wood shims or door stoppers?

[Masako Morishita]

Hi, fellow builders!
In a few days i will begin to build the dome and since cutting shims
seems the only way to go ,Iwas wondering if anyone had become
a bit more inventive and used something else like rubber door stoppers
would that work? they are rather inexpensive around here (Kobe) .
Thanks for your kind reply in advance.

[Breven]

Re: wood shims or door stoppers?

I wouldn't bother with that. I bought a piece of 3 x 1 poplar wood to use as a screed (since it's nice and straight) when I was laying concrete. I cut my wedges out of that. It was really easy and probably cost about the same as one rubber door stopper, for 15 or 20 wedges. By the way, I only used the wedges to help set the initial angle, after that I used the pie shaped wood form and just eyeballed it.

[Frances]

Re: wood shims or door stoppers?

I put pebbles and bits of left over firebrick in the gaps to get the right angle, the advantage being you don't have to remove them once you've mortared the brick down.

For shims I'd say whatever works. I think Doorstoppers should work very well.

[christo]

Re: wood shims or door stoppers?

I like Frances' idea of using stones, pebbles or brick remnants as shims.

I used scrap brick pieces for my shims - I had so many from all the cutting I did.

It's a real bonus not to have to remove them later.

Christo