32, Production starts.

It was to going to take me a month or so before I went into full production, there was a fair bit of fine tuning to be done and minor modifications to be made. Screens to contain the water spray also needed to be provided. A pair of old industrial PVC door flaps were perfect for the 2 sides and for the back section I fashioned an annex from doubled, woven poly plastic sheeting.
The saw was exceeding all my expectations and was cutting beautifully. By mid June I had started to accumulate a stockpile of stone blocks, ready for use. The courses, although random, are spaced in increments of 25mm so the blocks are cut the same, less 10mm for mortar. I store the blocks according to height, with the smallest, (90mm), to the left increasing to the largest, (290mm), to the right. Smaller 40 and 65mm pieces are kept in slab form separately to be cut to size as required.
The first stage of construction that I wanted to resume work on was the bay windows, for these I needed a number of large quoin blocks with a chisel dressed margin, 32mm x 32mm at 45degrees. The saw has the capacity to tilt to this angle in both directions but I opted for a simpler method, this would dispense with the need to reposition either the stone or saw or both.


I aligned a number of blocks along the length of the trolley and set the blade to a height of 267mm from its surface. The wall thickness around the bays is 265mm, this gave me an allowance of 2mm for the hand chiselling. A series of cuts was then made, moving the blade across about 5mm for each pass, until I had a flat 32mm horizontal surface. This face complete, I then made further multiple passes, each time moving the blade about 3mm horizontal and 3mm vertically down until the angled surface also reached 32mm.


The same block, as seen on the trolley nearest to the camera in the previous picture, with the angled face roughly pitched.

The main face now also roughly pitched.


The corner margin chiselled and the block is ready for final trimming. It seemed to be a pity to chisel off the sawn surface but it looked too artificial.


For the quoin blocks that were to project from the main wall, I used the same method of sawing to remove the excess from the inside face. To reduce the amount of slurry produced I stepped the blade to do alternate cuts, leaving about 6mm thick fingers of waste that I could snap off before performing the final cuts. I left a raised margin adjacent to the pitched face that could again be hand chiselled.

31, Yay!!!!

The more I worked on the hydraulic system circuitry, the more components I realised I needed for the machine to operate safely and effectively. I very seriously regretted going in this direction, A far better option would have been to make a 3 phase Generator, too late now! The list of bits, including swivel and removable couplings, control valves, pressure switches, braking valves, gauges, pipes and hoses along with the myriad of various sized and threaded adaptors to connect them all together seemed never ending.
I spent many months of scouring junk yards, eBay and the internet in general for suitable controls and fittings along with the designing and redesigning of the system. The bulk of the more expensive items I purchased from America, spending a total of about $600.00 including shipping. Paying the list prices in Australia for the same items would have set me back about $5,000.00.
By mid April, I had all the hydraulics in place and the moment had arrived for the inaugural turning of the blade, why, after 4 years of toil and a number of trial runs of the power unit too numerous to count, does the starter motor choose this point in time to fail? To say I was p****d off would be an incredible understatement!
Another couple of weeks went by before I was able to install a replacement and on the 22nd of April, 2006 all my work finally finally paid off.



A bluestone block, measuring 322mm wide, 215mm high and about 150mm thick, still wet from the saw, was carefully positioned for a photograph. As silly as it sounds this was one of the highlights of my life, this piece of stone had cost me about 4 years and in the vicinity of $20,000.00 to produce. This figure included the shed and is purely a guesstimate as apart from the main components, I kept no record of the money spent on the seemingly endless bits and pieces.

30, Handling the weight.

The cutting capacity of the saw was going to enable me to cut bigger blocks than I had previously been handling, for this I erected an internal gantry inside the shed. I used a block and tackle suspended on a girder trolley to lift the stone onto the trolley.
A more recent purchase from eBay was a 250kg capacity electric winch, I picked this up for about $60.00 including postage, which has made the job far quicker an easier. So happy was I with it that I ended up with 2 more 500kg versions at about $100.00 each, one to mount on a barrow hoist, (to be described in a later blog), and one to replace my initial winch, which I now use on the house.
Another girder trolley, eBay again for $37.00, had to be modified to mount this new winch on.

29, Blade cooling.

