Wednesday, January 21, 2009

First skin


First skin
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.
My Brede lifeboat has been neglected over the last couple of weeks as model railways have taken precedence. Since the photo of the boat with the stringers in placer is my most popular model shot on Flickr I'm guessing people are interested and better pull my finger out.

With the skeleton in place I have to start covering it up. The plan is to do this with very thin plywood and then fibreglass. I still have no idea if this will work - it should do but maybe not when I'm doing it.

I assume starting at the bottom is the correct thing so hack some cereal box card up to get a part that nearly fits. One surprise is that the bottom edge is flat until the front of the boat. A little thinking would have had me realising that butting up to a flat keel this was bound to be the case...

With the template shape transferred to wood I tentatively tried it in place. All look OK so I ran some aphatic resin along the ribs and started fixing it in place. Clamps hols the chine line and dressmaking pins are pushed through for the top. I'll fill these holes with varnish later so if the boat sinks it won't be these that cause it.

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