First winter project
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2011 10:19 pm
Well now that the cold has set in I have shifted focus to doing things I usually can't get done when the weather is warmer and my attention span not as long. My buddie John asked me about helping him make a rocket launcher/rod holder for his 25' Parker fishing boat. He told me he had gone to a local marine fabricator and saw the exact launcher he wanted probem was that they wanted >$1,000 for it and he is the epitome of frugal. In comes Mike with his snazzy tools and "knowledge".....
I looked at the pictures of the piece on the companies website and thought that it looked like something I might be able to make if i took my time and paid attention to detail. I am very much still in serious learning mode and will be for a very long time to come bt projects like this are good for me to get my feet wet doing things I have not really done before using someone elses money and materials.
So John came by last weekend with a couple of sheets of King Starboard, one piece was 1" thick the other was 1/2". The plan was to make the radiused rod holder portion out of the 1" and use the 1/2" for the extension table to the rear of the launcher. He had already traced out the shape of the radiused rod holder on the 1" so all I had to do was get out the jig saw and cut the pattern. Pretty easy for the most part. It didn't come out perfectly but it was very close and with some additional sanding and shaping it coold be perfect but I will leave that to him. Then it was on to drilling out the rod holder holes. These rod holders are at 15 deg. angles so I setup my Mark VII in drill press mode and set the table to 15 deg. with a hole saw and away we went.
Another task complete without much fanfare. Doing the measurements to make everything symmetrical was/is always the toughest part of the job for me. I just am not very good with the measuring and numbers stuff. Have always had trouble with numbers for some reason even when I was very young in school numbers gave me fits. I just live with that deficiency and do the best I can taking my time to triple check everything before I make cuts/holes.
So now it was time to pretty up the big 1" piece we had cut earlier. We wanted to do a completely radiused edge around the circumference of the table so I got my Bosch 1618 out and used a 1/2" round over bit. I don't own a complete round over bit so I had to make a pass on each side of the piece which worked but did not produce exactly the results i was looking for. But again with a little sanding effort the roughness of the edge can be cleaned up nicely. I still have tons to learn about using the router. Setting it up is always a chore. It is easier using it in the base then mounted in my make shift router table which is mounted on my SS 500. The table I have really stinks so that is something I will be looking to replace/upgrade. But setting up the router in the table to do the right cut/radius seems to be very tedious and time consuming> I seem to only be able to get it right by doing it trial and error style using scrap to figure out depth and shape.
So the big table was essentially done. We now had to mark and cut the extension table that goes underneath the rocket launcher and is an integral part of mounting the rod holders. This was pretty simple just put the big piece on top of the thinner piece, mark it, then cut it. We also scribed some radius's on the outside corners and ct those. Then I again used the router to radius the edges for a clean look. That being complete we had to setup and mark for the small rails that would hold things on the table when the boat is rocking. I used scraps from the previous cuts and made the rails on my Rigid 3650 saw. I really love this saw very accurate and easy to setup and use. One mistake I made and learned a lesson was that I should have used the router on the big piece's first then cut to size for the rails as routing the little rails once cut was not easy or pleasant. So I radiused the tops of all of the rails and that was it for last weekend.
Today we got back to work to finish it. John brought to spider mount with him today and I had picked up mounting hardware during the week. I started of by marking the lower table rail locations and then drilling/countersinking all of the holes. Messed up one of the short rails and had to make another one which took a little time but that was because I didn't like the ends of the rails and wanted them to be more like a rounded bullnose. So I started out using the router to round off the ends of the rails and then finishing them up on the SS disc sander. They came out pretty nice and with some final sanding with 220 or better they really looked quite nice. Not an easy thing to create the way that i did it but the result was pleasing.
The last thing was to mount the spider. I had to remove some aluminum from the base of the mount to clear the middle two rod holders but that was accomplished easily with the jigsaw and we had a couple of nice half moon radiuses cut out of the base quickly. I marked the center of the base and lined it up with the center of the table, marked the holes, drilled, countersinked and then mounted it. Very straight forward and easy. I put it all back together to take a few pics then John took it back home with him. He has a little bit of finish work left to do but that is cake at this point I took care of all the harder stuff for him and he saved a ton of money. He has to only buy a 30" aluminum post and base assembly to mount it in the back of the boat and he will have his nice rocket launcher/tackle station.
