Day 81 - Cowl assembly

I decided to tackle the cowl assembly next.  I think it's the last great pain-in-the-neck part to build, so I might as well get it out of the way!  I'm heartened by reading that the actual prop cowls (when observed up close) look like they were made out of bread dough.  Mine will look better (one hopes).

So, first, I gave Rainier a haircut by trimming off the excess fiberglass from under the dome.  Now he's properly bald.  I also added the slats temporarily, just for kicks, as they make him look even more Dalek-y.

I removed the dome and took it upstairs to work in a dust-free area.  Taking my painter's tape, I masked off the approximate area on the dome where the cowl will be positioned.

Like ccain before me, I used my old MacBook Pro box (as well as a Wii U box) for the cowl parts.  It took me hours to extrapolate the dimensions from the NSD plans.  Two of the measurements had both straight line and arc values specified (very handy), but the rest didn't, so I wasn't sure what they were actually measuring.  I took my best guesses at these—looking at lots of reference photos while doing so—and figured I would just pad it with Bondo later on if the cowl wasn't aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

Why the role-playing dice?  Well, the small plastic box they came in proved convenient to make an exact 90° angle for the cowl front and cowl top.  Once I figured out where to position this part of the assembly on the dome, I wondered how I was going to make the side pieces conform to the curvature.  Then I remembered that I have the exact thing I needed: my old dome former.  I traced out that curve and cut out the pieces.

Then it was just a matter of assembling and securing everything to the dome with tape.  Like AdamSt, I attached duct tape face-up on the dome, taped it down with painter's tape, then added strips of cardboard along the sticky surface.  Because of the tension of the cardboard strips, some of the tape lifted up slightly from the underlying dome.  I will need to add extra painter's tape over the top of the cardboard to hold it down.

I had some trouble getting the nameplate section attached, which looks flat on all the cowls I've seen.  On mine, it needed to curve along the chamfer of the dome; otherwise, big gaps would exist on either side, which I haven't seen on any other cowls.  So that part was confusing.

Now that the major shape of the cowl is defined and attached, I can cover it with Bondo and see how it will all look after sanding.  Like the dome, this will be a three-part process of cowl plug, then cowl mold, then casting the eventual fiberglass cowl from the mold.