Being a wet saw it's pretty obvious that water is going to be needed, As we have no mains water supply and rely totally on the rain for our needs I needed to be able to re-use as much water as possible. The floors are all sloped toward the central well, into which the water collects, from here it flows into the 2 settling tanks. From these tanks it then spills into the main storage, situated under the floor below the pump. The pump, an ex swimming pool pump with strainer, I picked up for $20.00. It was looking pretty sorry and rusty but cleaned up ok and works a charm.
I fitted the pressure gauge to give me an early indication of the tank level getting too low and the pump starting to lose prime, it works well with the needle dancing erratically the moment air pockets start to form.
To direct the water onto the blade I fabricated a "Y" assembly from 3/4" copper piping and secured it to the blade cover. Onto this are screwed 2 straight tubes into which I drilled a line of holes along one side, more concentrated towards the cutting edge. These and their end caps are easily removable for cleaning.
The small assembly to the top left of the picture is an adjustable holder that I was working on in which to mount a laser, this was to assist when aligning the cuts. I found in practice that this is unnecessary and wasted no further time on it, much to the delight of the mud wasps!

28, Trolley drive.

The trolley drive mechanism mounted below the floor level.
I connected a 1hp 180volt DC motor to the reduction gear box, this being housed in the brown case. A chain couples this to the shaft in the recess. This shaft, complete with pillow blocks and bearings set me back about $75.00 from a junk yard. The windlass, fitted to the near end, I fashioned from a 4 belt cast iron pulley.
Another product of my regular jaunts to the junk shops was set of odd clutch set-ups, possibly off a shearing machine, picked up for about $10.00. These I re hashed to produce the pair of guide pulleys.
To prevent the overrun of the trolley I installed 3 limit switches to the rails, one at each end and an intermediate one that can be bypassed to prevent the roller door from impact.


The cable return pulley. I fabricated this assembly from scratch, adapting the sheaves from an odd pair that I had floating around.
The trolley has a central arm projecting down into the groove in the floor, the cables are hooked under this before rising to be secured at each end. I fitted a turnbuckle at one end, but this proved inadequate, requiring a tension spring to be added.

27, Electrics.

My employment at Connex trains in Melbourne afforded me the opportunity to be in the right place at the right time. The scrapping of a large number of Hitachi units as I was preparing to carry out the electrical work enabled me to rescue a large amount of reusable gear.
Enclosures, buttons, switches, circuit breakers, relays and contactors from these trains made up a large proportion of my requirements.


The main switch panel, constructed from the "PLC" box, fitted in the saloon area, behind the driving cab.


2 separate remote panels were made from enclosures located in the driving cab. The push buttons were from the drivers door and park brake controls.


The design and installation of the wiring took me about 5 months to complete and consisted of 240volt AC mains supply, 2 separate 180volt DC supplies for the for the trolley drive and head positioning, 24volt DC control for the aforementioned, 12volt DC control for the power unit. 6volt DC for the cooling fans and 3volt DC for the 2 speedometers, which were rescued from dead treadmills.

26, Power unit.

2 years flew by as I worked on the electrical controls and the power supply, but, by December 2005 I did have something to show for it. For versatility I built the power unit as a portable appliance.
The trailer frame I fabricated from scratch. Onto this I fitted the rear axle and wheels from the Nissan, with the guards being salvaged from an old boat trailer. The radiator and motor, complete with gearbox were mounted in the front, with a new drive shaft made, (for $130.00), to couple it to the hydraulic pump.
3mm steel plate, salvaged from scrap, I used to form a hood to weatherproof the engine compartment. The tailgate struts, saw new life supporting this hood.
With all the main parts completed I delivered it, (along with the stone trolley), to the galvanisers for dipping.

Other recycled van parts included the fuel tank and filler, fuel filter, air filter, fuse panel, gear stick, gauge cluster, ignition switch, battery clamp and the clutch, modified for hand control. I also used the heater controls, connected to the injectors, to control the running and idle speeds.
A solenoid operated 3 way hydraulic control valve and 2 pressure relief valves, along with the associated plumbing and couplings, completed the unit, which has proved more than satisfactory.
The retaining of the gear box allows different hydraulic flow rates to be selected, with 3rd gear being the optimum for operating the saw.

To maintain the correct running speed I connected a cruise control unit, purchased from a local car boot sale for $30.00. After much time wasting fiddling, it proved unreliable and cantankerous and I replaced it with a simple solenoid which pulls the injector control lever a set distance.