Happy Veterans' Day!

As the headline says, I hope you all had a Veterans' Day that was happy. Happy, and at least partially occupied with thoughts of the veterans, and of the future veterans, in your life. Thoughts, and gratitude.

As is evident in the picture above, I've got both the casings on the south side primed now. The rain did not appear on Friday as advertised, and the first half of it was actually rather nice, if breezy, before the cloud cover came. Nevertheless, I finished priming the west casing just as the light failed Thursday evening. Here's a closer look:

I could do some more patching work, but I have a feeling that I won't. I'd really like to be done with this side soon.

On Thursday, I also removed the mold pieces from the Furnace Gap Elimination Project, Phase I. Although I coated the pieces thoroughly with mold release agent, they at first refused to budge after I removed the screws. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised; epoxy is, after all, an adhesive. Happily, the release agent did ultimately do its job; the pieces popped off cleanly once I persuaded them with a putty knife and a rubber mallet.

Not bad at all! I only missed one little area in the middle of the front. This does illustrate, however, the folly of assuming straight or parallel lines anywhere on the house; although the front piece was straight, and I put it on straight, still you can see that the putty line is too low on the bottom at the right. But it's not a problem; that's what sandpaper is for.

It's not a straight line, but a remarkable simulation! Note that I've extended the plane back beyond where it will meet the lower half of the profile; that's so I can maintain the gap between the two components of the belt course through the patch. Not that the gap needs to go back more than about a quarter of an inch at most, but establishing this plane now will make establishing the gap much easier during Phase II.

That, however, will have to wait until after the rain.

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Thanks, Sergeant.