31.08.2021 Afternoon domeworks.

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Tuesday 31st August 70F Remaining sunny.

The package with the new shelf brackets has arrived. Interestingly [?] the [gentle] curvature of the dome affects the right angle. The base ring would be pressed down if the shelf brackets were bolted directly to the dome. 

Could this downward bias be used to my advantage? It might help to resist upward pressure from the rotation rollers. The alternative is packing washers to make the bracket fit the angle forced by the dome's curvature.

I was only able to order a maximum of fourteen brackets from the supplier. I need six of those for the new steering rollers. Which leaves only eight for the base ring. Think of a number. How many brackets do I need? The dome's circumference is about 11 meters where the dome skirt is not missing due to the arched doorway. Even one meter apart seems a bit mean.

15.00 70F. Fibre-glassing: The temperature is fine for glass fibre work.Though I want to halve the quantities of activated resin. A half litre of resin has gone off twice now during lay-up. A quarter of a litre is probably better. I just need to divide the hardener into four. Which I can do most easily by sharing a full bottle equally between four empty. 

First I divided the polyester resin into 1/4 litres in empty coffee jars. Then I found an old syringe to decant 3ml of hardener for the first jar.  Which was less than the recommended 2% hardener due to the day's warmth. 

This went well and it did not go off after 20 minutes. There was just enough resin to completely wet out one rib length of 300g/m² CSM. 

So I completed another layer on top of each rib. The brush went into a jar of acetone this time. Rather than discarding it to harden. I also recycled the same pair of rubber gloves.

17.58 [CET] Started imaging. The seeing is "boiling" again. Just as it did yesterday. It is supposed to settle down but hasn't.

18.20 The trees have already eclipsed my sun!

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