Throwing My 32" Into the Ring

[daverep]

Almost a year later and I'm back on this beast. I have been doing small bits of work here and there, but no major progress within that time to really post anything until now.

A little pic heavy, but at least it will show where I currently am.

Since my last post, I've had to redo one of the front mandibles on the top and bottom halves of the hull so that they matched. That's what I get for cutting this whole thing out by hand. I also needed to adjust ALL of the mandible wells to make them match and to adjust some of them as they were a little off from the filming model. Just a little...

So what I also did is create a poster board template for my outer hull that I'll cut my styrene from. I needed to figure out where to put my seams.




And the entire template on the hull.



And with the docking tunnels added.



I added and subtracted areas of the hull that I screwed up to make a master hull template. I'll then use this to create my cutting template.



And now my most recent work...I've had some "extra time" on my hands since the middle of December due to knee surgery so, I've been able to get a bit more accomplished while I've been off work. Unfortunately, today is the last day for that! LOL!

BTW...the book on the table is NOT mine. It's my 13-year old daughter's. LOL!!!





So, I've gotten my sidewalls temped in and my inner structure temped in. I decided to go with square tubing instead of the round pipe that ILM originally used only for stability's sake. The square tubing has more of a surface area that I can use to attach to the hull halves. I'll eventually cement them in and also attach them using small screws. I'm probably also going to brace the corners where the tubes meet with angle braces to firm those weak joints up. I still need to figure out where I'm going to put the rear braces. I'm also planning to use the sides of the square tubes as my inner mandible walls. I may have to fill in the corners but if all else fails, I'll just attach the model parts to a very thin piece of styrene and just glue that in to place.

I've used 1-1/4" PVC pipe for the mandible well walls and they seem to work really well. They fit almost perfectly in the space between the sidewalls and the square tubing. I did cut out some of the tubing just a bit...just to make myself feel a little better. The fit was actually making me a bit nervous. LOL!





Today and this weekend I'm going to shore up the triangle braces for the sidewalls and also the hull braces. I'm also going to try and permanently attach my docking tunnels. Feels good to be back on this!

Thanks for looking!
- Dave