Slicing and dicing

We received all of our supplies to proceed with the beam construction, including gallons of MAS epoxy with slow hardener and several sheets of CoreCell foam.  The weather has been particularly cold and damp, so I am not in a rush to start work with the epoxy.  When temperatures rise enough for my 1500W space heater to keep up in the garage, I try to make progress by pre-cutting the foam as needed for the beams.  Here you see all of the high-density foam inserts that are required for the four beams.  This is CoreCell 1200 (~12 lbs/cf).  It is much harder than the CoreCell 500 or 550 I use for the majority of the structure.  As a result, cutting takes a bit more time and effort.  I cut all of my foam with a knife rather than a saw to minimize waste.  This stuff is just too expensive to turn it into dust.  In any case, it took me about 4 hours to cut all of this, including time to figure out all of the dimensional details.  I think I have less than a few percent waste, so that is good on the budget.

Here you can see the foam starting to be fitted into the beam mold.  The foam along the bottom of the mold is just being dry fit for size.  Most of the foam seen here is standard density foam, except at the two ends.  Once all of the foam parts are cut, including cutouts for he high-density inserts, I will start epoxying them together and then the real build begins.  The wedge in the middle of the mold (upper left in photo) will form a recess in the beam for part of the beam folding mechanism.  I finished cutting the foam bits that encase the recess last Monday during a brief warm spell (I think it hit 30 F!).  This weekend I plan to finish cutting the foam for the sides.  I will also try to cut the foam for the top of the beam which is formed on the other mold to the right in the photo.  Hopefully Mother Nature will cooperate and give me some warmer weather so I can start mixing epoxy soon.