Saturday, February 10, 2007
Slow Winter
It has been a very slow winter. When I haven't been reworking my American Airguns website, I have been trying to get over a sinus infection while on travel for work. It hasn't left me much time for shooting or other airgun activities. I have had to travel for work a bit more than normal which really cuts into my airgunning activities. That should stop in the coming weeks, hopefully.
The only good thing about traveling is that it allowed me to focus on editing my website to update it to a newer format. I have made good progress on it and I think I should have it done and published by the end of the month. The new format will help it to look a bit more modern and hopefully make the information a bit more accessable.
The only projects I have worked on since Christmas has been a wind flag design and a rework of my Big Tom turkey target. I thought up a wind flag design that is made from PCV pipe and a fiberglass rod. I haven't got the vane part of the flag working quite right yet so that project goes on.
I had originally made Big Tom using the wood target design that I have on my website but it was a bit hard to reset due to it's large size. I then reworked the mechasim to make it like Dick Ottens targets. I used hinges to make and overcenter 4bar design. It worked fine but after a couple years of the big target falling, the hinges were bending which misaligned the linkage and it wouldn't fall with lower power guns. This design is the third generation mechanism that uses a sear on top of the paddle like my wood target design, but the face is connected to the paddle arm like a 4bar over center design. The advantage with this is that you don't have to feed the reset string through the face of the target where it can get worn and cut up by pellet shards. Since the paddle is connected to the face, when the face is pulled up the paddle comes up with is and resets automatically. It is a pretty slick design that I wish I could claim as my own but I stole the basic idea from another target that Wade Sutherland has. I just married that idea with my sear design and bam, I had a new design!
I am on a second round of antiboitics so I am hoping that this will kill whatever infection I have going on in my head and let me get back to normal. Hopefully within a few weeks I can get the updates to my site done and I can get back to my airgunning activities.
The only good thing about traveling is that it allowed me to focus on editing my website to update it to a newer format. I have made good progress on it and I think I should have it done and published by the end of the month. The new format will help it to look a bit more modern and hopefully make the information a bit more accessable.
The only projects I have worked on since Christmas has been a wind flag design and a rework of my Big Tom turkey target. I thought up a wind flag design that is made from PCV pipe and a fiberglass rod. I haven't got the vane part of the flag working quite right yet so that project goes on.
I had originally made Big Tom using the wood target design that I have on my website but it was a bit hard to reset due to it's large size. I then reworked the mechasim to make it like Dick Ottens targets. I used hinges to make and overcenter 4bar design. It worked fine but after a couple years of the big target falling, the hinges were bending which misaligned the linkage and it wouldn't fall with lower power guns. This design is the third generation mechanism that uses a sear on top of the paddle like my wood target design, but the face is connected to the paddle arm like a 4bar over center design. The advantage with this is that you don't have to feed the reset string through the face of the target where it can get worn and cut up by pellet shards. Since the paddle is connected to the face, when the face is pulled up the paddle comes up with is and resets automatically. It is a pretty slick design that I wish I could claim as my own but I stole the basic idea from another target that Wade Sutherland has. I just married that idea with my sear design and bam, I had a new design!
I am on a second round of antiboitics so I am hoping that this will kill whatever infection I have going on in my head and let me get back to normal. Hopefully within a few weeks I can get the updates to my site done and I can get back to my airgunning activities.
