I’m just about ready to prime all the outer bulkheads. After noodling it around a bit, I realized that I had to glue in the truncated faces now. There was too much fussing with it to have all the other ring decks in place. My styrene “fingers” worked pretty well, but I had to take care with the clamping. Thin styrene under action of solvent cement can decompose a bit and break rather than bend. I did break off a couple before I backed off on the clamping force.
On the front side of the joint I went around a filled it with Med. CA after pre-spraying with accelerator. My Med CA is aging a bit and needs a lot of help to get it to kick. I used my MicroMark power micro sander to knock off the high spots. I did mitigate the lumps by squeegeeing the CA with a straight razor blade before it set up.
After more sanding with various sanding sticks (wet with water), I filled it with Tamiya Filler and then sanded that when it set up
Meanwhile I was waiting for the massive filling job on the upper barbette cylinders to dry so I could get that contoured properly. Before the end of the day, all of that filler was sanded, refilled and sanded again.
All the filling is now done. I test fit the rings to make sure I could assemble them with the truncated parts now glued in. I was able to put the lower ring in by angling it, and getting in the upper two circular annular decks from the top. They all fit nicely.
This view clearly shows how I notched that upper ring. I described this in words last post, but the picture is much more descriptive.
I also used a surface gauge to trace the top edge of the lower bulkhead assembly to ensure that it was parallel to the base. It wasn’t! I set the surface gauge scribe to the lowest point, and scribed a line revealing all the high stops. I cut off the excess plastic with a diamond-coated abrasive cutoff wheel and then a sanding drum on the Dremel Flexi-Shaft. I then sanded it flat on a piece of wet-or-dry emery paper glued to my granite surface plate. It reduced the overall height by about a 1/16" but that won’t matter in the scheme of things. I re-scribed the witness line for the barbette’s lower edge since the earlier line was based on the old top edge out-of-parallel line.
Here’s the entire bulkhead stack ready for glue up.
I was going to prime everything before gluing. I’m changing that. I’m going to glue the stack, then split it. Splitting it could make a mess so I’m not worry about paint. I will prime everything then… inside and out. Furthermore; it will be easier to paint and detail the annular decks. I’m depending on all those annular rings and the doubling of the upper barbette shell to keep the cylinders from opening up. It should be okay [:S]
Here’s the stack from the outside showing all the filler necessary to make it look nice. This is the seam side and it will be facing rearward, so any imperfections (albeit minor) will not be viewable.
This is the viewing side.
As I said before, this was the most challenging and ambiguous aspect of the build for me. With it now complete and ready for final assembly, the rest of the construction should move along nicely. The change from this raw material to finish painted parts will be dramatic and I am looking forward to it.