Day 40 - Mostly gunbox! (Though, shoulders, of course)

Some good progress on Rainier!  I finally took off all the clamps from the shoulders, and all the cladding is now on ... with the one exception being the small strips that will eventually go above the gunboxes when they are positioned.  I'll need some bigger, lower-reaching clamps for those, perhaps.  I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I then flipped it upside down so that I could jigsaw and belt-sand the excess cladding off the bottom.  In order to keep the shoulder section from moving all over the place while I was sanding, I attempted to clamp it to my table.  This is where I did a stupid thing.  I used the top ring as a place to put my blue clamps, and I snapped one of the seams off its spacers.  So I had to sand down the inside of that cladding and also the spacers underneath to get rid of the dried glue, and then re-glue and re-clamp it.  Bother.

I then set to work marking all the lines for where I needed to trim all the excess cladding away.  I drew these like I did all the shoulder lines so far—using a long, fat piece of plywood and a pencil clamped to it, dragging it perpendicular to the floor, scraping the jutting pencil along the HDF to mark the lines.  Then I took my wonder tool, the Dremel (and its fabulous cutting blade), and with as steady a hand as I could muster, trimmed off all the excess.  Except for the top ring; with the clamps and such in the way, I couldn't draw a line there to cut against.  A later task.

So, while my mistake was curing and drying, I decided to do something different, and finish up the gunboxes.  I unwrapped my new ickle trim router, whipped up a tiny jig to cut the 9.3cm diameter hole, and screwed it in place.  I cut these in similar fashion to the neck rings, going a little bit at a time.  Took about three passes to get both pieces' circles cut out.  Then I changed to a 45° bit with roller bearing, and made a few passes on that, too, for the inner chamfer.  Took out the gazing globes (nearly forgot I had them!) and test-fit them to check out the sizes of everything.  I liked what I saw!

Next up was getting the gunbox recesses cut out.  I decided to use the scroll saw for this job.  I haven't gotten to use this tool very often, so I was happy to get it set up.  It's such a friendly saw.  Until the blade snaps halfway through.  Which happened.  Good thing there were spared in its little drawer.

Once I cut those out, I sanded smooth the unevenness from the not-quite-yet-fairly-straight lines, and then traced out the hole shapes onto pieces of HDF for the recess inset pieces.  I left a little extra length for the straight end (not the edge with the rounded corner), so that I could keep sanding it down with the belt sander to get it to fit *just* right.  I also used the sander to give it a bit of a chamfered edge, too, to match the angle in which it sits in the recess.  Then I glued them in!

I let that dry for a few hours, and then proceeded to glue the front, side, and bottom pieces together.  The inclusion of the bottom piece was to make sure the top and side were square with each other.  And again, I let a few hours pass for that (while I rehearsed with my choir tonight).  Then, just about an hour ago, I added the top piece, flipping it over so that it's on the bottom now, and resting flat against something to keep it in place.

And, a shot (upsidedown) with the gazing globes again, just to get a sense of what these will look like before I put the globes in bed again.  Shoulder section is getting closer!!