The new belt arrived and it was fitted to the lathe and only took about 5 minutes. A lot of worry over nothing. Runs even better now.
I did previously turn the so far 10, rear deck hatch securing nuts last week. Today I drilled and tapped them to M4.
The lathe is a god send for simple tapping operations also. Using the tap wrench along with a live centre, keeps the thread arrow straight. I have ordered a spring loaded tap centre thing which I will mount in the drill chuck for future tapping.
The nuts were turned from 10mm dia. brass rod. The thinner sections have been turned down to 6.5mm to allow the brass tube to slide over. The tube will be made into the rear deck rails.
The finished nuts...
Over the weekend while waiting for the new lathe belt, I spent a lot of time lining up and measuring the rear deck hatch.
The main challenge was to ensure the hatch sat evenly between the rear bulwarks and so the securing nuts would sit evenly between the edge of the hatch and the raised area of the hatch.
There's just enough space for the 10mm dia. nut.
The holes in the hatch were all drilled and then the hatch used as a guide for the holes to be drilled into the deck.
I drilled one at a time and secured each hole with a temporary bolt while the other holes to be drilled, were marked.
The test bolts are 40mm long and this is were I'm unsure of which method to secure the bolts, will be used.
I dropped John a message who built 'Big Bertha' and mentioned in the first post of this thread, as this is an aspect of his build that I'm going to copy. I asked about how he secured the bolts and he simply screwed the bolts from the bottom of the deck and secured them with very thin superglue which was allowed to wick down the thread.
My idea was to secure the bolts in a length of 10mm thick wood and then secure that to the underside of the deck. I feel this method will be a lot more rigid, secure and prevent damage from knocks etc. The superglue trick can still be used to watertight the bolts. Stainless bolts will be used.