Hobby shop run ate into my long planned work session, but I still got stuff done.
Before I did that, I had to make an emergency repair on our 36 year old Eames Chair knockoff that was produced by Plycraft. A few years ago I had to have the base plate welded locally since the entire piece was letting go due to fatigue cracking. Now the rubber donut that serves as the spring and shock absorber in the tilt mechanism simply fell apart. It had been drying out for years (kind of like how I feel sometimes now that I'm 70) and the chair was no longer stable. You sit down and it would flip back to the reclined position and almost give you whiplash.
While you can get parts for the mechanism on line, the rubber donuts are not longer available. I need to make my own or use a spring, but in the meantime I had to make it so I could sit on it. Since the donut was still in existence, but no longer a connected circle, I was able to wrap it tightly with cable ties to contain it. It worked! I don't know for how long, but it buys me time until I can come up with a more perfect solution.
Incidentally, there's two ways you can tell an authentic Herman Miller Eames Chair from the Plycraft knockoffs: Herman Miller chairs (and as designed by Charles and Raye Eames) don't tilt, and there are no exposed screws holding the pieces together. But the knockoff's cost was about 1/3 of the real chair which worked for me. Now there are Chinese knockoffs that are much less expensive. The Herman Miller chair is still being produced as it has been since the mid-1950s. This chair is in the design galleries of most of the most prestigious art museums in the country.
Back to the Boiler House:
I added the fascia boards to the main roof and this time decided to spend some extra time and mask the whole deal so I could airbrush the Pennsy green instead of brush painting. I was unhappy with the results of the brush painting on the clerestory fascia. It was a good decision and the finish is much more uniform. While this was drying I chucked the CPVC stacks into the lathe with the help of the steady rest and faced and bored the top end so it would have a thinner and more plausible wall thickness. CPVC cuts nice, more like metal, than styrene, and doesn't melt.
Here's the tops with one finished and one original. I will paint it flat black so you won't see the part where the thick walls return. I will look convincing. You can only perform this kind of operation on a lathe. I would hate to have had to use a drill to open up the bore.
I still have to engrave the seams showing the stack sections and locate the three holes for the eyebolts.
With the paint dry, I started roofing the clerestory and got it almost completed by quitting time. Tomorrow it will be done and the main roof will be started. When I was masking the building I was turning it this way and that and nothing came loose on the inside (Whew!) thanks to those contact glue dots.
