Build It Backwards: OSGP - Control Panel pt.1

I know I said in this post we would be wounded and cutting metal(I actually make good on half of that by post's end), but I have to squeeze this in right quick like. I decided how I was going to do the knob panel and thought it might be interesting to someone to show what I did and how.

Rather than try to explain it, here's a pic of me working it out on paper.Its not complicated, but if I don't draw it I find it hard to keep things straight in my head. Back before my accident and I did this kind of stuff everyday I didn't need to draw it out unless it really was complicated, but these days I have to draw everything. Looking at the drawing though you can see how the basket sits at an angle and by cutting that triangle out and bending it a little I should end up with a condiment basket/knob panel that sits perfectly perpendicular to the grill body, which is necessary for the knob to function properly, unless I make a universal joint.

You can see that the bolt holes for holding the condiment basket are a bit below the center of grill body's radius. I measured the locations of the two holes from where the two halves meet with a square to ensure that optical illusion played no part. With the holes being along a radius you must use a square or you will measure wrong, guaranteed. The dimension we are after is how far in the holes are, since they are along a radius they get deeper the further you go down. Once we know how much deeper the second hole is than the first hole we can figure the angle(actually just having 'a' and 'c' is enough to find our angle). First lets establish side 'a'.

The first hole is at 2.0" and the second is at 4.687", so side 'a' of our triangle is 2.687"

Now for the hypotenuse, which checks 2.812. See that big gap in the middle of the rule? If I used a flexible rule it would lay down along that contour and give you a bogus measurement.

Now we have enough info to find the angle we are after and the length of side 'b'. This post is to show you how I did it, not to teach you trig, besides Im a crappy teacher and havent used it regularly in 4-5 years now. The angle works out to be 17.15, this is really all I need but I work out 'b' just because I miss doing this stuff . After I cut out the triangle and bend it so those sides meet again it should sit perfectly perpendicular when bolted on to the grill body, then mount the knob on that face. I'll gob JB-Weld in the seam then after it's dry I'll hit it with some black spray paint.

The basket is flimsy as hell, support is absolutely necessary, so I clamped it to a 2x4 and then clamped that to the bench. It's not ideal, but it'll work.