I did spend Monday in the workshop, and a couple of hours yesterday evening. It was supposed to be a pot-pourri of odd jobs; hanging the fire extinguisher, installing the alarm panel, insulating and lining the man-door. But as I was doing the latter, or at least preparing some support battens for it, my P/T stopped. The lights were on but no-one was home. I knew straight away what the problem was, it's happened once before, it's the drive belt from the cutter block to the gear train for the feed rollers. When it happened before, many years ago, I am pretty sure that I bought two drive belts, so I had a spare to hand next time it happened. Furthermore I remember seeing it recently, So the hunt was on. Yes, got it, installed it (it's a right faff as I have to remove the shaft of one of the pulleys and do a lot of wiggling, but as I've done it before it was not as hard as the first time). Job done, switch on. Nothing. I had mistaken a rubber band for the drive belt and of course, it just stretched and bounced.
So I googled for fan belts in Mansfield, and got a car factors I have used before. I rang them, yes, no problem we have one in stock. Great. 20 mins later it was "Ooh no, we haven't got anything like that, who did you speak to?". No idea. So I bought a standard V-belt of the same length and hoped for the best.
I couldn't try to fit it until yesterday afternoon, late. It doesn't fit. The problem is that the original is only about 2mm thick, it is flat. This was about 10mm thick and there isn't that much clearance between the pulley and the metal casing around it. So I went back and swapped it for a flatter poly-V like the main drive belt from motor to cutter block. It's 5mm longer, but I hoped I could accommodate that.
So I got that on and it is so much more robust than the flimsy thing that had snapped, very happy. But that little episode had cost me a good half day.
And today I am knackered.
We had already worked out that we needed 3 full floor boards plus about 2ft per run and there would be 13 runs. But we had to remove the tongue on the first row and we didn't want to be left with a very narrow strip at the end, so we ripped off 450mm or so, so that it lined up with the opening to the double doors.
We then laid out the rest of the row and cut the end piece,
the rest of which board became the first of the second row, thus staggering the joints by about 2ft or so. This piece had to be notched to go around the door frame.
There is a very slight step in depth just inside the door, due to the sole plate being a tad thinner than the polystyrene. But an extra strip of DPM made up the few mm
And so we continued, hammering everything together as we went.
But something was not going very well, to be honest. I was rather hoping to get it all so tight that the joints became invisible, but instead we had small gaps all over the place. In some places we had glue squeeze-out, in others you could lose a coin down there. So I, yes I, the slow dim one, suggested we check the line with a string. Problem identified, we were out about 1/3 way along by a good 6mm. No wonder we weren't tight.
It's because the wall is not laser straight. So we persuaded the boards into line and things looked better, but by this time the glue had grabbed and is was pretty much set in an imperfect position. It's not awful and if the glue had been grey than it would not be a problem, but I don't really want white lines. So tomorrow Ray is bringing some black cement colouring and we are going to try to make a grout.
I have to say that the material itself is excellent. It's almost like sandpaper, I'm not going to slip on that. OK, it is chipboard and as such the joints can't really be as tight as they would be on proper laminate flooring, but this is a workshop not a dining room and anyway it is not intended to be a finished floor surface. But so far I think it has been an excellent choice.
All that extra OSB was in the way so we had to re-stack that
And so, with 4 of the 13 rows laid, we called it a day.
Clearing up I discovered that there was an Allen key missing from my set. I couldn't find it anywhere. I knew I had used it yesterday on the P/T, but where had I put it? Nowhere to be found. So, like Sherlock himself, I figured that when you have eliminate the the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer.
I took the panel off the side of the P/T and there, inside, was my Allen key, laughing and mocking me. I've no idea how I missed it, it's bright orange.
As I say, I am knackered.