Hi Bill,
Bummer about the spray can and pants. I have had other types of aerosol cans puncture and leak, but never ruined any clothes.
The build is finally going. I've been milling and milling and milling. I've made a jig to get the length the same on ten 5" long pieces. Just took and angle plate, attached a 1 2 3 block to it, and threaded in a piece of 3/8" ready bolt sharpened to a point on one end. Piece of cake. However, I'm struggling with trying to get the 60" and 68" pieces milled to a precise length. I have a support I put together, which I leveled with a machinist level. It's made from some odds and ends pieces of 80/20 I had laying round.
Getting the ends of the long pieces square was no big deal. However, they were all off by different amounts, so they came out at different lengths. I attached an outrigger to my support stand and attached a stop it. A great way to get a consistent length, or so I thought. It didn't work. I was getting several thousands variations. I weighted down the stand, but that didn't do it. Obviously, I was getting movement of some sort, but I couldn't isolate it. I ended up finding the shortest piece, and measuring against it. I got one end even, and then I used a 1 2 3 block and feeler gauges at the other end to measure how much I had to cut off the longer piece. It worked way better than trying to use the stop, but I still have some very minor variations. I'm working on a design for a stop that attaches to the mill table, and rests on the support with the longer pieces. Hard to describe it in detail. I've been waffling between moving forward with it, or just calling it good and hoping I have enough adjustment in the linear rails to adjust for the variations. If the rails aren't adjustable enough, I'm looking at tearing the frame down and making my stop, or I'm looking at having to make an adjustable add on piece for the linear rails, like we discussed to fix the poorly put together Saturns. We'll see. Still struggling with the decision, but I'm leaning toward making the stop.
I've taken some photos of my work so far. I'm planning to start a new build thread in the next several days. If what I've discussed above isn't clear, and it probably isn't, it will make more sense with the photos.
I'm back at the mill tomorrow.
Thank your for asking.
Gary