New Deck #3: Day 4 of the build

Well day 4 was productive, just not on the deck.

About 1 week ago I was in the office in the shop and I heard a loud hissing. I went to find out what it was. The safety unload valve was dumping air from the air compressor tank. The compressor was running and it was not shutting off.

The safety valve was doing what it was suppose to do. Keep air compressor parts from flying all over the shop. Some how, some way the contacts welded shut on the shutoff switch. I moved the lever down to shut off the compressor and it didn’t shut off. I had to pull the plug.

I opened the drain plug and emptied the tank of air. I then unscrewed the air switch after unhooking all of the electric lines and the header-unloader air lines. It was tough to unscrew. It was installed before the motor was placed on the compressor. I finally got it off and looked to see what was the problem. Once I pried the switch contacts apart the switch worked fine (manually).

Today I took some fine Emory cloth and sanded the contacts. *I used a 6” extension pipe to get the switch up where I could reinstall it. I then found that the air line from the compressor to the tank was hitting the switch where I had placed it.

So off to Lowes to buy some 1/2” flexible copper pipe and some fittings to replace the main air pipe and a new line for the header-unloader valve. (Since I moved the switch the pipe was now longer that before, and in a different place. It took 3 trips to Lowes to get all of the correct replacement parts and then to get it installed.

The compressor was turned back on and pumps up fine. It was now 2 PM and the heat of the day was shinning on the deck. I opted to wait. I moved the wood into the workshop for the lamp posts and was ready to start that when I saw my dust collector. I planned to call Grizzly about it. I wanted to replace the top bag with a pleated cartridge with paddles.

So I called Grizzly, it turns out that the pleated cartridge is a direct fit on my dust collector. So $200.00 later it’s on back order until mid June. I guess this will be a Fathers Day Present.

My son Dan and I then went out and installed the missing planks on one side. I also did a rough cut on the curve so that I can make a jig that will follow the curve and put a pencil mark on the top for a cut line to really to be cut later.

So here it sits as of now.

I placed the next to last board in place to see how much space I have left. The left and right seem to be about equal.

So if I hadn’t messed up on my first measurement of the 2X6 ’s being 1/8” wide on each one, being 5 5/8 instead of 5 1/2, Over the 33 deck boards that is 3” in width that I hadn’t counted into my measurement. I would have had the correct amount of space on each side and been almost a full board on each side.

“Measure Twice and Screw once”.

No chocolate strawberries tonight, no coffee. I guess I need to make my own.

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com