Complete Control

This time I've been making controls for the wheelhouse and the flying bridge.  I've made the steering control, new throttle levers and the SIMS control.

The steering controls are on the helm and cox's seat and also to the port of the flying bridge.  The body is 3.2mm and 4.8mm styrene tube and the lever 0.8mm and 1.6mm brass/alloy.

As there are more throttle controls than supplied in the kit, I made a new set so that they are uniform.  The body is laminated discs of styrene made using my punch tool, through which is a 1.6mm alloy tube.  The throttle levers are dressmakers pins.  These are on the helm and cox's seats and on both sides of the flying bridge.

The SIMS controls are 2 pieces of 3.2x6.4mm styrene glued together then cut and sanded to shape.  The trackballs are dressmakers pins.  These go on the Helm, Cox, Mechanic and 1st Navigator's seats with a 5th on the 2nd Navigator's table.

Now, just to paint them.

Stairway to Heaven

This time it's the turn of the stairs.  Model Slipway have been excellent in supplying a few extra bits and pices for my build and allowed me to buy extra bits and pieces without having to buy whole photo etched frets.  That's allowed me to get a second set of steps back down into the cabin.

Is used my etch-mate tool to fold the steps though it was harder than I expected.  Due the shape of the outside pieces, I used a combination of the etch-mate and a pair of long pliers.  The pieces we re then soldered together by soldering all steps to one of the outside pieces first using a square to make sure all were, well, square!  The other pieces was then soldered on.

The photo below shows both sets of stairs finished.  One set has 0.5 styrene inserts on each side.  This was used to join the bottom step back on that I'd previously cut off.  This was originally cut off to fit the cabin as per the kit design.  However, as I wrote in my 11 & 28 January '13 posts, I dropped the cabin floor.  Luckily, I'd kept the unused bottom step and the pieces of the side parts that I'd cut off.  This set will go inside the cabin so the repair shouldn't be too obvious!