Hi m8,
Long time, no sea
and THX.
Plexy took me some time (and several ruined tops to learn) how to drill it. It almost couldn't be called drilling, but more like grating thin layers of it with drill bit (talking about big ones, 10 mm and thicker). It's the only way that I could achieve nice and perfectly round hole for the barbs, without a drill bit crushing and crumbling the plexy in pieces, or taking a good grip on it, making drill press stop.
If anyone is inetrested, first is a good thing to make a pilot hole through the plexy (I made 6 mm one), and then put the thick drill bit, position it over the center, fasten everything good, and start the drill on the lowest rpm. Lower the bit to the hole, and now is the trick part: put so little pressure on the drill, like just holding it in place and placing a feather on your hand. That's enough pressure to bit to scrape little thin layers and leave a perfect round hole (without making it wider, elipse or such).
Plexy was sawed with modellers saw (that long, U shaped thing with one handle, dunno the right word) with good quality thin blades.
Funny thing was tapping the bloody thing, I was doing it on my balcony, and I almost had to explain to my neighbours that I'm not skinning the cat alive, no, I'm just making the threads in plexy. It screamed like hell (didn't use no oil, WD40 or such, doing it dry
)
Now I refilled my pencil gas torch and tried polishing the edges of plexy with directional flame on some scrap pieces. It works, think that is good thing to sand the edges to the max with wet sand paper (max I have is 600), and then use flame like brush while painting (it needs more practice, no great results yet...
)
When I complete and install the blocks, I'll surely post the results.
Good to see you're still around!
Cheers!