01 May 08

May is here, and the countdown continues. I pulled the clamps off the rear window frame and routed the roll bar tie-in up to the frame first thing this morning. Next, I started making a scarf-jointed tab to extend the engine cover on the passenger's side. Once I had everything trimmed and the scarves ground, I riveted the 2 pieces together and epoxied them in a vacuum bag. Ben worked on punching out pieces for the loom almost all day, and Luke worked on the frame of the loom all day. Zac started off by gluing a seat laminate in a vacuum bag with PVA, and followed up with some landscaping around the shop since the grass was getting to the point where small cars could be lost. Aaron had some computer work to do this morning. After lunch, I worked on the driver's side scarf extension. Luke and Ben chugged along on what they were working on, and Zac made a couple of supply runs and glued up the 2nd half of the seat lam with Aaron. Aaron then helped me glue my 2nd scarf joint together and cleaned the gutters out on one of the buildings. Caroline came home from school this afternoon, and she and I set about skinning the passenger's side engine cover. We used a sheet of bi-ply with a short-grain orientation for the external side, and a piece of sliced maple for the inner layer. This was a cumbersome glue-up, and the maple was baaarely big enough, so this took us a couple of hours. Ben and Zac glued up another seat laminate, this time with all 20 layers in 1 shot. They were really moving those glue rollers. Zac, Aaron and Luke left, while Ben stayed around to help Caroline and me get the engine cover in the bag. Hunt continued to work on pieces for the loom until everyone broke for dinner. After dinner, Hunt came back up, and he and I worked on a system to make 200 identical eyes for the hettles of the loom. To make 200 identical pieces, it is worthwhile to put a little thought into how to do it. The system is going to be pretty slick. Time for bed, early tonight, since we finished up at about 10:15pm.