Clangers

Overheard in the bedroom - in a whisper:

Hay: "Badger, what time is it?"

Chairman: "Dunno - about 5?"

Hay: "No - surely it's about 3?"

Chairman: "Could be. Why are we whispering? We're the only people in the house."

Regular readers will remember that I was given a racing bell from a Bristol ice skating venue about a year ago - it may have been more. I've been thinking about what to use to hang it from for ages and finally decided to do some upcycling, utilising a suspension arm from the scrap bin of the local Ford dealership that I managed to salvage several months ago and thought looked promising.

I tacked it yesterday - cut off one of the bushes with a grinder as it spoiled the symmetry, gave it a good rust treatment and painted it with lacquer. I used a TV dish U bolt fixing to attach the lower part of the arm to the plank - not elegant, but effective.

Bolted it to a plank of wood and I now just need to trim the plank, paint it and then bolt the plank to the house. 

All the shackles I had for hanging the bell were either too small or too large - finding the right size for the suspension arm upper bush was a pain, as suppliers like ScrewFix and ToolStation go just by the size of the pin, without any reference to the width and depth of the D.

To make it easier, I hammered out the rubber bush, which gives me more freedom on selection of shackles.

Ignore the vent cover in the background - it's a paint job for a mate. The kono (also in the background) is waiting a sheet of stainless steel to insert in the base, which should arrive today.

I'm not best pleased with the lower fixing of the suspension arm and may reconsider that - will probably round off the profile with the grinder and see if I can dream up a more aesthetic method of fixing it to the plank. Any ideas welcome, but I'm thinking of a countersunk coach bolt from the rear of the plank into the point where the suspension arm touches it, drilling and tapping a suitable hole in the arm. That way the fixing will be invisible. The cantilever nature of the arm means the fixing isn't necessary for support, but simply to stop the lower arm sliding from side to side.