at last, some hope

After a quick detour to the jam rooms to practise for Friday night's show, it was time for the steering and finishing the hull.  After realising that I hadn't made a mess of the control arm holes, and that I could bend the arms to work on an angle, everything worked out.



After this, it was a matter of cutting, cutting and more cutting.  Cut out the duck body, cut out the hull, cut out the extraneous clips and edges from the platform.  Cut cut cut.  Finally it was all done.

 

And then, inserted - like loading a clip.

Ok so it's pretty much the same as the last photo, but you see the fitment now.  As it stands, the duck is now upside down with the glue holding these two parts setting - tomorrow morning when it's done, I wake up and sikaflex seal the tail end for water-tightness, and we're ready to water test.

I'm nervous, for two reasons.  One, we put the platform in my bathtub earlier, and weren't able to get it to move the water at all.

I was scared that I'd messed up somewhere and seized the drivetrain or untapped the impeller.  Problem was, it just wasn't deep enough.  I'm pretty sure the first time we put this thing in the water, it's not going anywhere.  It's going to need to be weighed down in order to get it low enough in the water for the impeller to bite, I just hope we can actually do that.

Two and a half days left.