Today I hit a new low in the project.

If you look at the picture above, you’ll see that my vise has oak jaws. I removed the vise’s original steel jaws and replaced them with the oak ones I fabricated to protect the longerons during the bending process, during which the longeron is clamped in place and bent using a dead-blow hammer.

Well, it turns out that oak compresses more than I thought, and about halfway through the bending process oak jaws compressed sufficiently to expose the steel screws that hold them in place. I didn’t notice this was happening, and as I tightened down the vise, those screws left these nasty gouges on the longerons…

This was a real demoralizer. I’m gonna have to figure out what to do next.