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Another week, another email, but from Iain rather than Ali this week.
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It was good to see so many people at the Shed on the last couple of Fridays working on projects for the community, rather than just concentrating on the Portacabin. There is certainly plenty of demand for our services, and we are having to deal with regular requests for more. Bearing in mind that we are not yet fully open, and shouldn't be sharing tools or equipment, we have to be a bit careful about taking these on as official Shed projects, however members have been very generous about doing the work on their own initiatives. If you have photos of your latest Shed-related activities and would like to see them on the website, please send them to me along with a bit of explanation, and I'll publicise them on the site. That's what we have done with Hugh's customised wheelie bin - Click here to see it .
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Returning to the subject of the Portacabin, the national shortage of building materials is still causing us problems in terms of obtaining roofing materials, so Ali is looking at alternatives to the insulated sheets. It looks like non-insulated box profile or corrugated sheets may be the best way forward, which would allow us to get the Portacabin watertight, then we can insulate it from the inside later. Ali hopes to have some drawings to discuss next week.
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If you have been at the Shed recently, thank you for registering your attendance, which we will use for the purposes of contact tracing in the event of a Covid outbreak centred around the Shed. Fortunately this hasn't been necessary so far, however as we move into cooler and wetter weather we are likely to have to meet indoors more of the time, which increases the risks. I for one am still very concerned about Covid, to the extent that I didn't attend a big event at the sailing club recently because I felt uncomfortable about the numbers of people there, and similarly, I want to be sure that we stay as safe as we can at the Shed. We have a set of 12 "Pathfinder" devices that we can use to remind us to stay a safe distance apart, and while we have not yet tried them out, I wonder whether this would be a sensible thing to do. Let me know what you think.
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One further thing - you will hopefully have seen the email that I sent out on Wednesday about the expanded benefits of signing up for a Co-op card. If you are able to encourage any of your friends and family to sign up for this, the Shed can benefit if you or they nominate us as their chosen charity, over and above the £400 that we have already qualified for. We do have some information about this on the website: Click here!
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Outside the Shed, I have been working on my little Mirror dinghy recently. Sadly, a bit of rot caused by water getting under the varnish has meant that I have had to cut some damaged wood out of the floor, so it certainly isn't sailable at present! I should soon be ready to patch it, however five millimetre marine plywood is a bit scary to work with as there is so little scope for error. I will be using marine-grade epoxy with microfibre additives which will bond the patch into place and fill any gaps, and my joiner pal (who has built a number of boats) tells me that the epoxy should be stronger than the wood. Here's hoping!
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