Monday and Tuesday - finishing touches : )

The final layers of paint have been applied by Angel. We have decided to give the model a slight speckle rather than it appear perfectly smooth and glossy as the steel on the real bridge has a textured appearance and is a more matted silver. We have all been cutting, gluing and re-gluing the meshed fencing as it was very difficult to maintain its curved shape whilst sufficiently holding it in place on the posts. Similarly, ensuring the holes in the front fence have gone all the way through has proved to be a very fiddly process. Once these were clear, I threaded fishing wire through to represent the railing. The ends of the wire were secured with glue and the clear thread was sprayed silver to match the steel finish.

One small mistake we made was securing the meshed fence before the wooden walkway, which then made it more difficult to attach this to the supports from underneath. However, once this was weighted to lie flat and set, we could bolt both parts to the base. I then stuck on the scale ladders while Angel and Paul applied the final adjustments such as the scale figure and clean and polish using T-cut.

The whole model is now completed three days before the deadline !

Wednesday and Thursday

Removing the fast cast resin from the mold proved difficult due to the excess resin spilling over and covering the whole surface. I therefor had to cut into this with a scalpel and sand the remains flush before the cast would pop out. Any cracks and breakages caused during this removal were fixed up with super glue and fine filler. I then glued both sides together and sanded the shape as smooth as I could before painting with acrylics. For the supports attaching these to the island, I bent small strips of brass left over from our netting order and painted these silver. These were then glued into place to hold the rings up.

Angel has been sanding and gluing the cable supports up the support pylon. He used dyclo to attach the styrene pieces together and a drennel for the small holes. Paul has decided to provide a cleaner alternative to our hand cut veneer strip to run along the bottom of the walkway. This needs to be laser cut from more veneer as the hand cut piece flexed when I cut it with a scalpel.

Friday:
Working on finishing touches before spray painting, Angel has been filling in any gaps between the cable supports and pylon with putty. Paul has found a way of creating a fine mesh for the wind break fence by flattening two strips of larger mesh together so that they criss-cross to make smaller holes. He has then cut this into panels to be glued between each pillar. I have been guillotining 2mm strips of aluminium to cut and shape into supports for the bumpers. I could then glue the bumpers onto these upside down so that they hold them in place when upright. The supports for the top ring were not quite in-line with the pillars running down so I re-glued these onto the island before re-attaching the top ring. We believe that most components are now ready to be sprayed once it is less crowded in the Spray Room.