I finally went out and got the second rib jig from the garage and brought it down to the basement. Ribs 24 & 25 are now curing, they will be ready to pull tomorrow evening. My new routine:
- Put the first jig on the bench. Cut all the pieces fro one rib and set the geodetic pieces above and below the rib caps, ready to glue.
- Stack the second jig on top of the first, cut all the pieces for it.
- Mix up enough glue for both ribs (14cc seems about right)
- Glue up the rib in the top jig and set it aside.
- Glue up the rib in the bottom jig.
Double the completion rate. I’m out of pre-cut geodetic pieces, so now I”m marking and cutting them individually with a razor saw. It doesn’t take much longer, really, and each one is cut exactly to fit.
I’m almost out of pre-curved top capstrips. The comments on the plans say you can bend the spruce dry and glue the ribs. I don’t like the idea of having that much tension on the wood. The nice thing about working indoors, though, is that I can keep hot water hot longer. When I run out of pre-bent pieces, I’ll try the hot water bend method again. In the garage the water cooled off far too quickly. In the basement, I can get REALLY hot water in a capped length of PVC, and keep it hot long enough to soften the capstrip. System 3 says T-88 works fine on damp wood… I’ll try that and see how it goes.