January 10, 2008

Now that the alodine has hardened, I pressed the bushing in tonight. I bought this cheap 1-ton arbor press from harbor freight to press the bushings in there but since I only have about 11 of them to press, I will probably return it soon. I don't forsee needing an arbor press for anything else anytime soon.

I was worried that pressing the bushing would be difficult to do accurately but I should not have worried. The pressing is slow and controllable. I made sure to put the red "permanent" Loctite on the bushing before I pressed it. That, and of course the press fit, should keep that sucker in there. This is essentially how the hinges come from Sequoia so I'm happy to finally get to this point. If you take out all of the mess-up/learning time, these two hinges took me about 1.5 hours of working time to make. Easy, huh? Really though, it's the learning time and getting all the tools you need that takes the most time. But you have to average that time in to making all the hinges to be fair. The hinges I have to rivet together may be trickier, but shouldn't be too hard.

I also redrew and cut out all of the other hinges that I have to remake now that I can drill that bushing hole correctly.

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