This past Christmas, Santa brought me a Shark Guard. I used it to complete Nathan’s crib, but knew I’d need to get it properly mounted before the next project. So I bought a 6′ length of 1″ square tube steel, a metal cutting blade for the jigsaw, and a bag ‘o 5/16 nuts, washers and bolts. I would have much preferred to weld it together, but since I don’t own the equipment or know anyone who does, that just wasn’t going to happen.
The overarm design is about as simple as they come and there’s really not much to say about its construction that isn’t fairly obvious from the photos. The arm hinges on a bolt through a couple mending plates attached to the fixed part of the bar and is held upright by an eyebolt inserted just behind the hinge point.
Hinge and Arm Lock
The trickiest part was bolting the dang thing to the brick wall on the right side of my table saw. The bricks are fairly brittle and soft and before this project I’d had mixed results using tapcon screws. Thankfully, expansion anchors did the trick.
The hose is held on by simple zip ties.
In position
Up and out of the way
