Started fitting the battens. First problem, the poly webbing again. It jams up on the bit and melts, making it next to impossible to drill through to the rafters. Instead, I drilled the battens, ran the screws into the joists with a hammer, then put them home with a driver in the drill chuck
Getting it up was a lot less effort than I thought it'd be. But I did discover I should have left the taping until after. As the battens tighten up, they inevitably pull the foil tape seam away from the wall. I would suggest you leave the trimming and taping until you have the battens on, and leave a big lip of foil hanging out the ends of the battening for a taped wall seam. You definitly want the battens. After a few days of it being up, I can see the foil tape seam has come away around the Velux I didn't batten at the time, no doubt due to the weight of the foil
I needed to use three different lengths of ladder to get to all the points on the roof
It wouldn't be a day without some more bleeding, this time from trying to close a slippery plastic tub lid with my foot
That's nothing compared to what the pedals on a BMX do to your shins when you fail, with their metal grippy spikes
WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!? Nevermind, you can stay for now, provided you eat some of the million blue bottles harrassing me
I was getting really tired of having to undo the Jacobs chuck on the drill to swap between bits, which I'm now having to do all the time and often a few metres up a ladder, so I got this neat Heller bit set. What I like is that the quickfit shanks on the bits are actually ground on the steel of the bit it's self. I've had others where the bit is simply heat sealed onto the quickfit shanks. When you put a lot of torque through those bits, the seal comes undone and the shank spins while the bit sits still. I also like the countersink it comes with and the fact it only includes one flat bit; Heller must also hate flatheads. What I don't like.... the driver bits aren't coated, so I don't know how long they'll last, but there's no marks on them yet. Also, the quickfit adaptor it's self doesn't have an eject mechanism on it, but it does have a strong magnet in it. That makes getting driver bits into it easy, but they can jam in there and it needs too hands wiggling them to get them out. That's not fun if you're up a ladder and, regardless, somewhat defeats the purpose of a quickfit adaptor; if I could undo a Jacobs quicker. The adaptors lock mechanism also isn't great. Sometimes it's let go of the bits as I drive them back and forth. I upgraded to a Wera BiTorsion adaptor, kind of pricey at 14 pounds, but it at least ejects the bits. Ironically, the best eject I've seen on an adaptor was on a no name POS from a blister pack that literally spat the bits out. Shame it couldn't drill a straight hole. Wera are like the Snap-On of screwdrivers if you've not heard of them, but without the brand hype. If I could find bits of equal quality to the Heller set in quickfit, I'd return them. But it's honestly prooving difficult to find anything, the Heller bits are real nice. Grinding those shanks straight on the bit takes a lot of extra effort, the bits are true and the masonry bits have carbide tips, so I may just have to put up with paying for the let down adaptor - shame they couldn't have included something better for 19 pounds
You also see I'm making use of a Bosch laser probe for measuring. That's coming in so handy right now it's untrue. Despite a few errors trying to read from aluminium foil surfaces, which it identifies to you rather than showing a false reading, it's been working like a superstar. I also picked up a digital angle finder, as there's not a straight edge anywhere in the house
I read quite a few complaints about the new DeWalt compound mitre saws not running true. Given how much this cost, it was a test I was hoping to remain blistfully ignorant about, but hesitantly put the digital angle finder up to the blade. Hey, what do you know? The mitre is dead on
The 45 degree mitre is also dead on. And to the nay sayers... I'm testing the presets so there's no complaining about me tweaking the mitre manually to perfection. Neither have I set the saw up, this is it in out of the box condition
And the 45 degree compound preset, dead on 45 again
Here I'm making some beams to span across the room and carry the CAT5 luminaire. Check it out, countersinking. You won't get that from a normal builder!
A pair of 5 x 60mm screws and blob of glue go on all the joints
Frame mounted
Wiring it up with 1.5mm^2 twin and earth, clipped to the timber support
Getting ready to lift it into place. This was quite a delicate operation since I didn't want to scratch the ass out of the paint job on the light before it ever got up, as it's quite a fancy looking light
The fit was beautiful, thanks to the laser tape measure and DeWalt accuracy. All I did was add a single 1mm shim to the end of a support. Not bad considering the walls are just breeze block and squiffy. I could have done without it had I also put some glue on the ends, but that'd have smeared glue up the walls as well, and the fixing is real snug already, so it's not going anywhere fast
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