23.06.2021 Orphaned Amazon Parcels!

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Wednesday 3rd. 60-67F. Overcast and breezy at first.

There is a serious problem with parcel delivery. Amazon provides no personal, customer details on the package label. A bone idle, carrier driver drops a parcel off at a parcel pickup-shop. The parcel should have been delivered direct to my address, of course, but wasn't. There is no way for the parcel pickup shop to contact the customer. Except by snail mail letter? At their own expense?

 I took a chance today and toured my nearest parcel pickup shops. The first sent me away empty handed. The second almost sent me away. Then found my orphaned parcel as he returned to the counter. It was on the shelf. Right next to the till! It was sheer luck I had persevered!

SIX weeks from first placing my order through Amazon I received my Titebond III glue! What a farce for a multi-billion dollar company! The vendor had kindly put a small extra bottle in with my order to compensate for the delay in receipt. None of the Titebond stockists has any stock in Denmark.

With no further excuse not to build some dome/shutter ribs I started [almost] from scratch. I decided that 2x12mm wasn't enough. Certainly not with square, butt joints. So I used up the arcs from the other rib. This gave me plenty of material to maximise stiffness. 

I marked the slanting cuts on the ends of the arcs onto the next arc down. The lines were then cut with the sliding, mitre saw. This gave me three layers of 12mm for a 36mm thick rib 200mm deep. With staggered joints and these same joints with deliberately opposing angles. The image tells far more than my description.

Once glued and screwed together this will form a single, reinforcing rib for one side of the dome slit. I already have galvanized angle brackets to bolt the ribs securely to the dome. Then there will be zenith boards across the top. Plus the 36mm thick, base ring for support at the bottom. 

The plywood arcs have been outside for nearly two months. So they have got slightly damp. The glue demands dry surfaces. It's lucky we have a run of warm, dry weather.

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