Asssmbly continues…
The glueup of the splinter modules went well. I added some Bondic to the front seams just to present a nice face forward. it’s nice and flat and should assemble to the rest of the structure without much trouble.
Getting the upper ammo hoists into the gun house was a different story. I thought I had the routine figured out, but that was not the case. First I had to rip off the officer’s platform that I had glued earlier as it prevented the powder hoist from moving far enough aft to let me manipulate the projectile hoist into place. Then there was engagement between the projectile hoist and the Sight Setter’s floor and seat assembly. I had to remove stock from the hoist’s floor so it would drop behind the front floor, not overlap on top. Then I had to removed more floor from the powder hoist floor so it too would fit flush with the projectile hoist floor. All of this required a number of insets and removals, each of which was poised to wreck these delicate parts. I only had very minor damage and for that I am thankful.
Once again, using the Gorilla Glue earned its keep since it gave me long working time to keep fussing with these parts. CA would have been a disaster. I used the gravity clamp to hold the powder hoist floor down flat. I tried conventional clamps, but they did’t ahe the reach I needed.
I also glued in the power systems for training and pointing and the sundry floor pieces they have. I think I’m going to use these images for the AV since you can see the pumps clearly. When more stuff goes on it will be more confusing.
Tomorrow, I’ll finish the Gun House installations including the pointer and trainer’s seats. The last thing to go in will be the gun slides and the sight checkers sights. The barrels go in AFTER the gun house shield is installed.
I started laying out the floor and wall pieces, even though I still have questions about the ceiling layouts of the spaces. I have to do all the layouts from coordinate measurements. For some reason, Corel Draw is NOT finding my HP printer. Doesn’t matter whether I used WiFi or USB line. This is important. Coreldraw lets you print out images larger than you paper size by tiling the images so they can be taped together. I wanted to print them full-size so I could use them as patterns and simply cut through them. Instead, I’m working with traditional layout tools and it’s much more tedious and error prone.
