1st May 2008: Wonders will never cease! After something of a hiatus, I finally managed to pull the finger out and start work on this project again!!! I finished off nailing and gluing the 2" edge support ribs to all of the hex-pents and drilled them to accept two M6 gutter bolts to assist in joining the panels together for final assembly. Stone me - it works too!! Using bolts to hold the panels together while the glue sets removes the need for lots and lots of G-clamps (been there... and gave up!)
To make final assembly of the complete dome a little easier, I have glued and bolted together five sub-assemblies consisting of a central pentagon surrounded by five hexagons. These sub-assemblies are about as big as can be easily lifted and carried by a single person (i.e. me!) They will eventually be joined together with five sets of intermediary sub-assemblies (middle picture, below.)
My next move was to cut out the 4mm plywood for the inner skin of the dome, to hide all those nasty looking support ribs and provide a smooth inner surface to the dome to facilitate heat to escape through the open shutters. Without a smooth inner surface, the ribs would effectively provide lots of pockets for warm rising air to get trapped in... which would result in a slower cool-down of the observatory and ultimately, crappy seeing.
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