Day 21 - Starting on the shoulders

(Originally posted on August 12th, 2013)

I got a chance to get a bit more done on Rainier after work today.  I finished up the final three bottom fender panels and secured them in place to dry.  I'm impressed that my construction adhesive lasted all the way through the skirt and fender assemblies, but I think I'll need to swap it out to the Liquid Nails soon.

I got into a bit of a conundrum around how to properly center the shoulder top in relation to the shoulder bottom, but I found a way, though I didn't take any pics of what I did.

Essentially, I deduced that there are 12.3cm from the front of the bottom to the front of the top, marked that, and then traced a circle around the shoulder bottom using the circular shoulder top.  I bisected this circle into even quarters (front to back and side to side), and marked a line 4cm inside the circle at each of the four points.  This was where I intended to line up a 3/4" perpendicular plywood strut.

Then, noting the thickness of the bottom and top together (2.3cm), I subtracted that from the total height of the shoulders according to the plans.  This left me with a distance of 32.3cm.  I cut three struts at that length, and positioned them on the inset lines that I had drawn.  Then I drilled small holes through the bottom and top, placed the struts on those holes, drilled into the struts using the same holes, and put brads in to secure them.

The final result looks like this:


That's about all the time I had, but I wanted to get a temporary stack shot in before calling it quits for the night.  Here it is!

Tomorrow, I'll be at a friend's place for dinner, so there won't be any additional work done until probably Wednesday after work.  I'm going to have to eyeball the angled struts since I don't know the bevel angle for the top and bottom of the front, side, and back struts that the skin will be attached to.  I'll just experiment with the miter saw until I get the proper angle.  If anyone knows the approximate angles, please let me know!

Also, I took off the cost of most of the tools (ones that will definitely be used for future jobs around the house), and have a new total-to-date:

Deducted cost of re-usable tools: ($489.66)

Adjusted total-to-date: $549.16