This afternoon, we carried on with sorting out what we need to do to make the PA Hip Rafter. All the surfaces are sanded (both the LVL flanges and plywood webbing) but we discovered that some of our plywood had a fault in the manufacturing process with the glue missing in the middle layer. It was a small section about 1 foot long and about 5 inches deep. We carefully looked at the other plywood strips and found three more. we never noticed this before and it is quite obvious! So we poured some glue inside the crack (forcing it open a bit more with a wedge) and then squashed it flat using large blocks of wood and half a dozen clamps. We did two strips today and will do the other two tomorrow.
The next job was to cut away notches in the webbing at each ends so they can slide into place and keep clear of any obstacles like steel I-Beams and wall’s top-plates etc.
Lastly, we need to vacuum all the pieces .. but we had an Incident!! The vacuum system suffered a major breakage! We accidentally blocked off the nozzle and suddenly there was a loud cracking sound and we turned everything off rather quickly!! We discovered that the wooden side of the box that holds the first major separator chamber has split right along the vertical edge and also the bottom horizontal edge too!! Wow! What sort of level of force would that need to do that kind of damage?!
It was nearly the end of the day anyway, but we sorted out a temporary by-pass connection pipe (to go straight into the second filtration chamber and the motor unit)so we can still use the new vacuum system to clear up the dust before we glue all the pieces tomorrow. Phew!