Eleven (26/11/10 - 28/11/10)

With the deadline less than a week away time is quickly running out. At the end of last week I had glued one side of cladding to the front and rear compartments as well as thread the elastic material through it, as this can't be done once the other side is cladded. The other side would've been cladded if it wasn't for the lack of super glue, so it has been put off till tomorrow, none the less progress has been made:

This is what the front and rear compartments look right now, with the elastic interweaving it's copper rod ribcage where it couldn't go through the acrlyic splines. This problem was thought of when I was digitally building the splines so pre-cautions were taken; that the splines had a 1x25mm slot cut out so the elastic could slide through. But not all of these slots came out perfect, most warped meaning I had to thread the elastic underneath the splines. On the other hand, when it did work, it worked a treat:

The elastic ends were hand sown together to stop them coming out completely. Thankfully all of that will be hidden once the top cladding goes on, for the underside it looks like this (the gap in the styrene is where the elastic is threaded through):

And it working:

One problem I've noticed with the cladding is that the actual edges aren't as straight as I'd like, it's hard to describe without a photo, but I'll get one tomorrow. One way of fixing this is to use one of the laminates or heat bent acrlyic and cut off a slither from them and attach it to the top of the front and rear compartments. This would also help when screwing in the drawbolt locks.