Tag Archives: angle grinder

Tuesday 18th November 2014 – I DON’T KNOW QUITE WHAT HAPPENED …

… last night, but it wasn’t until 06:00 until I was tired enough to go to bed. The only thing that I can thinkof is the cup of coffee that I has with Liz yesterday morning at Marcillat. But surely that can’t be right. Nevertheless, something went wrong yesterday.

Even more surprisingly, I was up at 08:30 – not that I felt much like it. But anyway, there I was.

After breakfast, I set to on the battery box. All of the old breeze blocks that were in the way have now been moved, and the new breeze blocks are cemented in in the correct position. A couple of them needed to be cut and one of the joys of having these new batteries is that even in a dark, gloomy, overcast day like today, the angle grinder whizzed around them with not even a hiccup.

While I was cementing in the breeze blocks, Terry came round. He was looking for a 12mm Allen Key socket for the sump plug on his FIAT. I had to have a good search around but eventually found what I was looking for. We also spent some time having a good chat and he had a look around at the progress that i’ve been making;

I had been struggling for breeze blocks. I have dozens, if not hundreds, of 20mm breeze blocks but I had to have a good scavenge around for some 10mm ones. In the end I had to demolish the raised step into the house and so this afternoon after lunch I built a proper one out of the old stair treads from the stairs that I demolished all those years ago. The circular saw came in handy too, and once again, the new batteries earned their corn.

And tonight, I’ve finally succumbed and lit the fire in here. The temperature dropped to 12.8°C and anyway I had to cook my mega-meal for the coming week. Thsi involved moving the kitchen up here before I knocked off this evening. And I’ve also moved the camping gas stove up here too. I’ve decided that my morning coffee will be much better made up here in the warmth as the winter approaches. It’s supposed to be a bad winter this year, so they say.

Friday 25th July 2014 – WELL TODAY DIDN’T GO ACCORDING TO PLAN

With the late finish last night it was something of a later-than-usual start.And this was interrupted by the boulangère with today’s bread. She’s going to be spending the weekend making jam and so seeing as how she seems to know what she is talking about, I took her to show her a tree and some fruit growing thereupon. She considers that it’s small plums and there’s no reason why I can’t make jam with them – but not for a while yet until they are ripe.

Back here I was sidetracked again with some research and so it was quite late by the time I made it outside. First job was to pick up all of the scaffolding that I’d dismantled yesterday and stick it over the fence into my garden.

Once I’d done that, I went up on the scaffolding and attacked the woodwork, putting the second coat of preservative on where I’d done the first coat yesterday.

I also attacked the bolts on the Sankey trailer with the angle grinder but this was where things went wrong and I ended up spending the rest of the day dismantling the angle grinder to find out why it keeps on stopping. It’s not been right for a while.

The brushes were worn and there’s a wire with a bad connection, as I discovered after I dismantled it. And I hadn’t finished it (and not by a long way either) at knocking-off time.

Up here later, I fell asleep watching The Naked Gun. I’ll see it again tomorrow and fall asleep in a different bit.

Thursday 11th July 2013 – WELL, THE ANGLE GRINDER …

… idea worked just fine.

Mind you, I had to strip it down, remove the safety guard and the side handle, and fit a worn-down diamond disc. Then I could just about get the thing in the hole that I made.

Although it took ages to work out the best way to use it and how to control it, I managed to carve a deep groove into the head of this stubborn lump of ironstone.

The SDS drill, in the stationary position and with a chisel attachment, fitted some way into the hole (after I’d stripped all kinds of surplus stuff off the drill) and after several good poundings I knocked a lump off the rock.

And that was how I proceeded – cut a groove in a lump of rock with the angle grinder, pound away with the SDS chisel, and then use the core drill until it grounded out again.

hole in wall shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt took ages too and then of course eventually the angle grinder and the chisel bottomed out and that was that.

