“Look at Venn’s frame design,” Len said, spreading the linen drawing across the unheated margin of the green slab. His finger traced the double-beaded lead seal ring that ran around the box-shaped mounting rim. “The standard mounting centers the glass in the steel channel. If we offset the plate three inches to the right, the entire cracked corner sits outside the main pressure seal. It overhangs the outside gutter where the cooling water drains into the sump.”
Ivara leaned over the paper, her sharp land-mapper’s mind calculating the altered shear vectors. She traced the proposed offset with her calloused thumb, visualizing how the crushing weight would redistribute across the leftover bolt points. Her brass land-mapper’s compass came out of her pocket. Its pointed legs walked across the linen grid to verify the clearances against the outer water-jacket casing.
“If it overhangs, you lose one bolt point on the upper bracket,” she muttered, her eyes narrowing as she ran through the sharp-angled moments. “The corner will float free.”
“It floats free, but it won’t be clamped,” Len countered, his courier instincts for load spreading cutting through the building caution. “When the forty-tiny plate heats up, it expands by nearly three-sixteenths of an inch. If that cracked corner is clamped tight under an iron bolt, the spreading will snap it off like dry biscuit. If it hangs free in the drainage wash, the heat radiates away before the tension reaches the crack tip.”
