Quick Update

I've gotten a couple things done in the past couple weeks.

Here is the Tabernacle all glued up with its bearing plate glued and bolted on. The metal strap is copper pipe pounded flat for lightening.  Everyone has their opinion on this matter.  Lightening is such a mysterious phenomenon, it's hard to know who to believe, but my money is on some kind of grounding and bonding.  At least when things start going BOOM BOOM BOOM all around, you can look at your first mate and say, "Honey, it's OK.  I have taken measures."

  Here it is installed. I had the disconcerting experience of having the 5/16 nuts pop loose after I torqued them real good on 5/16 threaded rod.  I bought a bag of these from Fastenal and they are all kind of loose. I wonder if their threaded rod isn't machined light as well, perhaps to be more forgiving of having the threads all boogered up when you cut it??  I will have to address this.

I don't usually go in for testing, but deck sheathing begged for it.   Here are some odd bits out of the bargain bin. There was a stretchy polyester, a double ply blend, a plain, thin cotton-poly blend of the very most common type, and some cotton canvas. My money was on the cotton canvas, but it was not to be....

     

  I followed Dave Z's procedure for laminating, skeptical as I was.  I-gor did the heavy lifting, as you can see here.  The double ply stuff was too hard to wet out.  The cotton canvas resisted wetting out and raised bubbles as it dried. It would be a poor choice for this.  The other two wetted out nicely and had a good feel.

After three coats, we were good. The thin, purple cotton-poly would have been ok after two coats and the third really slicked it up too much for my taste.

  I made the test piece into a sled and drug the kids around the driveway for half an hour, trying to replicate light to moderate abuse.

 

There was very little damage to any of the samples except the cotton canvas, which tore badly.  Whew!  Glad I didn't go with my gut on that one!