1/96 Albacore (after Phase III coversion 1961)

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Looks good, Scott. I'm boxing up all the ALBACORE work from this end and will put it upstairs. Florence will likely flood out the first floor this weekend. Stay tuned.

David

[HardRock]

The gel coat is STILL "on the way". Its coming from Queensland, (by yak train, I'm guessing) and its taking ages to get here. Meanwhile I banged a polyester hull out of the moulds to see how it looks.
This is it with the cast tail cone in place to check the angles.




And this is the bottom half.



The moulds have some flaws in that there are air bubbles below the surface that translate into lumps on the surface of the moulded parts. This is the fix



The idea is to inject the silicone, squeeze out any air, tape over the hole and let it go off. Seems to work OK.

[HardRock]

Progress. The moulds are done. Just waiting on the gelcoat to arrive.



The detail looks to be OK.

[HardRock]

Wait till you see it with David's sail sitting on top!! - (and the hatches, periscopes and do-dads).

[Albion]

Ive previously been picked up for saying the Albacore is a boring subject, Skip Asay didn't like my comment one bit:0

This completely changes my mind , the shape of this hull, and with the scribed details it looks fantastic, well done sir.

On the subject of snails and speed, a tortoise was recently attached a robbed by a Snail gang. The police brought the tortoise in and asked him to look at mugshots. Sorry says the tortoise i don't recognise any of them, it all happened so fast

[HardRock]

Here you go Tom. Brought to you at the speed of a racing snail; The upper and lower mould.





They will sit for a few days before I open them up for a look.

[trout]

That is funny! I laughed when I read this just imagining the situation.

[HardRock]

"You're already a force to be reckoned with, Scott. Tighten up the glass skills and you will (like me) be, ALL POWERFUL!

David"

You'll think that this is pretty funny, but there was an actual clap of thunder outside when I read this. Yikes - he's everywhere, he's everywhere!!!!!

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Hi Mate. Plenty of work going on but great dificulty in posting photographs. We have a thing here called the National Broadband Network which, had it been implemented as planned, would have been excellent. Instead of that the current govenrment decided to implement a "cheaper" version which is less functional - or in my case, not functional at all AND which seesm to have ended up costing more money than the original plan would have. The bottom line is that I now have an internet speed that would have looked puny in the days of dial up modems. They tell me that they will get it fixed - eventually.

I have started making the moulds for the Albacore. The lower one is finished and the upper should be finished this week. I also discoverd that a company here makes gelcoat that is formulated to work with West System epoxy so I have ordered some of that as well. Once it gets here I'm going to start practicing on the old Beluga moulds to try to improve my abysmal lay up skills.

You're already a force to be reckoned with, Scott. Tighten up the glass skills and you will (like me) be, ALL POWERFUL!

David

[HardRock]

Hi Mate. Plenty of work going on but great dificulty in posting photographs. We have a thing here called the National Broadband Network which, had it been implemented as planned, would have been excellent. Instead of that the current govenrment decided to implement a "cheaper" version which is less functional - or in my case, not functional at all AND which seesm to have ended up costing more money than the original plan would have. The bottom line is that I now have an internet speed that would have looked puny in the days of dial up modems. They tell me that they will get it fixed - eventually.

I have started making the moulds for the Albacore. The lower one is finished and the upper should be finished this week. I also discoverd that a company here makes gelcoat that is formulated to work with West System epoxy so I have ordered some of that as well. Once it gets here I'm going to start practicing on the old Beluga moulds to try to improve my abysmal lay up skills.

[trout]

scott, any updates?

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Will do Your Eminence. Thanks.

I HAVE SPOKEN, SO LET IT BE WRITTEN! (crack of thunder).

David

[HardRock]

Will do Your Eminence. Thanks.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Beautiful, Scott. Simply beautiful!

But, tone down the waterline cheat-line -- you want that to be engraved very shallow; just a suggestion of a line, not a declarative statement as it presents now. Screed some air-dry putty into that engraved line and leave it to dry for a couple of days. The putty will shrink a bit leaving a very shallow, almost-not-there waterline for painters to follow when it comes time to mask and weather this thing.

Beautiful!

David

[HardRock]

I'm pretty much done. A bit of sanding and fixing small dings to do but that won't take too long. Time to think about rubber!