After several reads of Ship Models From Kits by David Griffith, I concluded that the completed model should be displayed as a waterline model – meaning that I would fashion a base with simulated water and place the ship on the base with the sea lapping at the, you guessed it, waterline. This decision was inline with my feeling that every project should tell a story rather than just being a member of Occupy Shelf.
The Heller kit makes no provisions for doing a waterline model so I was going to have to chop off a few feet of plastic. I started with my large blade Zona razor saw. Much hard work later (one has to be careful not to split the hull towards the deck), I had the side cut as shown here:
You can see all the individual pieces scattered about the workbench. This was way too much work so I went to the hardware store and bought a cutting disk for my Dremel to do the other side of the hull. Real care is needed with the Dremel to not cut off any of the above-the-waterline portion of the hull. So, cutting was easier but more sanding and scraping was required. All, in all, a lot of work.
Once the port and starboard hull halves were cut and sanded, I taped the hull together and marked off the shape onto sheets of .060″ styrene. I needed several sheets as the Illustrious hull was longer than the sizes in my styrene sheet inventory. Sanding, fitting, more sanding, more fitting and finally I decided to glue the hull together and onto the base. This all could have gone faster if I had a hobby table scroll saw but I don’t really have room for one. If I do this again, there could be a new tool added to the workbench.
With the base glued to the hull, I saw that hand sanding the rough edges was way too slow so it was back to the Dremel to do the coarse sanding.
Exhausted by the hull work I took time for reflection.
Cropredy Illustrious Project 