McWire Build Session#1

Today I had my first  McWire build session. It was the first day of my Christmas vacation.

The first part of the build was cleaning the bench from the last project(s).

Highlights of the build:

• Life is SO much easier with a drill press. - Just say'n.
• The "stickers" for the pipes didn't work for me. There was no good reference to line things up with them. I ended up using masking tape and created my own drill points. I put masking tap on the top of the two base pipes. Then took the aluminum channel, put it on top of the pipes, applied a good amount of pressure and scraped it along the top of the pipes.  This scribed a nice straight line indicating where the top of each pipe was. 

• The hole locations for the X u-channel did not match the structure. I ended up adding an extra hole in the channel
• I used the one of the stickers to get the location of the 1st hole. I used the u-channel mounting holes, the scribed "top of the pipe" line  and a square to get the locations of the other 3 holes.
• The self tapping 10-24 screws I bought did not work in the pipe.  2 of them failed and I had to grind them out. I think I should have bought the ones with the bigger grove that deals with the shavings. Luckily I have a tap and dye set and used that to make the threads for the screws. I used a 5/32" drill bit for the hole.

Here is a time lapse of the build session. I think a higher vantage point would be better. I'll try that next time.