Before we get onto the technical details, look who showed up! Nathan decided to make my days a bit less lonely and brought that friendship an smile which he always carries around. He popped in, took pity of my soul and left me to work while he enjoyed the view, and the selfie is off the records, the image to your right is a Photoshop; as a matter of fact he was never there.  

 

Today we had to find the best timing belt and the best cog to go with it.  

I got reminded how best rhymes with cheap more often than not. The best combination of cheap and cheap was a 10mm AT rubber timer strip and a 10cm diameter flangeless cog. All will be bought today. The remainder of the day was spent thinking about the hatch. A full two hours later and some 6 panels filled with chalk, the solution appeared, like a brush in the desert.

Two solutions to that.. because if there is something I have learnt in coming to the UK it's the BOGOF method. The simplest was the right one. Initially I devised a ratchet mechanism where one rotating cylinder was connected on the same axle to another one of twice the circumference. The smaller cylinder would be connected to the outer panel, while the bigger cylinder would be connected to the inner panel. For every rotation of the axle, the inner panel would travel double the distance of the outer one, thus when fully deployed the two panels would be on top of each other. The outer panel moves a distance equivalent to one panel length, the inner one moves a distance of two panel lengths at the same time.

 

Everything would have moved smoothly if the inner panel had not always got stuck in its final 5cm of ascent. Getting it moving again was the toughest task of them all, killed your shoulders.

 

Four panels worth of ideas later, the result was quite revealing. I thought that the hatch was never meant to be fully open. I believe it was meant to be exposed by half its length only. When the inner panel is lowered the outer panel slides onto it from the outside, uncovering the top of the dome. On the other hand, to view the bottom part the inner panel is slid upwards. In rest position, while observing, the two panels are always on top of each other. To move the inner panel up and down there is a handle already. 

 

For the outer panel it’s all right to simply pull it down, but to pull it back up again there is no way apart from climbing from the outside.  Bring forward the pulley. If a pulley is placed at the panel's centre, another two pulleys are added either side of it at the top of the dome and pulling a rope makes the panel slide back up again. With this eureka moment and Malcolm on leave with his baby, the day ends. 

 

The following day saw us tackling the problem afflicting the ascent of the inner panel. After some want-to be Da Vinci drawings Malcolm’s solution was to cut 0.5cm off the panel's width. The reason for this came from his belief that over the course of the decades, the dome had undergone a shape change resulting in the panel touching the edge of the dome and therefore not being able to slide.

 

The effect would only be noticeable on the inner panel because it travels on a more curved track; it is under greater stress than the outer panel due to the heightened curvature of the dome. I proposed to add small wheels; but this idea was quickly discarded. The screws on the other end of the slide had rusted so much that they were impossible to unscrew without hacking at the slide itself. The panels could not be removed from that side of the dome. Quite thankfully too as I was oscillating under a beating Sun on a ladder with a 20 metre void below me. As much as I like omelettes I didn't have a liking in becoming one myself.

I rotated the dome, managed to firmly fix the ladder to the wall and started unscrewing the screws on the other side of the dome. These came off easily. The panel was removed and to my surprise was very flexible, more than what I had expected it to be. I advised Malcolm on the risk of breaking the panel while trying to get it out of the slides; it did deform, but in the end came out in one piece.

 

We then cut the panel with a jigsaw; this time I was under Malcom’s supervision. The danger of sawing off a finger was real. This goes to show that there was no danger in electrocuting one’s self as much as there was none in falling off a ladder or getting tetanus from rusted pieces of metal tearing your flesh like hounds. The panel was then flaked with sand paper and became very smooth, it slid perfectly.

 

The hatch was then the main problem, we needed ideas more than ever. One of the farfetched ideas was to completely get rid of the panels and have an accordion type slide which would fold in on itself when open.

We retreated to the initial plan of the ratchet mechanism but the problem arose with how the panels were connected: by simply attaching the rope to the panels we would get a situation in which the inner panel hit against the outer panel's rope.

 

This was overcome by thinking of a pulley (yes I do like pulleys) which when connected to the inner panel and the outer panel's rope would not block the former, but allow it to slide following the rope. The ratchet (where the cylinders are mounted on) would be placed at the top of the dome. This idea was good if not great but only solved half the problem; how would the panels come back down? It is all right when the panels are pulled up as there is tension in the rope due to gravity. But when wanting the panel to descend gravity is not enough to get the panels moving down hence when unwinding the ratchet the rope slackens and nothing occurs. Too tired to think of a solution I decided to leave and realised that the door does not open anymore when I come back. I had to get back in the dome to unlock the door from the inside; getting in via the open hatchet is quite a feat. The bolt/lock mechanism was broken and this led to an epic conversation:

 

'Malcolm, the lock is burst'

'Well fix it'

'I know nothing about locks'

'Oh, if you don't then don't touch it, but give it a try'

'I've never done this before, what am I looking for?'

'Edo remember the time you first lost your virginity? '

'...'

'Did you know what you were looking for back then?'

'Err... yeah... didn't you?'

'Get it done'

'This is not the same kind of keyhole Malcolm'

 

End of epic call and no comments. The lock was unrepairable, to add to that, I lost the lock to the dome's inner door. Returning back home disheartened I killed time by finishing off some sketches.