to the last 2 weeks which was having less than $20 each week remaining in my bank account after a service, gas, phone bill and my template paper. Hopefully this week i will get paid my missing pay so i can progress with buying the various bits for the sewing machine.

Shopping list

Trademe:

10.99 Machine Belt (M-40)

22.00 Bobbin Winder

12.49 Thread Nippers (4)

3.40 Small Unpicker (2)

3.98 Large Unpicker (2)

eBay:

25.00 Bobbins (20)

30.00 Spool Stand

Another item yet to be added to the list is a replacement bearing for the hand wheel which we removed this week to find the bearing wasn't sounding to healthy, that will be $30 along with a box of beer for Katie's father which got a 316 stainless ring made up for me which will serve as my crown ring.

I looked into a variety of options when it came to getting a crown ring made. I initially wanted to get 6000 series(or higher) aluminium which has high heat transfer but is lighter than stainless with the added benefit i could anodize it any colour i wanted. However 6000 series aluminum wasn't easy to come buy in 5-6mm thicknesses therefore i opted for the heavier, lower heat conductive options of stainless steel. The ring i have now weighs something like 860g which clearly feels heavier than other crown rings i have held however i highly doubt this will have any functionality drawbacks on the envelope. As for 5000 series aluminium which from what i am told is the common type of aluminum i believe this material would if been fine to use considering the directional stress on the crown ring and a ring sharing some strength characteristics with eggs in the form of distributed pressure along the surface area. My reasoning came down to not pressing boundaries on my first home-built along with the ring being one of the parts i didn't want under estimate.

Since the early years of my involvement in ballooning i have had a strange fascination with home building. Thinking of it now it was probably due to the fact that 30,000 is a unworldly amount of money for me and building an aircraft with my own two hands sounds like a hugely rewarding experience with the added benefits of it being a lot  cheaper and learning a new skill set.

Since the discovery of Chinese “made to order” fabric by Tem Smith my hopes of building my own balloon, spreading my wings and not relying on the generous people around me to gift me time in their balloons has become a plausible option due to being a student.

In my breaks from class I have been working trying to raise enough money to start the venture into the exciting world of home-building an XLTA aircraft. I remember a speech by al pachino in the movie “Any Given Sunday” he talks about life being a game of inches and how all those inches accumulate. This was very much the case when referring to saving. That extra shift moved me closer to the chance to work a little more too eventually put me into the sky.

Since early May I have been spending endless hours on the internet finding parts or useful tools to purchase when I had the funds to do so. Going into the project I planned to build my funds up then going on a buying spree after the fabric had arrived but reality stepped in and I couldn’t resist buying some pieces of the puzzle to keep my motivation going, some of these items included thread, an electric cutter and sewing machine.

The sewing machine I bought was a Juki LH-515 through a friend of my girlfriend’s father. I had no idea of its history besides the usual observations of age, surface rust being one of those characteristics (This is where buying the machine months prior to the big adventure had paid off). The sewing machine lasted about 10 minutes in the garage before me and Katie started cleaning/pulling it apart ready for a dose of “Elbow Grease”.

Elbow Grease:

•          Sewing machine service
•          Replace foot pedal brace
•          Frame reinforcement
•          Frame strip and paint
•          Replace all frame nuts & bolts
•          Replace all table screws

The first step was using a grinder with a wire brush disk to remove the paint and surface rust. With help from my dad I managed to get all parts of the frame stripped and coated in rust remover just to ensure the frame was rid of rust.