Savage's Fusion Generator

[savagecreature]

Sorry to everyone for the delay in continuing this. Life and all that. I'm sure you all can relate.

So, I kept working my way up the body of the generator. Next was the body cylinder. The part that lights up.  I set up the parts (dry fit like) so I could not only develop an idea for best approach, but so I could also see what parts were required.  Not a great photo, but it shows the cylinder piece, the top ring of the bottom assembly, one of the cylinder rings at the top and and the cylinder top ring, which fits into the inside of the cylinder.

I had glued all the cylinder ring halves together previously in the process believing that I would be able to fit them over the top of the cylinder and that having them complete circles would help form the cylinder and hold it in place while I was gluing and attaching other parts.  This was still the approach was intending to take.  I considered gluing the inside of the top base ring to the outside of the cylinder body, but I found there was a gap in the cylinder if I did this.

Thinking that I could shim between the inside of the ring and the body of the cylinder, I decided to put the cylinder rings on first and see how it all played out. I first fit a ring on the cylinder, but it was difficult to hold in place so I could apply glue. I fished out my mini-barclamps to see if they would do the job.

I slipped the bottom ring around the cylinder, fit the tabs into the slots and clamped it. Once it was held in place I hit it with some Weld-on 3.

This system ultimately worked out fairly well, though it did have the downside of being painfully slow, contributing to my not posting.  I went around each ring, clamping each upright with two mini bar clamps. When I would finish one, I would simply slip another ring down the body of the cylinder from the top, carefully easing each tab into the correct slots and start over again on the new ring. As more rings got added it was easier because the rings already on the cylinder would support the pads of the clamps better.

As I'm always trying to come up with ways to get more done in less time, I started gluing alternating uprights on the cylinder at the same time. It got more ring gluing with the same wait time.

After about 227 years I had all but one of the cylinder rings glued in. There is no gap in the cylinder shell, either top or bottom, so this was definitely the right way to go. I fit the cylinder, the topmost base ring and the top cylinder ring onto the base and snapped a photo. It's starting to look a bit fusion generatory, now, I think.

This post was fairly short because the process was repetitive, but this part of the process has taken the most time of the build so far Definitely needed to be wearing my patience hat.