Tiny Circus and Clouds

Wood Walls

We are filling in the tiny trailer with wood floors and walls. The floor will be cherry, thinly sliced to save on weight and wood. Here, a 1" thick board is cut in half to make two boards. The surfaces were planed and the edges given a lap joint.
Greta made a template by laying out construction paper on the trailer floor, then chose boards to fit the space. We will cut them to exact size later.

The baltic birch panels that we prepared are going in too.

Greta drills some holes for the rivets.
Then she rivets them in.
This is the rivet gun, air powered, very satisfying to use. It makes a nice wooshclick sound.

Wiring, studio beginnings

We put wires in the little trailer. We're not sure what will go where yet for lights and pumps and things, so we just put in extra. It's ready for walls now.
The first studio work session. Nick and Greta snipping and gluing. We are making a Tiny Circus explanation animation for our first project.

A still from the first animation.

Circus Hot Spots

Carlos=Participating in morning weeding ritual and dodging sprinkler showers

Beans= Single file, ready for growin'

James= Studio cat in training
New Studio Wall= Hung by Carlos, ready and waiting for large circus drawings and animations

Gloamy radishes and lightning bugs

The corn is knee high and the alfalfa is cut and baled and so Iowa is patterned with these stripes and polka dots. The lightning bugs arrived all-at-once, after a hot day, before a storm.

Today we weighed the small trailer, 920 lbs.

Finishing wood

We took a trip to Iowa City to put finish on our wood wall pieces. John, Greta, and Carlos made an assembly line.Greta carried the pieces to the spray station.
John sprayed on finish - three coats on the back, two on the front. We will install the pieces then spray a final coat on the fronts.
Carlos carried the pieces away, stacking them on shelves. Greta was standing ready with the next piece.
A stack of finished wood.

Wood panel preparation

The remains of the Arkansas trailer went to the dump today. Then we started to work on the interior walls.
First we layed the templates onto new wood and traced the outline. The new pieces were cut roughly to shape on a bandsaw....and then fine-tuned with a belt sander...
...before drilling holes for rivets and sanding the surface with a hand sander. Then they went in a pile for a trip to Iowa City to spray on some finish.