Today I started out with a very respectable task list and planned to make every attempt to knock out it out.  But then I finally had to deal with an issue that has been effecting my quality of life big-time in the workshop: squirrels.

I don’t mind critters coming in and out of the shop, as long as they don’t crap all over my stuff, or in the case of the squirrels, tear the place apart.  I can tell you the squirrels have knocked down so much insulation, that it will take me a good half a day to make the shop look presentable before I do my next video.

Well, today, as I was over in the far back corner —which smells disgusting like a squirrel outhouse— I kept trying to get a block of wood to use to apply uniform pressure to the forward heat sub-panel cover when squirrels kept trying to run in and out of the top corner of the shop.  Something snapped and I’d had enough….

So I spent the next half a day plugging up all the squirrel ingress and egress routes of the shop.

As I was on a roll of NOT building, and with tomorrow being trash pickup day.  I spent another couple of hours doing nothing but cleaning up the shop, including a sweep of all the floors and a good cleaning of the milling machine and surrounding area.

I then spent a good couple of hours on the phone catching up with Marco re. machining, our builds, throttle and mixture cables, the Silver Hawk fuel injection system and leaning with the GRT EIS.  A great conversation to be sure and really good to catch up, but even more no work getting done.

I wanted to get at least a couple minor but significant tasks requiring cure times “in the oven” if you will and knocked off my list.

First off, I got back to using silicone RTV to attach the forward heat sub-panel cover in place.  I don’t know if it’s the angle of the shot here, or over time the clear coat looks grayer, but I’ll have to note it tomorrow when I go out to the shop.

I then cut and shaped 2 pieces of PVC foam and micro’d them into place to make up the backstop (outboard wall) of the throttle friction lock pocket.  Tomorrow hopefully I can get some glassing done on this and get it knocked out.

I will be out of town Saturday and half of Sunday, so my build progress will be much lighter this weekend.

With that, I had a much deserved glass of red wine as I write this!