After two trips to the sewing machine store, the double-needle machine is back in working order. The nice man at the sewing machine store is very good at fixing broken sewing machines.
And how did the machine get broken you may ask? Well, it seems that your humble author, while changing the needles in the machine managed to install the new needles backwards. This is a bad thing to do. It makes the machine very grumpy. The truly annoying part of the story is that I know that it’s a really bad thing to do and managed to do it anyway. (My children make fun of me for doing things like this. So please don’t tell them.) But it’s all better now and except for spending a good chunk of the day in the car and a slight nick in my wallet, there are no lasting consequences.
We managed to finish cutting the third set of trapezoid panels. Only 10 more sets to go.
The good news is that the rest of the fabric, both baby blue and navy blue, arrived today. The bad news is that the baby blue is the wrong stuff. The vendor sent uncoated fabric rather than coated fabric. Uncoated fabric is more porous than the coated stuff. This leads to higher fuel consumption during flight as the hot air slowly seeps through zillions of tiny holes between the threads in the fabric. Not the end of the world, but a significant (and aggravating) additional cost over time.
Kevin is now mulling his options in terms of getting replacement fabric. The decision is complicated by the tight time table for this project. Given shipping time from the vendor, there is some chance that he’ll run out of things to sew before the replacement fabric arrives. (Stress? What stress?)
The other bad (if less bad) news is that the navy blue weighs a bit more than advertised. This too needs to be discussed with the vendor.
But in the end, it was a good day. When I went home this evening, Kevin was busily sewing away. Last evening he as dead in the water.
For the baby blue fabric that turned out to be 1.1oz instead of the expected 1.3oz, how about just driving down to see the Westmark people? Even with an accelerated sewing and building schedule, a short trip down the Connecticut River valley might be a nice change of scenery from Nylon- and Juki-land. 😉
On a related note, I very much look forward to the 2nd XLTA event in June. Can’t wait to get back up to Amherst!
Gentle winds, and good luck on this construction project!
-Roland
A drive to Westmark in CT is indeed an option. If Noah Lamport had been less reasonable about fixing their mistake, that’s probably what Kevin would have done. I too am looking forward to the June event.
Dan