Nearly there . . .

Second to last day before the build and being in the Shed all weekend has completely screwed up our body clocks so now none of us really know what day of the week it is. Time has, to quote the immortal words of Jen, gone out the window!

We planned the day so that we took shifts between working on the pavilion and working on our portfolios.
SamSam headed straight over to the workshop with Joe to finished CNC-ing the frame. This was then bought to the small team of us in the wood-workshop to be chiseled, filed and sanded to within an inch of it's life. This would then be ready to varnish.

The CNC machine in action

Over the weekend, we had also glued six plywood layers together to create a thick beam for the base. The slots for the frame needed to be chiselled out to make sure the frame fitted well. This was also done in the workshop before taken back over to our storage container.
Lunch time came with a shift change so while I spent the afternoon catching up on some blog entries and portfolio, other team members were slaving away to finish the varnishing and the inserts.
As we had finished varnishing the inserts on Sunday, they could then be fitted properly by pinning strips of rubber/scrap lino flooring around the edges. This was so that they wouldn't fall out of the tubes.

By the end of the day we were nearly ready for the test build.

Black Friday

Just for the record: Not a lot happened on Thursday. It was, of course, lectures but a very small handful of us volunteered to come to the Shed super early and chop down the forest (continuing with the metaphor from my last entry). This involved us meeting at 8.30am with the plan to be finished in time to get to lectures at 10am. We managed it and the tubes were stacked on shelves in alphabetical order by the time we left ready to be worked on that evening after lectures had finished . . . . . 

That didn't happen.

Third year were using the room and we would have to wait at least an hour before we could get in there, by which time there would hardly be any point in us starting varnishing. So we all got a well needed early night.

Onto Friday!

Nothing seemed to be going right on Friday. Despite planning on a really early start, it was a slow one as we were moved from place to place due to the spaces being used for teaching. 

Once we had finally settled, SamSam were off to the workshop to CNC the frame. The pieced that had been CNC-ed were then bought back for us to chisel out the circles (which seem to be taking over EVERYWHERE now!) and sand the frames down ready for coating. Sheel and Taniya were sent, once again, to B&Q to pick up said wood varnish.

Progress was also made on the inserts and over lunch, I heading over to the workshop with some 120 off-cuts to get them sanded for the craft fair. 

Whilst all this was going on, it had begun to rain so we had to quickly get all the still-slightly-wet tubes in before sending Sheel and Taniya to swap the wood varnish because it wasn't actually waterproof (???) 

Filing and sanding on the frames continued for the duration of the day but Clara (who would be coming with me to the craft fair) and I managed to escape and decorate some of the beautifully sanded off-cuts. 

By the time Sheel and Taniya got back to the Shed, it was closing time. However, Siobhan had managed to get the Shed open over the weekend for us to continue, but Shhhhh, it's a secret!