| I went to Radioshack.com and purchased
some shrink tubing for the larger fibre cable. They had a ton
of different kinds and colors, so I was able to color-code the
fibres! (Grin) Red tubing for Port, green for Starboard,
yellow for flashing and orange for the fore hull light.
I was also prompted by a friend to
visit the local hobby store so as to find some paint-on masking that
he had found on the 'Net (Thank you Jim!). I have yet to
experiment with this stuff, but it looks better than caulk.
Caulk's pretty darn good, but it does harden after painting it with
enamels, which may damage the more fragile materials (like the
cement I'll be using for the crew quarters),
While I was there I asked about the
cement melting the plastic, and they pointed me towards a preferred
brand of what is, essentially, super glue. I am using it to
put the fibre cables in place, then using putty to add reinforcement
to the bent shank which is extremely fragile (having been heated and
bent to 90 deg.) This is a very delicate process and the putty
takes a long time to cure in quantity, so this means each fibre will
need to be placed and cured overnight.
Fortunately the smaller fibres don't
have the strength to pull against their glue, so they shouldn't be
as bad. (Whew)
After each fibre is placed and the
putty cured, I can turn the ship over and rotate a soldering iron
around the exposed end, causing it to mushroom and expand into the
hole ensuring it's not going to go anywhere. I then polish it
with paper and it's damn-near perfect.
|
