May mnews!

'Allo folks - another month, another update!

This has been one of those months where I felt not much had happened... until I looked at the pics and what I'd actually gotten done. Turns out I'd done a lot, and it was just non-glamorous stuff that requires disproportionate amounts of time. Sneaky win!

Suit rig stuff

• Figured out the final bits of the water proofing! Took me a while, but I finally found plumbers putty! Turns out in sweden it's sold as what could literally get translated to "sanitary [archaic word for 'goop']". Not very intuitive. Long story short, makes emergency water leak sealing for the big-rig pretty manageable. Won't be needed for when I actually go full rubber fill, but gotta' be able to get at least one water-based test fill done first.

• Figured out and got the basics in place for the 'liquid management system', aka how-the-hell-do-I-get-100-litres-into-the-rig. Going for a simple and easily sourcable solution. 4-5 20L liquid jugs on a sturdy shelf up at roof height lets me pre-arm the system easily, one jug at a time.
  A simple trough solution, maybe roof gutters or something, gets it poured into a filtered pipe to the rig. Hydrodynamics take care of the rest, and will let the rig fill up all the way. Got the core bits in place, will build the trough/piping next and get a water-test done.

• Sanded down the updated molds (10h of sanding even with machinery - fml), and got them going paint-wise. Not much of an update design-wise, but upped the durability on them quite a bit with better infill and thicker walls. Old ones had a few small hard-to-repair cracks here and there, which is a major problem when doing liquid immersion casting. Might chew up an extra 10-20L of latex and seal it on the inside, completely ruining the cast piece on removal. Annoying redo of the mold, but necessary.

All-in-all it's pretty much go-time for a full-scale water fill test. Order of operations as follows;

• Finish getting the new mold base-painted + final sanding touches on the socket plugs

• Finish the trough/piping build for the dispensing shelf

• Verify that my 'drainage system' idea with a simple T-joint + plastic containers works

• Clean out the casting area completely

• Swap out the protective plastic on the floor, set up a nice ~30cm safety margin edge in case of catastrophic failure

• Get the rig back into the area, mount the mold in it

• Seal the rig together with the caulked edge

• Take the system for a fill-spin, hope nothing goes horribly wrong

If it pans out, I'm pretty much only a rig reset away from giving it a real rubber cast. Fingers crossed and all that!

On a sidenote, besides being genuinely psyched to get rubbery results, it's going to be So Damn Nice to get going on something more photogenic than the big-rig project. Doing these weird-ass big scale experimental builds could lend itself to a camera in better scenarios, but with my still relatively cramped workshop it's... meh. Mostly looks borderline nuts. Which it kind of is, but still. A bit further to go before this is past the goalposts though, so focusfocusfocus!

Other stuff

• Summer vacation from the day job is coming up in mid-june (~2 weeks to go!). Quite welcome as I kinda' skipped it last year due to Reasons related to the day job chaos. Patreon will carry on as usual, as I plan on spending a decent chunk of the vacation on the workshop projects. Still keeping the facebook posts in low-maintenance until after summer though, gotta' get the rest and recovery in. Will see where we go with FB/storeposting/... in August or thereabouts when it's time for the yearly plan-post.

• Shop's up and running in low-key mode, not posting overly much about it. Hoods going off the shelf every now and then, which is always a highlight of my day when it happens. I've prepped the production systems but haven't done any size refills/batches yet. Will give it a think over summer, maybe take the opportunity to do a few small production upgrades before I go loud again. Might also need to look over how I handle/store the latex vats, since I'll need a lot of storage set up for the big-rig when that's live.

That's about it for now. Hopefully I'll have at the very least a successful full-fill water test by next post, if not even a first rubber cast. Keep your fingers crossed! And however cliche it may sound, thank you all for the support - it helps keep me sane throughout this bonkers project!

Until next time, have a good one :)