… when I finished working.
Mind you, I had an idea that it would be something like that. Cassettes are quite regular in length so you can work it out to 10 minutes or so.
But I’m not going to have this insulation finished by Friday. It’s sloooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww. This shiny space-blanket type of stuff works best in a vacuum and in the absence of a suitable vacuum you have to do your best to make your own.
The outside was easy – you remember me using counter-battens to put the hardboard layer 25mm off the insulation. But the inside is not so easy. The chevrons are about 65mm in depth so I tacked in some small nails at 40mm and cut a load of 40mm polystyrene tiles to fit in between the chevrons – pushing them down to the nails so that they are flush with the outside of the chevron and 25mm off the insulation – so I now have my air gap of 25mm.
Well, sort-of. We struggled to get the insulation as tight as we could and it wssn’t easy – in places we didn’t manage it. But it’s the best we could do.
But every piece of polystyrene has to be cut to size individually – no standardisation of distances between chevrons on this job. And that’s what’s taking the time, especially with the … er … knife that I have.
I’ve done less that half of it and I’vr also got to thread the electric cables throough it – something I’d forgotten all about.
You’ve no idea how much criticism I’ve been getting for using polystyrene as insulation. But
- no-one’s given me a substantiated suggestion what else I can use and, more importantly, where I can get it
- I’m on a limited budget
- any insulation is good insulation and it’ll more than economise on the energy wasted in making it
- fourthly – it’s not polystyrene anyway. If you look closely at it, you’ll see it’s recycled Dalmatian
But I was shattered again when I’d finished – but not like yesterday. Yesterday I crashed out for an hour, was too tired to cook anything to eat, and crashed out again before bedtime. Tonight I at least managed to cook some pasta and open a tin. But I’m clearly not well and it’s a little disconcerting.
>Highlight of the music today was Kate Bush. She has a beautiful voice and she can sing to me all night. In fact, it’s a toss-up between her and Karen Peris of Innocence Mission
When I recorded all my music onto mp3 and copied it to SD cards I copied it alphabetically by artist and named each card after what was on it – such as “Wishbone Ash to Yes” or “Caravan to Aynsley Dunbar”. And I have a card entitled “Help Yourself to Kate Bush”
Quite!
Her two best albums by a country mile are Lionheart
have been on my playlist for ever and they always will be, and it was a shame that she lost her way when she tried to run the show herself after flying out from under the wing of Dave Gilmour. At the time that she did those two albums she had a boyfriend who was a bassist and if you listen carefully to the tracks you can hear how it would be possible for them to be performed by just a bassist and a keyboard player.
And if I ever were to have a dream that I would wish to come true it would be to be on stage with Kate Bush – just the two of us – and perform Lionheart
What you need is an electric carving knife. it works a treat on polystyrene and what’s more doesn’t damage the knife either. Maybe one of your many lady friends would loan you one for a few days?
If they’re French, they’re not ladies!
A hot knife works well to without the polystyrene dust too.
If he heated up a knife with a blowlamp until it was nice and hot – not glowing hot – he could slice a piece of polystyrene before needing to reheat the knife. For this I suggest not using the best knife – a cheap and cheerful dinnerplate knife would work best. It’s generally best though to fashion an insulated handle for the knife out of wood as it’s going to get damned hot. Also, those knives with handles made separately from the blade are just going to fall apart with the heat.