New Centre Leg - 1.3 - Ankle Cylinder

As only one or the other centre leg will ever be used at one time, I'm going to swap over one of the ankle cylinders to the new Centre Leg when in use. The wedge is already fitted to the cylinder, so I don't need to make a new one of these.

But I will need to make a new ankle cylinder holder. I have to make a new cylinder holder as the centre legs don't have these and the outer legs need the ones already fitted to them.

So I found a scrap piece of 18mm thick wood and shaped it to fit. Unlike the other holders [which are fixed to the cylinders] this one will be screwed onto the centre leg.

I marked hole positions onto the leg for the cylinder fixing dowels to push into.

 pictures of holes

picture of cylinder fitted position

I've done things this way so that the curved angle is right and matches up with the angle on the cylinder wedge.

Next is a brass bush for the bolt hole......

Horseshoe No2 - Hydraulic & Buttons fitted

To make space in the bedroom [keeping the wife happy] I took the Horseshoe back out to the garage and fitted [bolted] the Hydraulic & the two Buttons back on. Then fitted the spacer and finally, pushed the location pegs into the holes on the Leg.

Leg No2, is now complete :)

Ankle Cylinder / Wedge No3 - 1.3 - paint

Sanded the wood filler smooth, then sprayed primer all over.

Masked off into sections and then sprayed silver.

Once dried, re-masked off and sprayed with blue metallic paint.

A mishap with the masking tape ment i had to redo one silver side of cylinder :-(
So sanded, re-primed and then silver sprayed again!

Cylinder holder attached with a screw. fitted,looks good. Finally finished off with clear lacquer.

Ankle Cylinder No3 - 1.2 & Ankle Wedge No3 1.1

Sprayed up the cylinder and end caps with grey primer.

I then fitted the end caps into the cylinder and applied P40 inside to fix them in place. I've used P40 this time as these are going to be more 'exposed' so want to make sure they don't pop out etc.

Next I used wood filler to fill in the gaps and smooth things out a bit.



Using previous templates, I marked up and cut out pieces for wedge. Shaped to fit, used P40 to bond the sides to front face. This one only took me all in, half an hour to build.

Once the P40 had set, I sanded all the faces and ensured the curved area fitted over the cylinder. I then drilled and screwed the wedge to the cylinder.

Wood filler applied to gaps on the sides.

cut-out under screw was to help screw in the screw

Main Leg 1.4, Ankle Wedge 1.4 Centre Leg build update

Spent 2.5hrs working on leg. Sanding then more wood filler. Made the counter sunk holes bigger on five of the screw holes. Then filled with wood filler.

counter sink holes made deeper

Once dried, more sanding. Also applied wood filler to fill in the wood grain surface.

Mixed up some more P40 body filler and fi0lled in the back of the seconed ankle wedge. I then got to work on re-shaping the resin in the back of the first wedge. Once happy with the fit, I marked its position on the ankle cylinder and removed the cylinder from the centre leg. I then drilled through from the inside of the cylinder up into the resin in the back of the wedge & secured it in place with a screw. I repeated this with the second cylinder & wedge, once the resin had dried.

There is a screw (that you can't) see securing the taped up wedge onto the cylinder

I then masked of the wedges and sprayed them with grey primer.

Wedge masked off and primed

wedge time taken, about 1hr.

Next Day = Once they were dry, I sprayed them blue

And then once dry, I sprayed them clear and also the centre leg.

Centre Leg complate, with cylinders and wedges

 Am pleased with work so far.

Ankle Wedge build 1.3

Lunchtime, I glued up the sides onto my second ankle wedge for my centre leg, using car body filler. I also back filled in the first wedge with the left over mix. This will help with fixing the wedges to the leg.

Ankle Wedge build 1.2

The template i had made was the right size, but the trimmed wood ones came out a bit small. The filler needed filing down and the gap left will be filled with more P40 resin.


I made up another template for the wedge sides and this time they should come out a better fit.

Not the best pic, but these side pieces are larger than the first ones.

Ankle Wedge building

I decided that now would be a good time to finish off one thing, lol. So lunchtime I cut out the side pieces needed to complete my Centre Leg 'Wedges'.



Using masking tape to hold the sides of the wedge in place. I then us P40 car body resin to secure them to the front plate.