skins

Well, this post doesn’t really come with a big cliffhanger, since the title pretty much says it all!

Continuing where I left off yesterday, I did find some time to work on the pocket vent!

I went out this morning and picked up 2x2mm evergreen styrene strips as suggested, and started dressing up the innards of the pocket vent.

I put strips of aluminium tape around the edges of these small strips to make them look right..

Every strip was glued in place one at the time with CA glue. This aluminium tape is great, but it does give sharp edges. I managed to cut myself working with this again…

This is the back with all the ribs in place..

And from another angle

Once this was done, It was a simple task to cut one back piece out of 1m styrene

After painting it with a decent colour that is quite close to R2 blue, this is what it looks like

… and with the panel mounted…

For a final test on the skin..

Seems the curve is a little too little, but I think it will work great anyway. this will be the rear Pocket vent in any case. It was my first attempt after all =)

Not a lot done today.

Yesterday was a full day with a lot of work and a late night gig. Today was spent mostly to prepare for my fiancée who’s turning 40 tomorrow!

However, I managed to get a few hours in my little office and continued working on that pocket vent.

This is where I left off from Wednesday:

I tried scoring and snapping, but managed to get a few folds that showed a little too much, so I quickly went into another tactic: I drilled holes across the ribs that should be removed, scored as deep as I could so I got a visible trace on the back of the vent, and then, with a pair of pliers, gently started rocking the piece that was going to be removed back and forth until it started to loosen up. Once that was loose, it was easy to just bend back and forth at the ends to break these tabs off.

A bit rough, but probably salvable..

After the last piece was cut out, and I’ve worked with the files for a while, and finally sanding the front panel off, this is the result:

Next step is to make that insert, the big pocket itself. According to the blueprints it should be roughly 16mm deep. A scrap piece of aluminium, some scoring and snapping, some sanding, more scoring and intricate folds, and we’re left with this!

It has a bend that follows the curve of the outside of the vent (I’ve bent the vent too, so it should fit nicely in the end)

There is no real room to make tiny tabs on the end that I can glue into the front vent, due to the skins interfering, but I’ve solved that with using aluminium tape on the inside, and adding some CA glue.

Next up: The sides!

These will not be as nice fit as the curved piece, since I want them to extend around a bit, in order for me to add some plastic padding to really lock the shape properly.

This is the basic shape:

These pieces gets sanded as well once they are cut, and I carefully assemble the thing, first with tape, try a bit of CA glue, realize it isn’t strong enough, mix up a small batch of plastic padding, only to realize that once I was ready for it, it had already set. *sigh*

I taped the entire assembly together, loosened the tape on one end, made a new batch, added on to the untaped piece, taped, removed the second tape piece, put the goo on there and kept on going. This was the only way I could be sure it would stay in shape while adding the sticky stuff!

When it was all done: this is this part of the vent from the back:

A little bit of aluminium tape there tstill to make sure it sticks together and sets properly.

From the front, it looks a LOT better!

A quick test fit on the frame..

Oups! The inner skin is a little too tight, I need to trim this a bit..

Scoring and snapping… how I love working with styrene! It is a bit scary to modify the skins when they are glued on to the frame, but I really had no choice!

After repeating the process on the back Pocket Vent area, it now fits like a glove:

Next step will be adding the depth to the ribs in the pocket vent.

I will make this by cutting strips of 2mm styrene and dress them in aluminium tape. I will then sand the tape with 400 grit sand paper, and this should look the same as the outside of the vent. The very back of the vent will be a straight piece of either aluminium or styrene. I haven’t decided yet. I don’t even knos if I’ve got enough aluminium at home for it, but the idea is since the back of the ribs (small sections is blue, I will simply make one full plate that will go over the entire area and have that painted blue. It will make my life a LOT easier.

Before that, however, I need to celebrate my fiancéss birthday, and maybe have some time to sand off the front of that vent again, looks like it got a wee bit dirty during my final assembly!

Anyway, the last bits of this vent is really the easy part! =) One (almost) down. Three vents to go!