The High Writer

Step 3 Make the tail

Fabricate the Tail

To build the tail and connect it to the head you will need to fabricate a few parts: the cable, the hand lever and the cable constraints.

1. To make a night writer with a full extension of less than 10-feet you can just go to your local bike shop and ask for a tandem bike brake cable. For lengths greater than 10-feet, I don't know any way other than to make your own cable. (a) Get your local bike repair guy to cut you as much bike cable housing as you got pole to extend. (b) Cut the end connector features at either end of an old bike break cable. (b) Go to the Home Despot and get 1/16th or smaller aircraft cable and JB Weld. (c) Go get a coffee. save the stirrer. (d) Slide your aircraft cable into the cable housing. Experiment with your pole in order to get the right length of housing and cable. (e) Mix the two part JB Weld with the coffee stirrer. Scoop up some of the epoxy into the stirrer. Cut a small section of the epoxy filled stirrer around a 1/4-inch in length. Stick two ends of aircraft cable or bike break cable into the two ends of the stirrer. Let the connection dry for at least 12 hours before use.

Assemble the Tail

2. To make the hand lever that controls the spray-can remotely, you simply need to slide the bike lever over the base of the extension pole and connect the bike cable to the hand lever using the round retention feature on the end of the cable. If you are using a smaller diameter pole, less than 1-inch, this will not be a problem. For those using larger diameter poles (1" dia. or larger), you will need to modify the pole. I modified my Mr. Long Arm painters pole, by removing the rubber grip at the end. This reveals a hollow cavity inside the pole. I epoxied a threaded junction inside this inner cavity and screwed-in a cut section of 0.90-inch diameter extension pole. The hand lever slides easily over this small section of extension pole.

3. For the bike cable to work, you will need to secure the cable housing at a minimum of two locations: the top and bottom of the pole. While a number of ways exist to constrain the cable housing, I use transparent tape. Just wrap the housing and pole with tape. Remember to leave a service loop so the telescoping pole can extend to its full length. Check out the attached images to get more details.

4. Once you have welded the cable to its intended length, attached the hand lever, inserted the cable retention feature into the lever and constrained the cable housing, you can insert the other cable retention feature into the brake arm. You should initially leave a good deal of slack in the cable so you don't inadvertently trigger the paint can during assembly.