But I did find a 500mm 22mm SDS drill and so I used that to punch a whole row of holes, rather like perforations, around the groove made by the core drill. And at about 16:30 this afternoon I broke through and that was that;

Now the pipe is in place, cemented in from the outside and with the filter fitted. It’s mostly filled from the inside but of course the air vent and fan won’t be fitted until the tiling is done.

While I was waiting for all the cement to dry, I had a little (yes, just a little) tidy up in what will be the bedroom and I found loads of stuff that I had been looking for. But now I’m whacked, and that is that.

But back to this morning.

Cécile and I were up early and loaded her car with all of the stuff she’s taking to her mother’s, which was uite a considerable amount.

I then ran her into St Gervais d’Auvergne to post a letter at the Post Office, where we ran into the guy who runs the sawmill. It’s always closed in July and August while he does the harvest, but he did mention that he had a workman down at the mill just then.

Upon hearing that news, I took full advantage and came back with a load of demi-chevrons.

A really good investment, Caliburn’s roofrack.

So now Cécile has left the area, probably for good, and I’m back here making rapid progress now in the shower room.

What’s going to happen next to jam a spanner in the works?

Monday 11th July 2011 – I really don’t know …

… what happened to today.

For a change I was awake reasonably early and after breakfast I had my nose pressed firmly to the keyboard here by 10:00. I’ve been working this morning on a bit about Canadian Railways and so I was pretty much engrossed, and what with one thing and another it was about 13:20 when I stopped.

I nipped outside after that to carry on with my solar panel frame. First task was to sort out all of the fittings that I bought in the UK. But hereby hangs a tail – half of them are missing – including the important bits for my framework. Sudsequent enquiries reveal that there were two boxes of stuff for me at Benchdollar, but they only gave me one of them. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Next task was to cut the scaffolding poles to the right length. And could I find my angle grinder? Could I elephants. In the end I found the old one, rewired that and used it (having to use two drills and a screwdriver to change the disk). And of course, after all of that, as soon as I had finished, I found the proper one as you might expect.

That took me to, would you believe, 16:30, and time to get ready for the Pionsat Patrimoine meeting. Here, I have never known so many people gifted with the capacity for fitting the smallest amount of thought into the largest amount of words. Everyone was jostling for position and you could here the egoes banging together. Absolutely everything became a conflict – it was awful and I was glad to get away. It surely can’t go on like this. It was worse than a meeting of the Open University Students Association

We went off to St Gervais d’Auvergne and the Anglo-French Group afterwards. Terry is talking about adding a dumper to the fleet and I’m thinking seriously about a cherry picker. We’ll have a famous pool of equipment at the end of it all.

Tomorrow, I’m off hunting a Roman spring, so I won’t be finishing this flaming framework either.

Monday 5th July 2010 – Today was an important day …

roofing sheets barn roof air 403 wind turbine les guis virlet puy de dome france… in the story of the barn roof for if you look closely at the image just here you will see that all of the roofing sheets are fitted and the kwikstage scaffolding has been taken down.

And not only that either but although you can’t see it clearly we have guttering all down the side of the roof too. No downpipes as yet but that’s not an issue as I still haven’t solved the question of the evacuation of the water. Nevertheless this is progress.

kwikstage scaffolding air 403 wind turbine solar panel mounting frame barn wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn the previous photo you could make out the wind turbine. In this photo you can see it much better now that it’s in its permanent home at the other end of the barn.

We are also well-advanced in the fabrication of the framework to mount the solar panels down there too. We were well on our way to doing that but we came to a shuddering halt as we couldn’t find the three T-brackets that I used to mount the solar panel on the garden fence back in 2007 when Liz came here and that was annoying.

But a discovery I did make was the little mains angle-grinder that I bought a while ago. The cordless Ryobi is good enough but you’ll be amazed at how quickly it drains the battery. Cutting the pipe with the little mains grinder was no problem.

But now that the scaffolding is down we are going to erect it on the other side of the barn tomorrow and take off the tiles from there. Because of the way that the land slopes around here the other side of the roof is nothing like as high so we don’t need as much scaffolding and what we do need will be erected pretty quickly.

Who knows? We may even have this roof done by the weekend.