Yesterday, I finished building my new shooting gallery, and I have to say, it came out quite well – for being the product of someone with literally no experience in construction, working completely alone. Then again, I suppose I have YouTube channels such as Primitive Technology and Mr. Chickadee to thank. Either that, or growing up in a house that was perpetually under construction, and simply being around the stuff a lot. Still, I’m a machinist, not a carpenter (and it shows).
This was a much quicker project than the tractor canopy, taking only four days instead of eight. To be fair, however, when working on this one, I generally spent more time per day working on it, and I had far fewer delays.
The first day I spent working on a preliminary design, which I changed just before beginning construction (though I hinted I would do that in the design video). That was back in March, and I only just now got round to building it. To be fair, this is not warm-weather work, at least not for a walking toaster like me (before anyone decides to remark on the obvious, I’ve been a cold-weather cat since LONG before I stopped cutting my hair).
Design video: https://www.bitchute.com/video/evfRJVvuLzC1/
I got the lumber in the evening, so it sat overnight before I did anything, and therefore I don’t count that as a day. The second day (when I finally pulled the lumber out of the truck) was the day that I cut up the pieces and drilled all the pilot holes where they were needed. This wasn’t really an all-day process, though it did get briefly interrupted by rain.
Basic woodworking: https://www.bitchute.com/video/AQ4Bw3jx2RsN/
The next day was the painting day. This was an all-day process, even though I tried to make it as efficient as possible by putting all the structural members next to each other on a pair of metal saw-horses, one piece of OSB on top of the main posts (which didn’t get painted), and the other piece of OSB on top of a plastic tractor cart (not shown in the video). OSB is quite paint-thirsty, and as such, takes a long time to dry. Everything was finished just as the dew began to settle, and then I began compiling and editing the footage that I already had. This was a time-consuming process, since my main desktop is running Windows 7, and even though I have OBS (Open Broadcast Studio, not to be confused with OSB, which stands for Oriented Strand Board), I don’t know what its editing capabilities are, much less how to use them. I use OBS strictly for screen recording when I’m making CAD tutorials. My secondary desktop runs Windows 10, but that’s in Maryland, so I’m stuck using my potato laptop, which also has Windows 10 (in case you haven’t caught on, I like using the built-in video editor that Windows 10 has – it doesn’t do everything I want, but it’s good enough for now). I did as much editing as I cared to do before calling it a night and posting my progress report to Hive.
Painting: https://www.bitchute.com/video/1bTC1PaAfm3J/
The fourth and final day was assembly day. I didn’t start until right after lunch, mainly because I woke up late. Full disclosure, Hero Forge 2.0 had just been released, so I was goofing off “painting” my virtual miniatures until quite late the previous night. I’ve mentioned Hero Forge before on this blog, and I regularly share my creations on Hive. From now on, however, all the Hero Forge creations that I share will be in FULL COLOUR! Anyway, back to the subject at hand, I spent an hour digging holes for the main posts, the first two of which gave me trouble, as I had to break up and pry out lots of rocks in order to get the desired 24 inch (61 centimetre) depth. If there is a god, the he must reward persistence, because the third and final hole gave me no trouble at all; I was able to dig in completely using only the post-hole digger, which is an exceedingly rare occurrence in the ground where I live. With the hard part out of the way, the posts went in, and the assembly proceeded from there with little trouble. I had to wiggle the posts a bit to get everything to fit together toward the end (measure twice, cut once, beat into place), as expected, but it wasn’t all that hard.
Final assembly: https://www.bitchute.com/video/bLYeDVD1MrTU/
I would have had this posted sooner, but the final video required an unprecedented SIX attempts (WTF BitChute?!) before it would finally finish processing (this is after upload). Much as I intended to document the process of adjusting the scope on my crossbow, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’ve had enough with sitting about, doing nothing, waiting for video files to process, especially since it eats up so much time. I think I’ll wait to upload more videos until after BitChute releases its desktop application, which, supposedly, will make the upload and processing much more reliable.
Kaja's Kreations 