October 19, 2007

Day 3
So
this time around on Day 3 we had a few problems. One was rain, it had
rained earlier that night, and was expected to rain the morning of
also. So we decided to move a lot of everything inside the shed. Second
was we were missing our skill saw that weekend cause a buddy of mine
decided to take it without mentioning it to me. It was for a good cause
though.
So with that being said the day started out well. Luckily
it didn' (TM)t rain that day but was extremely windy, and we were joking if
the shed was to blow away what would happen. We planned on building the
flat bottom and the initial tranny up the side of the levy this day.
Shane and Jarred started building the flat bottom for the ramp, most of
the templates were precut a few days before to make sure the day went
by smoothly. We started using recycled 2x4s on the flat and after
building the 8ft section and a 4ft to be attached to it we had to cut
an angled piece for the 1st transition uphill. This is where we ran
into problems.
We found out we no longer had the skill saw (what we
had used to previously cut the transitions). I search frantically
throughout the garage and found nothing but the original hand saw! Heck
no I thought to myself, but we had no other choice. After cutting a few
inches with the handsaw I quite and went looking once more and found my
Ryobi Reciprocating saw, mostly used to cut plastic and metal tubes and
sheets, this seemed to be out best chance to get by the day and it
worked! For the moment, after cutting through and finishing of the
first template, not only was it not cutting straight but torturing my
hand with its constant vibration. I stopped and we knew it wouldn' (TM)t be
any good to use. We wasted a perfectly good sheet of wood.
All of
us brainstormed for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do next
and came up with using some of our precut templates for the flat runs
uphill. We were reluctant but its what we had to do. After making a few
measurements and adjusting for the correct angle, the pieces were cut
and nailed together forming the wedge. We moved all the pieces into
there perspective places and called it a day fairly early. That plus
Shane' (TM)s girlfriend lost the cat and he had to go help her find it. Hope
you found it Shane!
In the meantime we will have to level the
ground and drill holes in the end 2x4s for each section so we can bolt
them together making a nice tight fit and hold between each section.
That and start building the runway uphill, the hardest part of this
whole project. To view a small clip from this day among other video
updates please visit our Youtube channel at www.youtube.com/skatescoff