It’s been a couple of months since I last did any real work on the Bonsai RepStrap. My money’s allways close to the line, and most of it’s been tied up in T-shirt stock. However tonight I bit the bullet and ordered the next batch of parts. So I now have on their way to me:
- 30x Miniature bearings, 3x10x4mm
- 10x M3 flanged nyloc nuts
- 40x M3 10mm stainless pan-head machine screws
- 50x M3 15mm eye-bolts
- 50x 0.7mm double-barrel crimp sleeves
Now, a lot of them may sound like pretty generic parts, but I’ve done my research to get just the right ones. The crimp sleeves for example aren’t the plain crimp tubes used in jewellery, but the sort used in sea-fishing. They’re double-barrelled so wires don’t get crossed inside them when crimped and get damaged and weakened. Small (and light) bearings at a good price were also a trick to find. But not as hard to find as the machine-thread eye bolts. While some place do them down to maybe M6, I could only find a single shop providing them with an M3 thread, and only in bags of 50.
To be honest, I’d prefer to have used M3 hook bolts, but couldn’t find anywhere that did them at all. Maybe later something will turn up.
They’ll be used in the wire tensioning system along with the flanged nuts and wire crimps. The crimps will hold secure loops of 0.7mm nylon-coated steel cable. Those loops will be fed through the eye bolts. The eye bolts will be retained in a recess by the flanged nuts. The recess will stop the bolt from turning as the nut is adjusted, pulling the bolt further into the recess and putting more tension on the drive wire that runs around the geared capstan.
That’s the theory anyway.
Until they turn up, back to casting and designing T-shirts.
Off to Focus in the morning, looking for some specific storage boxes and some 12mm mouldings. In turn to build the new cargo hauler around, and tidy up the rough Bonsai frame.
