Splitting The Hull.
I had a busy weekend planned. It was time to split the hull. It is fair to say that I had been looking forwards to having a go at this. I had made the special tools last week ready for the split.
The first job was to try to fix down the hull to a board perfectly level and rigid enough to ensure that it did not move during the cutting phase. The first thing was to find a suitable flat board, 12mm marine ply, and stick a 1β strip of sandpaper right down the middle to help to reduce the risk of the hull sliding. This done, I placed the hull roughly central on the board and marked out the positions for the anchor points for the elastic bands and screwed them in. I used standard hooks for this. The bands, two at each end, were fitted. It was surprising just how rigid this was but the hull could still slide. To stop this, I had bought some angle brackets. They were to be screwed onto the board, one each side at the centre of the hull. These proved top be very weak and I could still move the hull. A search of the garage followed to find something suitable and I came across two Krick motor mounts which were left over from the Dusseldorf motors. I screwed these to the board and the hull was rigid.
I fitted the Dremel to the special tool with four cable ties. These held it very well. I then set the height on the
marker pen
and tested it at each end of the weld line chosen as the split point. It was around 3mm out at one end so I placed two large washers at one end under the hull and this gave me level. I then checked to see if the hull was level across the width and twisted it until the pen made a mark at the same height on both sides using the weld line on the model as a point of reference. I them marked a cut line along both sides of the hull.
Next up was to set the height of the slitting saw using the previously drawn line. This done, I then very carefully cut the side walls taking care to only taking shallow cuts as the Polystyrene melts very easily if heated. I did this in stages leaving the hull connected at each end, behind the bands and about Β½β in the centre to ensure stability when cutting the other side. I completed the cuts on both sides and then remove the hull from the board. The remaining sections still joined were then carefully cut with a 12β hacksaw blade. Success!! I had two pieces.
I then roughly cleaned up the cut joints and placed the two halves together. It was good.
Finally, for today, I made and fitted a support brace at the stern end of the deck piece as cutting into two had left this area weak.
Next time I will improve the cut surfaces, put locking devices on the deck half and location tabs to aid alignment.
Thanks for reading.
Peter.