Now that we have the structure of the underwater room coming together, it’s time to start cutting the holes for the windows in the underwater room. Since this room will have to withstand the water pressure below the surface, the walls are made of steel. That means that we have to cut the window holes out of the steel.

The process is pretty simple and is effectively the same as when we cut other steel sections like the caps for the spars. We use a jig to mark the circle and then use an oxygen-acetylene torch to make the actual cut. This torch heats the metal until it becomes liquid and then uses the pressure from the torch to blow the molten metal out of the gap giving us a cut.

Since this is a solid piece of steel, we have to cut a little hole at the top of the cutout so that we can feed a chain through and support the weight. We don’t want this heavy piece to flop out and potentially hurt someone or damage our equipment so we make sure to safely support it to keep everyone safe.

The cut is a slow and steady process and as you see in the video below, once we go all the way around the circle, we can knock the disk loose and let the chain support the weight. After we make every cut, we have to go back with angle grinders to smooth out the edges and make sure that the new hole is ready to receive the underwater window frames!

Each room has several windows that we need to cut so this process takes some time and uses a lot of gas but we know that the results will be something incredible. The underwater room is coming along nicely so be sure to stay tuned for more updates!