10 May 08

I put final seat mounting bracket in the bag first thing this morning. When I finished that, I came back into the blue room and started figuring on cutting out the centers of the seat laminates. I drew a 1 3/4" inside offset line around the edge of the seat pieces and drilled a 1/2" hole at the corners. I then used a jigsaw to roughly cut the center out and a grinder and a sander to clean everything up. Hunt was working on a part for the loom to keep tension on the veneer strips, and we went to Lowe's to get some 3/8" PVC tubing for it. Caroline dipped 180 pieces of the tubing in boiling water and molded them to shape using a threaded rod and a spring clamp. Hunt and I made a simple mold out of a couple of our leftover redwood 4X4s to use for a bracket that mounts the bottom of the seat backrest to the floor. After we machined the pieces, I glued the mold together and went in to eat. After dinner, I took the clamps off and sanded the mold into shape. I layed a part on it and put it in the vacuum bag as the rain poured down outside the glue room. After I finished the glue-up, I trimmed 2 seat laminates for tomorrow's installation process. I was done in the shop by about 10:15pm and came inside to look at an Illustrator file of the Splinter logo with Ryan, which I will mail to Glenwood in hopes of laser cutting a couple of inlays for the seat backs. That would save a lot of time and look sweet. Gotta keep on rolling.