The Bluebird Project

Is there a pic of the boat hanging from the ceiling???

Quick pic from my phone until Mike sorts out an arty one.
The front was stropped at the outer roots of the main spar where it meets the sponsons and the rear was stropped through the Orph' engine mounts. It wasn't going to fall unless we hand a failure of a chain block. Trouble is - we've had those fail in the past.

How long was she hanging?

Too bloody long!

Can see why you didn’t like it. That would’ve hurt

Bluebird team

Have followed from afar for years and cannot say just how amazing your achievement is. A truly heroic story of perseverance and ingenuity. Looking forward to seeing the final picture of the boat with canopy, on cradle, finished.

One question though. What is /was the LAST piece of original material to be refitted to the boat? I assume it’s the jet pipe sealing strip from following PIc of the Day? And is there still the top half of that to be fitted?

Ken

Square lid on top of the engine cover maybe.

There're some bits of pitot plumbing that won't go in until after Bute and as we're likely to be mothballed for a year before the proving trial, wherever that may be, it's going to be a while before the rest of the original bits go on.

Trimming the canopy looks like a job not to be taken lightly, one slip with that disk cutter and one very costly mistake. I presume that both canopies have no been successfully trimmed with no catastrophes.

I would imagine that making the mould was a time consuming effort as well. Was the canopy vacuum formed?

Trimming in the canopy was just a case of creeping up on it. The last few mm were sanded off by hand. The first one took an entire day - the second one took 20 mins.
The surface was modelled on CAD by a company called Cube3, their work was then used to develop a model for a vac-forming tool by a local company called Bay Plastics who roughed out the tool in MDF with a 3-axis machine then finished it with their 5-axis cutter then vac-formed hight-impact acrylic over it.
I'll write it all up as a diary piece when I get a chance. We're a bit full-on at the moment, as you've probably guessed.

mickday wrote: ↑Wed Jul 04, 2018 4:59 pm one slip with that disk cutter and one very costly mistake.

Did you see the episode of Wheeler Dealers where Edd China was trimming a new canopy for a bubble car and cracked it so had to buy another one? An expensive mistake indeed!