Sunday, November 02, 2008

Aframe Refurb (1)

Last month, I briefly mentioned that Mimi put her foot through the Aframe while flying up it (she's not SuperDog; the wood rotted through after more than 5 years of use and exposure). Since the Aframe is a relatively difficult contact obstacle, especially for smaller dogs, and since I like to reinforce contacts often, I planned to start the Aframe refurb project right away. I thought it would be the work of perhaps a couple of weekends, take some photos, write a quick blog, and we are back in business.

Oh no. Oh my, no, it's not been that way at all. The Aframe refurb project has taken over my spare weekends and my garage. It's proven to be a challenging task.

If I were in the business of making Aframes, there are some things I would acquire immediately, such as two more pairs of sawhorses, at least four more clamps, a compressor, a paint sprayer, and a sealed room with at least 12' ceilings so I can hang the 10' tall pieces of the Aframe for painting. But I have none of those things, so I've had to make do with what I do have.

Day 1 (really, an hour): I had to remove the rotten wood from the steel frame. I tried to take out the screws but the heads were too rusted to keep a bit in them. I ended up using a crowbar to pry the wood off. I kept all of the wood parts to use as guides.

Days 2 and 3: I used a pair of channel locks to gently, ever so gently, get the screws out. Even with the care I was taking, I snapped off half a dozen screws.

Rotten screws sticking out of the rusted, peeling frame.

Now that I had the old wood and screws as guides, I made my first run to Home Depot for plywood, paint, and screws. I had them rip the plywood--the guy didn't even charge me for the cuts! It's hard to make long straight cuts with a circular saw, which is all I have, and I wanted my Aframe to look good, not hacked.

The steel frame was in good shape although the paint was peeling off in large sections where rust had developed around the screw holes. I used a wire wheel attachment on my drill to clean up the grungy areas. This was by far the most labor-intensive part of the entire project. You can't just whip that wire brush across the rust and peeling paint and call it good. It takes a lot of force and focus. And there are certain combinations of direction of rotation of the wire brush and angle of attack that are guaranteed to slam your forearm into the steel frame. I ended up with large bruises on both arms. I probably spent more than six hours cleaning up each half of the frame.

Multiply this rotted spot approx. 100 times for each half of the frame...

I suspended one section of the frame from an accommodating tree in my yard, cleaned it well with mineral spirits, and applied two coats of black paint (even outside in warm weather, it took more than 4 hours for each coat to dry). I usually work with latex paint, but for metal you have to use the oil-based stuff. Thick and sticky and messy. And I never know what to do with the dirty paint thinner after I clean my brush. I bought a cheap brush just for the task but didn't realize it would take DAYS to finish painting the frame. So it was either clean the damned brush or go buy more.

Days 4 and 5: The Aframe is 10' long on each side, so you need an 8' piece of plywood plus a 2' piece tucked in at the top. And I wanted slats on my Aframe (slats are controversial because some people think dogs injure themselves on the slats but I play AKC agility often and they have slats on their contacts). All of the wood pieces need primer on both sides and all edges. Latex primer dries quickly so I was able to get 1 or 2 coats of primer on all of the wood pieces over the weekend.

As those pieces were drying in the garage, I was able to get a coat of paint on the other half of the frame using my handy tree. But the weather turned so I had to move that part of the frame into the garage. The paint was still damp, so it took over the sawhorses. I managed to get the second coat applied to both sides a couple of evenings that week.

Days 5 and 6: I painted the back of the wood pieces their final color before I attached them to the frame. Exterior latex takes quite a bit longer than primer to dry. With only one set of sawhorses, I had to wait for each piece to dry before starting the next one.

I used a large cardboard box as a temporary sawhorse. Rickety but it worked okay.

I put a lot of thought into how I would attach the wood to the frame. I initially thought I could use the original holes in the frame but this turned out to be far more difficult than it was worth, if not impossible. So I worked out a placement pattern for the new screws that didn't intersect with any of the old holes.

By accident, I purchased 3/8" plywood although the original had 1/2" plywood. I decided that this might be okay: the steel frame was in excellent condition and I have small dogs. Plus the Aframe might turn out to be lighter and thus easier to move once it was put together. Nonetheless, every screw required a smaller pilot hole to make sure I didn't split the wood and to make the new hole in the steel frame.

Tangible progress! Plywood is attached to one half of the frame.

I measured out the position of the slats, glued them, clamped them, waited half an hour, discovered that my first clamp job sucked, reclamped them, waited an hour, then screwed them down too. I then waited another couple of hours before caulking the top and bottom of the slats.

More progress: slats attached and caulked.

After approximately 25 man hours, I've not yet reached the halfway point of this project.

What's left? I have to put masking tape on the frame and measure out and mask the contact area, then apply two coats of two different colors of sandy paint to the face. THAT will get me to the halfway point.

It's satisfying to see how much progress I made today, but frustrating that it will probably be the end of the month before I can finish this project. Still, I'm having a lot of fun making this new Aframe as good as the old one!

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