Bedding

I've been bedding a few things so I thought I'd show how I am doing it:

First I drill the hole larger than it needs to be.  Then I fill it with thickened epoxy.  After the epoxy cures I drill out the epoxy enough to fit the bolt through, or if it is a screw, I drill a pilot hole.  Then, I drill a countersink.

Next, I smear butyl rubber on the part where it will make contact.  In fancy talk this is known as the faying surface.  I do the same thing with the washer that will be bolted to the other side.  The butyl is sticky on the fingers, so I use wax paper to press it down.

I squish the rubber up around the threads a bit as well, to make sure it fills in the countersink.  Then, I bolt it all together.  The butyl is pretty stiff, so I tighten it just until I get good squeez-out all around, then leave it for several hours, and tighten it a bit more.  Depending on how thick your layer, this process of tighten a little and let sit can extend over days.

To cleanup I grabbed a piece of wood scrap with a sort of pointy end and ran that around the edges.  Once you get the bulk off, you can get the little bits by balling up the stuff you removed and dabbing at the little pieces.

Also, I forgot to take picture of my tiller and extension when I made them.  But the process was to trace teh shape out on my ash stock. Rough cut it out with a circular saw.  Saw and rasp the part that slots into the tiller, as well as the rest of it.  Sand it smooth.  Coat it with varnish.

The tiller extension felt a little smooth in my hand, so I used a round rasp to make a hand friendly grip.  It feels nice in the hand and is much easier to hang onto.

The extension got connected to the tiller with a gimbal sort of device that allows for pivoting in 3 dimensions.  This got bedded to the tiller as described above.