Bulldog - more work on seat

 After the last post, I realised that the seat wasn't quite right. According to the available kits and aftermarket products, the seat back should have a noticeable taper towards the top. I know, I know. But I thought I might as well go with the consensus.

The next day, I set to to work making a new one. Now that I'd worked out the basic methods, it didn't take too long. But I was a bit hasty with the cutting out, and I ended up with something that was not quite square: the base of the seat was a kind of rhombus, varying in depth by about 0.1mm from side to the other. Not very much, and hard to measure, but the human eye is very good at detecting this sort of anomaly. And it just looked very wrong.

I decided to have another go, and this time make better use of the tools at my disposal. So I drew up a cutting guide in TurboCAD and taped it to a piece of 0.5mm plastic card. Then I cut out the pieces using a steel rule as a guide. In the picture below, the two pieces are separated by a small gap. If you don't have the gap (as I discovered on my first attempt), then when you cut out the second piece, the knife blade can be diverted from its course by the cuts you have already made for the first piece, and you end up with a shape that is not quite as clean as it could be.

Once I'd got the pieces cut out, I cleaned them up and added plastic strip for the sides. This time I made my life easier by adding the pieces and then cutting them to size once the glue had dried. And I remembered to take pictures:

While I was at it, I decided to have another go a the adjustable seat mechanism, using the Airfix 1:48 model as a guide, because I never learn. I ended up with these bits:

But this is where it all started to go wrong. I had a bearer and a sort of tubular framework for each side, but once it came to gluing them together, I took my eye off the ball. In order for the seat to sit properly on the framework, the bearers have to be exactly aligned, but somehow I got one of them almost 1mm out vertically from the other. Also, the struts were much too big and so the seat ended up much too high. I know the seat was adjustable, but even so...

 

I had a couple of hasty attempts at putting things right, but in the end I decided I would have to have another go at the mechanism, and so I called it a day.

 

Next day, I redrafted the mechanism and set to work rebuilding it. For the previous version, I had used 0.4mm Plastruct rod, but I had run out of this, so I used 0.5mm Evergreen instead. I had the feeling this would be a bit over scale; but on the other hand, it was bound to be stronger. As before, I printed out an assembly jig and taped the plastic rod to it as I went along. But this time, I added the bearers before cutting to size.

 

After this, I cut along the baseline of the seat using a guillotine (I forgot to take a picture), and this is what I ended up with:

Then all I had to do was glue the bits together and add the adjustment lever. The lever was made from 0.4mm Albion Alloys brass tube, with 0.1mm nickel rod inserted for the release button. Unfortunately, because I cut it to something like scale length, I don't think you're going to be able to see the button.

 

The next thing was to do a trial fit.

And - it didn't fit.

The problem, as I discovered, is that the adjustment gear fouls the diagonal cross-bracing at the rear of bay no. 2, and this is probably one result of the compromise that had to be made between scale dimensions and the thickness of the fuselage mouldings. I think a further compromise will be necessary. In all probability, either the cross-bracing or a part of the seat mechanism will have to go. But rest assured, I'm not going to do anything hasty, especially since I've already poured myself a well-earned glass of cab sauv.

But one outcome or other soon!