September stuff

Woo, another writeup-round! It's a case where simultaneously a lot and very little has happened :)

First off: suit stuff

• Lost count of the misc water-tests I've done. Main reason for lack of dramatic progress - it takes ages to set up, conduct and clean up after a full test. Water all over the testing area, parts that need to dry out, edge seals that need to be removed, etc.

• Figured out that I need to reinforce the edge clamping system, as apparently the water pressure is enough to overcome the fairly heavy glue clamps. Cue proper wood clamps, plus some wooden slats to even out the pressure. I'm now the owner of like €200 in clamps, which is still pretty normal for this workshop.

• Did a full-seal all-the-way water test (edit: fixed link). The new clamping system worked, made it up past the knees before the amount of microleaks started to feel iffy. Tricky bit with the hotglue-sealing is that it's still quite difficult to see if you got a proper seal. Only takes a tiny opening and you're spewing a fountain, and some of them are tricky to plug with plumbers putty. Still a success though - clamps worked, mold held its balance nicely, drainage system worked fine, etc.

  PS: Sidenote, really gotta' figure out a better way to gauge the liquid level in the mold...

• Possibly figured out the "final" way of sealing, in the vein of "why overcomplicate it". Moderately thick string of plumbers putty all the way around, and clamp the entire thing HARD. Will try it during the week when the place's dried out.

You know the todo-list by now - if the putty edge method works, it's go-time for a latex cast attempt at last! Will probably take a few attempts to iron out the kinks as per usual, but still, big milestone!

Annoyingly enough I'm itching for a new shell design that'd make things a lot easier - mentioned it a post or two back. However, I SHALL RESIST THE TEMPTATION to conduct like 2 months of work for this and get the current one past the goalposts. Design #2 gets to live in the back of my mind as the later "production design", whereas this one is clearly the janky prototype. Learned a lot from it so far, and I expect I've got a few more lessons to learn before this is over.

Other stuff

Here's the big one. Y'all remember me mentioning the possibly-great-news-for-the-workshop stuff across the last two posts? Well, first papers signed. If nothing goes belly-up in the last minute, by the middle of october I'll have the final paperwork round done. Storytime in the october update if that goes well, so keep your fingers crossed! Easily the best news I'll have had for several years if it lands - major thing for my life in general, and that'll track down to the workshop straight away.

Hood production restart and season opener kind of on the backburner pending the above. Will explain in the next one! Trust me, it'll make sense why it's impacted so much and still had me shutting up about it.

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Kind of a short update this time - above mentioned paperwork keeping me antsy AF and occupying my brain, plus the water testing being slow and undramatic. Still though - we are on the damn cusp now. Reasonably sure I'll have the first actual latex casting test done by the next update, plus some seriously good news on the other thing.

I'll hold off on too much planning speculation until the stuff has landed, but yeah... Tension's rising. Thank you all for sticking with me through this!

You know the drill - anything interesting I glossed over? Comment or DM, always glad for the feedback!