Opening the windows

wheelhouse cutting
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I have a good idea. Today’s was one of the best.

Tomsk’s wheelhouse (it’s too small to be called a bridge) is a single vac-formed moulding. There are feint lines moulded into it to show where you ought to cut to put the windows and door in but these are on the outside. Pushing a knife straight in without support would simply crumple the part, especially once you’d done a couple of sides.

Providing support wasn’t going to be easy as the part isn’t huge and the pressure to cut the plastic would need to be reasonably high.

Then inspiration struck. I’d been wondering about clamping a bit of wood to the bench that would protrude enough to go into the moulding and suddenly realised that I had recently inherited a tool to do just that. I think it’s a sort of fretwork table – basically a cast metal clamp that fits to the bench and holds a wooden tongue sticking out of the front. The parts had been separated when we first found them so it wasn’t obvious that they went together to start with.

Digging it out the thing worked perfectly. I drew over the lines with may CD marker pen to make them easy to see, put a fresh blade in the knife and carefully worked away. Several cut rather than one heavy one were the order of the day with the first couple being made against a ruler to keep things straight.

The result was that most of the plastic making up the part was removed leaving a very delicate item that I’m quite proud of.

The fret table can be purchased from Squires of Bognor Regis. If you are any sort of modeller you’ll already have the excellent free catalogue (no website), if not, go and get one !