Evening, all,
Firstly, I can confirm that I am a real person - all the bits of hand and leg you see in the photos are mine. Certainly not 'cad-cam' - more like 'not-very-rapid prototyping'!
Meanwhile, back at the build...
After working on the rear window frame I was keen to continue with the rest of the internal detailing - but it was clear that I couldn't do anything with the front window until I actually had a window to frame! However, removing the fibreglass would leave the remaining shell quite vulnerable - at the base of the 'screen it's only about 4mm wide. So, I had to leave something in place for a bit of reinforcement, and make sure that I got on with the job sooner rather than later. First step, cut out most of the screen:
I wanted to glue a skin of thin 0.25mm styrene sheet to the inside of the fibreglass shell - I could then add further layers of detailing to this to create the windscreen pillars, roof supports, etc. I started with the corners at the base of the screen, as these were the two weakest points:
To make life easier I would do this in small sections - the 0.25mm styrene has a fair amount of flexibility, but I wanted to keep the changes of direction as small as possible. I used plenty of CA glue, pressed the styrene in place then used the clips to hold it for a while. Hmm, pale blue crocodile clips - I've got some orange ones around here somewhere too...it's a good colour combination, I think..!
After a few hours of trimming and gluing:
At this point I was happy that I'd strengthened the screen frame enough to be able to remove the central support section - plus, this would allow me to file and fettle the edges of the shell to tidy everything up:
As you can see, I've also started to add a few layers of 0.5 x 0.5mm styrene around the inner edge, similar to the rear screen last week. Here's the view from the outside:
The cardboard dashboard-top is a basic pattern I started working on a couple of weeks ago - I'll return to that (much) later when I do some more fibreglassing. I've also started trimming out the vent openings in the lower curved panel at the base of the windscreen - in time these will need to be covered with some sort of mesh grille...
So, with the windscreen trimmed out and reinforced, I continued lining the shell, starting with the rear side windows:
...and continued adding 0.25mm sheet until I ended up with it like this:
I've dug around online to find some half decent shots of the internal shell detailing, so I've got a reasonable idea of what I need to add. I'm sure I'll have to make a few 'adjustments' to fit around the tube frame, but if it all looks 'right' I'll be happy. I'll be continuing with this during the next few days, so hopefully you'll see more progress at the weekend.
Have a good week,
SB