@Clive
Well-known member
More work on the Fishing Gazette Float today. The cork discs have been mounted on a 6mm beech dowel and glued together under pressure from clamps and now resemble a kebab. I protected the dowel with masking tape and put a band of tape around the cork to give a visual reference whilst shaping the cork on a bench mounted belt sander......
The diameter was still too wide to fit on my little lathe so once I had the tapered ends roughly shaped I took the tape off and sanded down the middle section. The diameters of the hole cutters available were 36mm and 44mm. Not ideal, but they are all that I had. A 40mm would be better. Anyway, the kebab became an egg......
And the egg fitted onto the Unimat. After another dousing in sanding sealer and allowing time to dry the egg was polished up a bit......
I have since slimmed it down a bit more to give it a more authentic shape, and turned down the lower part of the dowel to give a taper as on the original versions.
The cork is now drying out after yet another dose of sanding sealer before getting a final light sanding. The original floats didn't have a perfectly smooth finish and mine won't have either. But I am still unsure as to whether to cut out a slot so I can fit a couple of small eyes on the dowel peg and make it a slider, or just fit an eye to the bottom on the peg and mount it bottom end only using a free running pilot float to keep the main line on the water surface. I didn't want to replicate the original removeable peg as this was the root of water ingress and ruined floats when I used them like that. Decisions, decisions.
These are originals....
The diameter was still too wide to fit on my little lathe so once I had the tapered ends roughly shaped I took the tape off and sanded down the middle section. The diameters of the hole cutters available were 36mm and 44mm. Not ideal, but they are all that I had. A 40mm would be better. Anyway, the kebab became an egg......
And the egg fitted onto the Unimat. After another dousing in sanding sealer and allowing time to dry the egg was polished up a bit......
I have since slimmed it down a bit more to give it a more authentic shape, and turned down the lower part of the dowel to give a taper as on the original versions.
The cork is now drying out after yet another dose of sanding sealer before getting a final light sanding. The original floats didn't have a perfectly smooth finish and mine won't have either. But I am still unsure as to whether to cut out a slot so I can fit a couple of small eyes on the dowel peg and make it a slider, or just fit an eye to the bottom on the peg and mount it bottom end only using a free running pilot float to keep the main line on the water surface. I didn't want to replicate the original removeable peg as this was the root of water ingress and ruined floats when I used them like that. Decisions, decisions.
These are originals....