All of the points patterns are now cut, so all that is left now is the final cutting on fabric.

Then onto sewing

Today we cut a fair whack of material, check out the cutting gallery for pics. We polished off a big roll of yellow and used all of the hyperlast we need to, we still have a fair lot of hyperlast left as well.

Here is a breakdown of the progress:

(The table isn’t working, I will have to fix it.)

D, E, F and K, L, M are panels where the points are. So far we are only cutting whole panels, when we finish cutting the (70) whole blue panels, we will be about 77% of the way through. After that its the tricky bit of points, plus the nomex (easy).The circular cutter (thanks Adam!!) has been great, so far we have only put 1 new blade in and we probably did that well before it was needed. We found that it was easy to cut through 20 layers at once.

The only yellow we have left is the big roll, which has around 217m left on it. I guess that we will have at least 150m of it left over, if not more. We probably have 20 or so meters of Hyperlast left as well.

Hopefully we should get at least the rest of the whole blue panels done early next week.

Next week I am looking at buying a car. I have found a few I like so after I go see the accountant I am going to get myself a car. This should make coming home much easier because I can always find at least 1 other person to split the fuel with, so it works out to a $35 trip is way once split.

Hopefully this means that I can come to all the normal balloon events as well.

Anyway, don’t forget to keep checking the gallery because I am adding new pictures all the time!

Sewing machines are a barrell of laughs.

I got some screws to mount the seam folder onto the machine on Friday, so I decided to mess around with the machine and see what I could make it do.

After a while of winding bobbins and threading up the machine I found that rather than sew, it wanted to be the first singer 212G to land on the moon. It was rocking and shaking all over the place.

So after a few hours of “setting up”, 2 things were concluded:

1. We need a new belt.
2. Unless we want the white thread to turn oily golden brown, we need to give the machine a good clean.

Oh and DAMN! I am not sure how many people have used a machine like this before but they get absolutely smoking (fast) when you put your foot down, I think some adjustments are in need to make it easier to manage the speed.

Today should see panels B + C cut.