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!

All hands on deck

Some of us became very attached to our tubes. . .

Once again, another early start for the Tube Cubed team. The plan was to meet at 8:45 and start the cutting of the tubes. Joe had made a list of the lengths needed so once we had sorted them into the rows and made individual cutting lists. We had three teams up and sawing and were finished soon after lunch time.
As all the tubes were all different we had to measure each diameter individually. This was recorded on the cutting sheets which were kept and Joe was able to make the appropriate adjustments to the drawing of the frame. 

We weren't going to let the guys have all
the fun!

Teamwork was crucial

Once cut, the tubes were labelled with the grid reference according to our drawing and the ends sanded down to give a clean finish to them.

Organising the tubes into their rows was fun. A lot of them were already pretty much together as they were cut by the same teams but we needed to group them together and separate them before we could start gluing.

Someone order plywood?

Whilst we were busy in the Shed, Taniya and Sheel headed down to B&Q to pick up some glue and brushes. Warren, our white van man stole Sam and Panicos to help him collect the 13 sheets of plywood we need for the frame. I was also able to get into contact with the rubber suppliers and ordered the sheet we needed. It was meant to be ready for today. Yesterday afternoon I got an e-mail saying it was ready so Warren, Alex and I headed up to Cheetham to pick it up, making a stop at B&Q to pick up more PVA and buckets on the way back.
We were then able to FINALLY start coating the tubes with watered down PVA as a waterproof  base coat for the varnish - which should be happening today.

Gluing Tubes

Tubes, tubes, everywhere

Waterproofing test of tubes

Another early start in the library for Tube Cubed. After hours of hard work the tube team managed to test the waterproofing for the coated tubes. Coating of varnishes will help the cardboard tubes repel water and will stain the pavilion with a nice earthy brown, fitting right in with the beautiful gardens of Dunham Massey. A little experiment has been done with three one-meter cardboard tubes which were treated with different varnishes and different PVA base applications. Three qualities were tested:

1. Type of varnish (outdoor vs. yacht)

2. Number of layers of varnish

3. PVA base quality (diluted or not)

From the results of the experiment, both outdoor and yacht varnish worked well on waterproofing and gave the same result. Water flowed down the tubes and did not soak into the cardboard. Water formed droplets and slid off the tubes. The number of layers of varnish and PVA didn't affect the waterproofing much in this test. It is, however, important to know that more layers of varnish tend to darken the tubes. We may need to coat the ends of the tubes with more layers in order to protect the weakest points.