Throwing My 32" Into the Ring

[daverep]

I have some more progress pics. These are the most current pics, but I'm a little farther along than these pics. But not by much to be perfectly honest.

It's slow going as usual. So, I finished the templates for the lower hull skin. Again, I used poster board to make the templates and still (as of today) need to cut them out of styrene.





I doubled up on the ribs in some places in order to fit the pieces together. I may eventually add a few tabs to each and shave them down flush to give even more places to glue the seams together.

The trick for me was to match up where the hull skin meets the docking tunnels. I have to say this has been a pain in the ass. I'm STILL fiddling with these areas even now.




So, what I did was get the edges as close as possible to the docking tunnels, then fitted a smaller piece of cardboard to get the edge as snug as possible to the tunnel.



And the finished templates on the bottom of the ship.




So, then I decided to tear apart the work I did on the tunnels themselves. I just wasn't happy the way they were fitting and I also realized that none of the docking tunnels were fitting correctly. So, I took some of the pieces and spent a little time re-engineering.




One of the issues I was having with the tunnels was that they were crooked. So, I decided to use the square tubing to make everything straight and flush. Since I'm not too worried about weight, I thought they'd give a little more support to this area anyway.




And here she is with the revised docking tunnels and the poster board templates on the bottom.



I ended up doing the same thing with the top docking tunnels.





They'll be a little neater when I actually glue them in. I realized that 98% of this model is held together with painter's tape.

It's been a challenge, for sure. This is my first scratch-build and I'm learning a lot! LOL! The most recent work has been test-fitting the upper hull styrene pieces and realizing that I have some issues with where the hull meets the tunnels, but I've got an idea on how to fix it. So, I'm finishing up with the docking tunnel construction and then I'll start working on finalizing the upper hull so that I can start gluing this stupid thing together finally!

I'll try to get more recent photos up this weekend.

Thanks for looking as always!

-Dave