Today was probably the most productive day I've had on the observatory in a long time. Not only did I get hours of precious time, but I also trialled a couple of new tools.
One was a flap disk to fit the angle grinder. It's a round disk covered in overlaying sections of very coarse abrasive. I used it to strip the bark off the wood I am using for the balusters.
The other is a rotary chisel. This is also a round blade for the angle grinder, but it has only three teeth in it. It takes of massive amounts of wood in a single pass and is also very dangerous.
Finally, instead of trying to manoeuvre the belt-sander all over the wood, I turned it upside down on the saw-horse and clamped it down. Now I can move the smaller and lighter pieces of wood over the belt sander with ease. The trick now is to watch the knuckles as I de-skinned two until I got a good technique.
I got the top of the stairs (top floor) cut to match the vertical line of the stringers, plus dressed the hole with some big pine. The stringers are all bolted in and I made a start on the hand-rails and balusters.
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/CBGi2GR.jpg)