Howdy folks, thought I'd give you quick update on our progress. We have been working away on laminations and reinforcements in beam 2. I lost a weekend to a cold, but otherwise made steady progress. This weekend I finished the internal laminations in the second beam. Today I cut and dry fit the bulkheads and gussets so they are ready to be glued in place. Here you can see the seven bulkheads temporarily in place. You can barely see one of the gussets at the far end to the right of center. Now I can pull the beam out of the mold so I can start assembling the third beam.
Pull out about a bazillion screws, and here is the newly freed beam #2 along with the first beam (with installed bulkheads as previously discussed). They look nearly identical, and will even more so once I get the bulkheads installed. I will glue the bulkheads into beam 2, assemble the foam core for beam 3, and prep the foam core fillet for beam 3 all at the same time so I can make better use of the epoxy putty I will need to mix. I hate wasting material, so having several tasks that all require the same putty might make better use of the batch.
I should also note that it is starting to get cool here in the northeast. To keep the epoxy ready for use, I moved the two parts to shelves in the laundry room. This way the epoxy will be a reasonable temperature so it will flow, rather than being like molasses. Well, lots of gluing to do, so next weekend should be busy.
