So, onto (save for the Y-boat) the last major component
build on the boat; the mast. Looking at
the full size boat and the plans, the 2 'arch' pieces are canted forward but
with all the braces and radar platform being horizonal. My initial plan was to canabalise the cast
metal mast bases in the kit by cutting out the brace and replacing with a brass
brace. However, when I looked at the
pivot point and attaching dummy hydraulic rams and the lifting mechanism, I
decided the base pieces needed to be U channel and not cast solid.
So that meant ditching the cast bases, drawing a plan for
the mast and machining a square brass tube to a U channel. So here's a picture of the drawing and some
but not all of the mast pieces.
I also noticed from photos of the full size boat that the
arches and one pair of braces were a larger diameter that the rest of the
mast. So I used the kit arch pieces,
made one pair of cross braces from 4.0mm brass tube with all other pieces from
3.2mm brass tube. I decided that I would
drill and pin the cross braces as well as soldering them, so I used tube of the
next size down as pins.
It was a real struggle to get everything at the correct
angle even with my drawing, I must have soldered the thing together and pulled
at apart at least 3 or 4 times! The
other mistake I made was to use superglue to tack the radar platform to the
arch pieces. As soon as I tried to
solder the joints, the glue melted, therefore stank, and contaminated the
solder flow. So lesson learnt.
Still, it's heading in the right direction now…
