Today in the shop (obelisk)

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For some unknown reason I like to build an obelisk every now and then. In this case I'm going for a metal one.

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As penned by Grace Slick "go ask Alice/when she's ten feet tall" this one is about 10 feet tall. I'm not sure if it will be name Alice but that is the working name for now.

The metal work is done but I still need to make a top and some wood plugs. The 1/2" conduit is bolted together and is very solid and rigid, weight should be about 25 pounds and is easy enough to move around.

One though is to have a small birdhouse for the top. Other ideas are fancy and less functional. Anyway this year we plan to plant moonflowers at the base of each leg. It is a late for planting so we will have to see how it works out.

Ed

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Didn't get much time on the project today but I did get a few things done. No matter what ends up on top it will need a base to sit on. I had some left over 2x4's (treated) from another project so that is what I opted to use. Here a couple of pictures of it.

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The other thing I started on were the plugs for the tubes. I made a batch of them to see how they were going to work out. Turns out the tube ends that came from the store have larger openings then the tube ends I cut with a pipe cutter. No surprise, and this batch was sized for the cut ends.

I used my G3 chuck with a stebs like center, cone end on the live center, my round tool bar and turned the stock to the outside dia. of the tubes, then marked and cut the reduced segments.

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I then cut them in to plugs, this is a pile of them.

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I tried a few, a few were to tight so this might be an issue of the hole size being different or my lack of quality control. Either way they will fit with a big enough hammer. Actually I'm going to paint them before installing, plus I need a pile or two more of them to really get this going.

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Ed

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I thought it might be informative to show how the top is drilled. I didn't take a shot when drill the real top but here is another top for another project that will have the same angles as the obelisk.

The top has to have compound angles to work and this is how I did the set up to get them right.

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The results can be seen here with some scrap conduit from the obelisk in the holes.

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I think this is all I'll cover on this subject so thanks for looking.

Ed