I looked at the pictures of the piece on the companies website and thought that it looked like something I might be able to make if i took my time and paid attention to detail. I am very much still in serious learning mode and will be for a very long time to come bt projects like this are good for me to get my feet wet doing things I have not really done before using someone elses money and materials.
So John came by last weekend with a couple of sheets of King Starboard, one piece was 1" thick the other was 1/2". The plan was to make the radiused rod holder portion out of the 1" and use the 1/2" for the extension table to the rear of the launcher. He had already traced out the shape of the radiused rod holder on the 1" so all I had to do was get out the jig saw and cut the pattern. Pretty easy for the most part. It didn't come out perfectly but it was very close and with some additional sanding and shaping it coold be perfect but I will leave that to him. Then it was on to drilling out the rod holder holes. These rod holders are at 15 deg. angles so I setup my Mark VII in drill press mode and set the table to 15 deg. with a hole saw and away we went.
Another task complete without much fanfare. Doing the measurements to make everything symmetrical was/is always the toughest part of the job for me. I just am not very good with the measuring and numbers stuff. Have always had trouble with numbers for some reason even when I was very young in school numbers gave me fits. I just live with that deficiency and do the best I can taking my time to triple check everything before I make cuts/holes.
So now it was time to pretty up the big 1" piece we had cut earlier. We wanted to do a completely radiused edge around the circumference of the table so I got my Bosch 1618 out and used a 1/2" round over bit. I don't own a complete round over bit so I had to make a pass on each side of the piece which worked but did not produce exactly the results i was looking for. But again with a little sanding effort the roughness of the edge can be cleaned up nicely. I still have tons to learn about using the router. Setting it up is always a chore. It is easier using it in the base then mounted in my make shift router table which is mounted on my SS 500. The table I have really stinks so that is something I will be looking to replace/upgrade. But setting up the router in the table to do the right cut/radius seems to be very tedious and time consuming> I seem to only be able to get it right by doing it trial and error style using scrap to figure out depth and shape.
So the big table was essentially done. We now had to mark and cut the extension table that goes underneath the rocket launcher and is an integral part of mounting the rod holders. This was pretty simple just put the big piece on top of the thinner piece, mark it, then cut it. We also scribed some radius's on the outside corners and ct those. Then I again used the router to radius the edges for a clean look. That being complete we had to setup and mark for the small rails that would hold things on the table when the boat is rocking. I used scraps from the previous cuts and made the rails on my Rigid 3650 saw. I really love this saw very accurate and easy to setup and use. One mistake I made and learned a lesson was that I should have used the router on the big piece's first then cut to size for the rails as routing the little rails once cut was not easy or pleasant. So I radiused the tops of all of the rails and that was it for last weekend.
Today we got back to work to finish it. John brought to spider mount with him today and I had picked up mounting hardware during the week. I started of by marking the lower table rail locations and then drilling/countersinking all of the holes. Messed up one of the short rails and had to make another one which took a little time but that was because I didn't like the ends of the rails and wanted them to be more like a rounded bullnose. So I started out using the router to round off the ends of the rails and then finishing them up on the SS disc sander. They came out pretty nice and with some final sanding with 220 or better they really looked quite nice. Not an easy thing to create the way that i did it but the result was pleasing.
The last thing was to mount the spider. I had to remove some aluminum from the base of the mount to clear the middle two rod holders but that was accomplished easily with the jigsaw and we had a couple of nice half moon radiuses cut out of the base quickly. I marked the center of the base and lined it up with the center of the table, marked the holes, drilled, countersinked and then mounted it. Very straight forward and easy. I put it all back together to take a few pics then John took it back home with him. He has a little bit of finish work left to do but that is cake at this point I took care of all the harder stuff for him and he saved a ton of money. He has to only buy a 30" aluminum post and base assembly to mount it in the back of the boat and he will have his nice rocket launcher/tackle station.
