Atychiphobia

 

There actually may not be a word for "fear of not being able to put the interior of your car back together again after you've insulated the roof", but it does feel something akin to atychiphobia I suspect, and that's probably what I had a very good dose of today!

It was a lovely change for a time, not worrying about the minutia of cupboard detailing, to let the shoulder that comes these days from working overhead take away all other thoughts, that was until we figured there would be no better time than the present to install the telephone hands-free kit properly.

What's the word for "fear of the remote microphone not working after you've made a special fitting, cut a hole in the ceiling, and put all the interior trim back together without testing anything"?

Places to go

 

It was more than satisfying to finally have the first of the drawers in for what should be the last time for the build process anyway.

Ladies and gentlemen our bathroom is installed.   Sure there's not a lot of standing headroom, and nowhere to hang a towel, but when a man's gotta go, he's gotta go and now with the flick of two yellow catches and through the miracle of a small slide, he can!

Today though with the drawer concept proven, and the printer chugging away making more bits, it was time for our second very long lunch of the week.

Everything but the kitchen sink.

 

We are in the midst of something of a social season I'm afraid, but there's plenty of time between visitors to tweak here and there, so we got the galley unit in for a bit of a trial fit today.

"Trial fit" of course ignores the ten thousand kilometres of trial we've already had, but the more observant will notice the white plastic templates held on with blue tape.   The more observant will also notice that the removal of large amounts of building dust and debris is not necessary to achieve a reasonable trial fitting outcome.   

Encouraged by the fact that everything seems to open and close as it should, we've suggested to the printer that it could atone for its sins of the past few days by working overnight.

Perhaps by day's end tomorrow we will be ready to cook, if not wash up although even that might be possible at a pinch. However given that our working day will end somewhere around eleven as social responsibility looms large once more, who knows what boxes will have been ticked!

With only three drawers to go, would now be a good time to note that we haven't soundproofed or insulated the cab area yet.   Will that happen in our next exciting episode?

Some not diamond days aren't bad!

 

Another day "lost" today, but it's not what you think.   

Some good friends decided they could assist in pulling us out of this semi-productive mire, which they achieved by plonking us squarely in a totally non-productive one.   What were they thinking, popping in for coffee like that and dragging us neither kicking nor screaming, to lunch by the beach?

It was all delightful enough that the printer seemed to sense a lightening in our collective moods and set about restoring equilibrium.   

There is great joy to be had in being able to produce products of one's imagination on what ever whim take's one's fancy, however much as we like to think otherwise, the 3D print process is not completely hands-off.  

A printer relies entirely on operator input and will blindly follow instructions even if those instructions doom it to failure at some point of the process.  This is usually timed to have the greatest impact, for instance when one bounces happily up the stairs (OK there's a bit of licence taken there in the use of the word "bouncing"), gently glowing from a few hours of sitting by the beach and eating fish and chips.  

Print failure tends to  leave great globs of molten plastic encasing delicate electronic components which need to be heated to 250° and gently picked out of delicate electronic componentry, usually over the next several hours. 

You know what?

We've pretty much written off today anyway, I think I'll have a nap and think about it later!

Some days are diamonds.

 

If one was working to a schedule, one could only describe today as a "setback".  As things tend to do when they come of the rails, they started poorly and went less well for the rest of the day.    Several steps were taken in a backwards direction and while I think in the end we were back more or less where we started,  it's difficult to avoid making the conclusion that there's actually more to do now than there was this morning.

One of the very cool things about being able to print anything at a whim, is that we can make incredibly accurate jigs and guides, such as the one in the photograph which would allow me to cut out that notch for the drawer slide with a zillionth of a millimetre precision using a trim router to great effect.   

I don't think I'd finished my pre-breakfast coffee when I was lining it up ready to make the first cut and wondering to myself (although I might have mentioned the haste previously) why I hadn't done this  in the first place.   Thankfully that wondering led to me realise that there were screws embedded right in the firing line of the router blade and that perhaps it was time to pull out the trusty Dremel, hence saving the cost of a router bit, and the potential healing time of limb and eye after picking shrapnel out of them for the rest of the morning.

The Dremel did the job remarkably quickly, and the hand plane and spoke shave made short and very pleasant work of shaping the edges before breakfast as it turns out, and that dear friends, was the last time we were to see anything go right this day.

PVC shavings do not absorb tears very well.  It's just as well we're doing this for fun!

On the subject of drawers.

While we were out having a splendidly long lunch today, and not thinking at all about what needed doing, nothing happened.

I know I seem to be fixated on those drawers, the ones that looked as though they'd been chewed on by a rat.  The ones that still had bits of plastic protection on them in places because at that point we were simply screwing things together and packing, not particularly in that order, and they certainly weren't in need of protection.

It's fair to say that the workmanship on those, while fundamentally sound is not something of which I can be proud, but there's nothing a bit of sanding, a few plastic bits and some vinyl wrap won't fix.

It was the frig that started it all, with its curvy edges and all its blackness.  The plan was always to add the dark wrap to the drawer fronts and some trim to at least show a bit of sympathy,  and although no one seems to have noticed that we've been testing it on the galley cupboard since we launched.  To cover up the nastiness of the industrial hinges we've planned something that looks as though we tried at least and with a few other bits it might all come together in the end.

A smarter person than I, might have edge stripped all the panels before assembly, therefore saving himself yesterday, but at least that bit looks as though someone cares now (not unkempt as in the photo!).

Tomorrow will be another day, and rested as we are, we'll fire up the printer and get them done, or maybe we can start tidying the shed and put it off until closer to our deadline.

Therefore I made a mouse.

 

My spool of black PETG filament has been open for quite some time in our recent overly humid weather, and had absorbed sufficient moisture that print quality was being affected and remedial attention was necessary.   This is no big deal unless you are building a van and have a deadline - one of which I have not, yet.   

It was a bit of a relief really, to have a sort of tidy-up day.   I really didn't feel like battling on trying to sort out the last of the tiny details around the drawer slides, and while I was sitting with my CAD software open I discovered a competition to design a cat toy and this was the result.

I know a lot of people are under the misapprehension that I don't like cats, and would therefore perhaps under their breaths be mumbling things like: "You hypocrite". 

Let me go on the record here and now.   I actually quite like cats under the right circumstances.

They taste a bit like chicken.