Cannon the boat looks great. also tug that little bitty boat of yours sounds interesting for a printer project.
I finally had a chance to grab some more building supplies from their hiding spot.... I should be able to get back at the build tomorrow. Next on the list to accomplish - fix the bow that I so masterfully messed up....
Time to repair V108's bow. It had underwent what appeared to be numerous repeated small scale collisions with what can only be described as an extremely abrasive object. An investigation is underway to determine what this abrasive substance was..... I fashioned a bow repair template and fixture from space aged material that I obtained from an undisclosed supplier. Then I used a spare keel (you DO always keep a spare keel handy, don't you!?) to manipulate the bow forming material to the appropriate shape.
Then I mixed up a small batch of bow repair compound. Edit: Although it looks fairly large in the photo, that is a plastic shotglass sized bow repair compound mixing station.
The fixture was applied to the bow using this purple fixture retention device. Then the hull was affixed securely to the hull inversion unit. The Kriegsmarine will carefully analyze the effectiveness of the repair once the bow repair compound has fully cured.
Well, the repair workers at the shipyard got a little impatient and attempted to remove the fixture before the West Systems had fully cured. Do to this mistake, the West came off with the fixture. At this point, admiralty has gotten impatient as well and ordered the bow to be repaired using the easiest method possible - build it up with body filler. This wound up taking much longer then expected. It took around 10 applications to get it built up to where it needed to be, each coat sanded in between to check progress. In retrospect, I should have just globbed a bunch in the offending area and sanded it to shape and worried about blending it in later.... 1st coat of filler:
I decided to make a template to use to check progress and accuracy. I traced the target shape onto a piece of cardboard using the spare keel as a guide.
Completed repair looks pretty good. I hope it will be strong enough to not break off during the de-molding process.
The plug mostly smoothed out and is nearly ready for a coat of West Systems. I still have a couple minor details to finish up first. I ordered all the stuff to make the mold and subsequent hull yesterday - this is going to be one pricey little hull!! On a positive note, I will have plenty of left over material to make a few more molds if I ever desire to make more fiberglass hulls.
Thanks, I'm interested to see how this works out too... I haven't tried to make a fiberglass hull yet... I did get the detail work finished up and got the first coat of west on it last night. I will post a pic later tonight if I have time.
After some deliberation (and because the gloss resin won't be here for a few days) I've decided to assemble the other laser cut plug I have to see if i can do a better job on it. The existing plug is pretty good, but I think I can do better.
"pretty good" in my personal experience means the plug will have to be removed from the mold in about 300 pieces. I just never have the patience to bring the plug to the perfection that it needs.
For my second attempt I am adding the balsa one window at a time, then rough sanding it to near net shape before continuing to adjacent windows. My hope is that this will leave a minimal amount to finish sand once all the balsa is in, so I can pay more attention to detail during the final sanding.
Plug V2.0 is pretty much done sans some minor detail work. To the casual observer, it is identical to plug V1.0, but the minor differences has made me much happier with how it turned out, it is a little more true to the contours of the ribs. V2.0 on left:
The bow is the area where I wasn't happy with the first plug. Not really noticeable, especially for a combat ship, but since it's a plug for a mold, I wanted to make it as good as I could.It just needs some very minor touch ups and a trim edge applied and she's ready for gloss resin.
All finish work is done on the hull, and flange pieces for the trim edge are cut out, filled, and ready to apply.
