Scuttle Sunday - Part 2:
I also decided to trim "just a little" off the ends of the Spitfire bulkhead.
This should make it easier to "blend in" the body shell when I finally get to that stage.
Again, I will come back and tidy up the "wound" with filler another day.
While this destruction was going on, I had moved the body shell out of the way.
Obviously, I am really pleased that the work I have done so far holds everything in place.
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Then it was time for some construction, which started by recycling the templates I'd used before.
The new template then sat at the back of the bulkhead like so.
The edge inside the cockpit is "oversize", so I can trim it back later on.
Then with the body shell back in place, it looked like this.
Although I did cut away the corner of fibreglass that I had previously shaped around the lump in the bulkhead.
I will come back to tackle this whole corner separately.
As it took five frantic fibre glassing sessions (given the pot life) to get the rest of the scuttle looking like this.
Obviously, the scuttle follows the curve of the Spitfire bulkhead, which is nice.
You can just about see the build up of the three layers of matting I laid today in this photo.
I actually quite like the "sun visor" look of the scuttle extending over the Spitfire dash like this.
But I need to work out how the outside corners will work, before I commit to a final design.
( i.e. With the lip, as per the cockpit in yesterday's post, or without a lip, like above. )
Overall, given that my first attempt at using fibreglass was just 40 days ago, I am making good progress.
Clearly, I still have a lot of work to do before the final scuttle shape will be easy to see.
My daughters' school is closed tomorrow for training, so I don't think I will get much done.
So until next time, take care, Paul.
