Well yesterday felt like the biggest setback we’ve come across. But we have to move forward! I feel like everyone has a share of mixed emotions; some are frustration, sleepiness, and excitement. We are all still excited to build this and get this project done. But I also feel a physical, emotional, and mental tiredness from everyone. My body has been sore for the past few days over building the bridge alone: arms, fingers, wrists, legs; you name it! Guess we all need to lash and build bamboo structures more often to get these workouts?
But we also have other classes that get set back with the set back of this new finishing date, which concerns us all a bit. We haven’t even thought of other classes over studio. We’ve all been so focused to build this structure within the dates on completion that this set back, I think, took a chunk out of everyone’s hearts. But now we plan to continue building the structure until the tuesday before Thanksgiving thursday. We plan to be complete that day and install the structure on the fountain on the monday following Thanksgiving. With this new time comes more work days and more chances to fix problems we may run into.
So now we must bring the trusses of the bridge back inside the shop to work on the peg problem. We are going to replace the wooden pegs with metal ones. We are also increasing the size of the pegs from 2.5” to 3” each. The steal pegs will solve our snapping problem that we had with the wooden pegs. But this also means we must unlash every member and take out every wooden dowel (about 200 dowels total for both trusses). Then we will need to re-lash every member and put the decking back on. Basically we have to start from pretty much the beginning.
We also needed to fix our lashing method, now that it will cross over the three members of the top and bottom of the trusses. So the lashing of the rope has changed a bit, but not by much. We are continuing to think about our next move and questioning our actions so we don’t have to run into another set back in the future of this design and build. Hopefully it can all flow smoothly from here on out.
