1/96 Project 1710 Beluga

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Oh, man! It looks fast just sitting there!

David

[HardRock]

Spent a few hours today adding safety lines and hand rails. I started with 1mm stainless stell rod but it looked too thick. This is .5mm brass - much better.

[HardRock]

I'm getting close to finishing the tail section. If I had the skill and a vacume pot, I'd cast this whole tail section in one piece and eliminate all the messing around. But I don't, so I won't!

[HardRock]

R/C peacocks! What a concept; although if I had made them I would have removed their annoying habbit of walking past my window at dawn and HONKING at the top of thier lungs. I go home this morning at 0300 and they woke me 0500. Nice. I'll let the gell coat sit for a few minutes befoe use next time.

[MFR1964]

Are those birds RC?, as for your gelcoat problem, it seems you had some airbubbles inside your mixture.
Either de-gassing or gentle mixing will help, try to keep the mix as smooth as possible.
Those hulls look good to me, better as my crude first attemp at the Ko-Hyoteki.

Manfred.

[bwi 971]

good Job sir.....interesting to see that you use peacock’s to keep you workspace tidy......are they barbie proof?

grtz,
Bart

[HardRock]

I've started on the upper moulding process. This is the first shot out of the mould. It has a few faults where the gell coat has pulled away from the substrate.







Meanwhile; its amazing what strolls through you shed on hot days down here.








And, meanwhile the Beluga build goes on (in the background).

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Yep, I thought about that and about placing a brass rib in the mould but it kinda got lost amongst everything else.

Good man. This project is moving along very well. It's a beaut.

David

[HardRock]

Yep, I thought about that and about placing a brass rib in the mould but it kinda got lost amongst everything else.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Next time you cast up the horizontal and vertical stabilizers, prepare the tool by placing strands of carbon fiber at the tips to give the resulting cast part strength in that area.

David

[HardRock]

I keep busting off those fiddley little pointy bits on the stern planes. This is the fix -



A bit of filing and filling and it looks OK and is much stronger than before.




She is slowly coming together.

[HardRock]

Fitting the tail feathers today. Not perfect but OK. One of these days I'm going to buy a pressure pot and a vacume pump and and elephant and a merry-go-round and a new Ferrari etc etc.



The control surfaces look pretty small but I'm assuming that this boat will be very slick in the water and won't need much in the way of deflection to get it turning and diving.




And the messy bit.....

[HardRock]

Test fitting some of the bits that I made earlier whilst the upper mould dries.

[HardRock]

I've sourced some silica but it will take a while to get here. Meanwhile I'm cracking on with polyester gellcoat and epoxy backing. Seems to be OK as far as detail goes and it is VERY hard.

[HardRock]

Thanks for the info.