June 2002, trip report for SK rebuilding (from BU crew of Ed, Jim, & Chris).
An example of the new PMT covering: fiberglas shell in back, clear acrylic dome in front. Apparently there was a mishap where in the molding process, a residue of material not transparent to UV was left on the acrylic. Some number of domes have to be remade.
Our Japanese colleagues working on the inner PMT preparation assembly line.
Students at work on top outer detector tubes and Tyvek.

We needed new pipes for attaching the Tyvek. Finding a vendor was an adventure starting at a local home store, going to a commercial supplier (who did indeed deliver these to the mine entrance), and even after the mission was accomplished, we ended up 'discovering' the holy grail of hardware stores- comparable to Tsukuba's famous Joyful Honda.
The ropes were a little too loose and the driving was a little to fast.
Mission #2 to the hatrdware store (Musashi) required bringing back three stainless steel pipes each 4 meters long. That's a little too long for our car, but Jim takes a stab at modifying the back seat. (In the end we lashed them to the side).
Chris and Jim on the floating floor inside the inner detector.

Yes, the ladder down is hanging by ropes.
Reference shot of the front of an OD PMT.
Reference shot of the back of an OD PMT.
We went to Kamioka for dinner and ran into Ohtsubo-san. She sent us to a new (for us) restaurant with an okonomoyaki variant called manjoyaki.
A lot of the effort revolved around designing a setup to align and hoist 3 panels of 1-meter wide Tyvek (the widest we could procure in Japan).
At the hardware store, you can also buy pet giant beetles.
Since the top of the tank is practically inaccessible, we are hanging the new Tyvek starting a few meters down. After much debate on how to accomplish this, we bit the bullet and asked (paid for) Mitsui to weld new brackets.
Then we extended the old Tyvek, suitably cutoff, and wired it in place. Here is the final installation, ready for new rolls to hang down sometime in September.
Outside the tunnel, Hank and crew took apart the Radon Hut. It will be replaced with a simpler scheme drawing fresh air from far away from the tunnel entrance (now that the landowner has agreed). Here is Hank in some snappy painting gear.
Chris wants to know how this dam, seemingly built out of wood planks, can possibly hold up. Well, it is leaking quite a bit...