Cutting day 3

Well its been a massive day but it is not over for me. I am rushing to post the progress from day 2 and writing out todays progress before work in 25 minutes so it might be best to save this as a draft.

Right, progress as normal for cutting out the balloon. We managed to cut 60 panels again which means we are sitting at the 160/300 mark which is officially over half way! Because of time constraints we are not really getting as far i would of hoped. Due to my cutting location being open from 8am-5pm only on week days it means we are only really fitting 6 or 7 hour days in which  is my fault for not squezing more out of the day.

Initally i went in with the goal to knock this out in two days which is realistic for some however having 20 gores is a lot of fabric to cut cleanly/accurately in one swipe. If you look at it in that respect you can gauge why i havent met my pre cutting prediction of 2 days.

That wraps up this weeks cutting session. I am planning on cutting next week. Hopefully i will be able to knock out the last panels in a lengthy day. Sadly returning to the smaller panels at the top of the balloon this time wont speed up progress as i will be searching through my off-cut bag which i will hopefully reduce the amount of wastage.

On a side note i talked to a friend of mine which i have mentioned the fabric to in a pervious discussion and he is very interested. He works at a balloon manufacturer and would like to do a variety of tests (pull strength, tear test, porosity and water test) on each type of fabric i have. Hopefully the tests will give an insight into the make up of the fabric and give us an idea of its expected life.