Mast(erblaster) part 1

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…

Even though, that's less than half the total pieces needed!