14.04.2021 Musings on cladding the upper building and some imaging.

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Wednesday 14th 30F, bright, frosty but calm. Back and shoulders still aching from recent exertions.

I need to collect some [metric] 2x6 and 2x4. I also need more 120mm x12mm coach bolts and more roofing washers. Cladding the observatory level can still go ahead with the 12mm ply. The 2x6 timber will be laid and fixed over the top of the frames. The cladding stops at the 2x4 ring at the top of these.

Fitting the upper cladding will be more difficult because of poor access. It will need ladders standing on the ground outside the gravel pad.  This area is well furnished with saplings.

The z-profile flashing has yet to be fixed between the upper and lower cladding boards. Probably easiest to pin it to the 2x4s at the top of the lower boards before adding the upper cladding. It is not easy to fix cladding from above. Though it can be clamped once it is accurately positioned and initially fixed from below.

The upper cladding boards have yet to be cut to size. [89cm x150cm] Should I cut all the sheets to 1.5m long? Or cut out the desired size with the jigsaw? To leave the residue in an L-shape. Trimming the upper cladding sheets accurately to size can be done on the table saw. Far more easily than cutting the cladding from full sheets on the table saw. [Full sheets are very big and very heavy in a confined work space!]

The L-shaped off-cuts will provide lots more useful cladding inside the lower building if it were still at full 2.44m length. If it were all cut to 1.5m high then the [30cmx150cm] off-cuts can only be used for internal, observatory level cladding. [135 x 83] I thought I might use matching, 9mm ply for the inner observatory walls. For a better finish than loads of off-cuts. Full panels would also be stronger than three, narrower strips. Far less fiddly to fit neatly too.

It was such a sunny morning that I did some imaging. It took ages to get everything working. The batteries in the mouse and keyboard were flat.  Firefox kept messing about too. The images are from full frame crops, through cloud. The cloud is incredibly slow moving. The seeing is boiling. The PST etalon out of tune and the focus is all wrong! 

It became much worse after that. Hours of cloud and then mushy seeing! Never mind. I enjoyed a rest day from my labours on the dome. [After climbing ladders all over the observatory to confirm various dimensions]

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