Wow, it seems like forever since I've posted anything. The last month or so has been a little busy with other things. I have been working on my R2, but not as much as I had hoped. Most of the time I only get to work on it after my kids go to bed so it limits what I can do. Anyway, enough about that. One of the things I have been able to work over the last month in the evening hours has been the skirt.
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| Primed Skirt |
The last work I had done on the skirt was to get a few coats of primer on it and see how it looked. I did some sanding and a few more coats. At this point now, I needed to make the curved pieces that end up being the front and back of the skirt. Using Mike Senna's tutorial from "R2LA IV", I was able to cut out 6 of the curved sections from styrene.
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| Skirt and 6 cut sections of styrene |
Using masking tape to hold the styrene in place, I attached 1 piece of styrene to the end of the skirt. I adjusted and readjusted it until I determined that it was a good fit. Then used some Loctite Super Glue Gel to hold it into place. I started at one end of the curve and on the inside of the skirt glued little sections at a time making sure the glue was nice and dry before moving to the next part.
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| Styrene held on by tape |
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| Curve being glued on |
Once I was done gluing the first piece of styrene to the skirt, I added 2 more layers of styrene to the inside to make it a little more sturdy. I then used Plastruct Weldene on the top of the top edges of the styrene layers because it basically melts the plastic together making a stronger bond and giving them the appearance of a single piece of styrene.
Once I was finished with both sides of the skirt, I needed to make the ribs which will attach to the outside of the styrene. This took some trial and error to get the correct size for the ribs. They need to run from the bottom of the skirt to the top at the angle of the curved section. I used MDF and started with a piece that was .5" x .5" and put a 30 degree angle on it. Then I increased the angle a little at a time until I got the one that fit the best. It ended up being 37 degrees for me. Once I got the angle correct, I sanded down the rib until I found the correct size for a flush smooth fit. Once done with that I cut all 12 ribs at once to the same size. As a note, I made sure to cut the ribs a little longer than I might need with the idea that I would trim them down later.
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| Cutting all the ribs |
Once done with the cutting, I needed to determine placement of the ribs. This took some time but using the plans I was eventually able to determine the approx location of the each of the ribs. Once the location was determined, I choose a rib and because of the curved section of the skirt, needed to do a little sanding to ensure a good flush fit. Each rib was unique in this respect so once I got a nice fit with one I glued it to that spot.
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| Ribs glued into place. Notice the height. |
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| Ribs glued into place |
Once all the ribs were glued into place, I used my router to trim off the excess. Again, there were instructions on how to do this in the "R2LA IV" video. The end result was a fairly straight smooth looking skirt that lies fairly flush against the bottom of my R2 frame.
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| Skirt with ribs attached and trimmed. |
There are a few areas that need to be sanded, trimmed, and filled before it will be considered complete but that it to be expected. Overall I'm very happy with how it turned out.
