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.