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Author Topic: Dickie's Don't Bounce! (AKA: Alex's Seaport)  (Read 3559 times)

TugCowboy

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Dickie's Don't Bounce! (AKA: Alex's Seaport)
« on: April 26, 2010, 01:54:55 pm »

I'm living with my girlfriend at the moment and all modelling stuff including my boats are back at my mums house.
After a few lovely afternoons down at the pond watching the local club (of which I've been a member for 3 years but never sailed in anger) I decide its time to go home and screw the deck on the Dickie, put in the RX and take her sailing. She's been about 6 screws away from "finished" for 8 months or so now but having a son born in December put all that on hold.

I get home, open the door to my hobby room and there's the Dickie, on the floor cracked and broken, deck laying next to it all the fittings strewn allover the place. My scratchbuilt items shattered and it in a condition I can only describe as unsalvageable.

There's a huge crack right down  the side going over and up the other side covering 85% of the hull:



I've tried to push it back together and considered filling the gap but really all structural integrity has been lost and a good twist would have the hull in half.

She had an experimental brushless outrunner in and a programable ESC which I got developed for me by one of my suppliers in China which I deal with for electronic goods, perhaps one day I'll get another to put it all back in.

I'm not sure why but I'm totally devastated about this, really felt sick to the pit of my stomach when I saw it. It might only have started out as a £30 cheapie but I've spent so much money and time on her over the past 2 years.

In the meantime, if anyones got any boats to flog cheapish to help a guy get his hand back in I've got a thread in the Wanted section!

A very sad,

Alex

I'd sold all my other boats and just kept this one to "play" with and improve as time allowed. So now I'm entirely boatless
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Corposant

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Re: Dickie's Don't Bounce! (AKA: Alex's Seaport)
« Reply #1 on: April 26, 2010, 07:14:00 pm »

Alex,

You have my deepest sympathy - which is not a lot of help to you! As you say, it's not the cost but all that TLC that hurts.

Mike
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Edward Pinniger

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Re: Dickie's Don't Bounce! (AKA: Alex's Seaport)
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2010, 08:31:21 pm »

Ouch  {:-{  Cost is irrelevant when you've put so much time and effort into a model, it can be heartbreaking when something like this happens  :(( . I had a similar situation a few years ago with a (static) model aircraft, which I'd scratchbuilt a complete interior for; I stupidly suspended it from a ceiling hook, and a broken string resulted in complete "self-disassembly".  I managed to put it back together again, but without most of the scratchbuilt detail, as it had to have all the hatches + panels glued shut to have any chance of staying in one piece.

Your boat - may - be salvageable with a bit of luck, though. The Dickie hull is moulded in styrene plastic, which means it can be glued with a "welding" liquid glue like MEK and Humbrol Liquid Poly (this gives a much stronger bond than "tube" glue and, for joins like this, stronger than superglue or epoxy). If you use this to glue the cracked areas back together, then reinforce the inside of the crack with strips of styrene sheet (Plasticard) the resulting repair will be watertight and should have a reasonable amount of structural strength (especially with the deck in place). A strip of duct tape over the inside surface (once the glue has thoroughly set) would also give some backup strength and more resistance to flexing.
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Mr Andy

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Re: Dickie's Don't Bounce! (AKA: Alex's Seaport)
« Reply #3 on: June 16, 2010, 11:27:15 pm »

Why not try putting fibre glass in the inside, and maybe add a couple of bulkhead's, just my thought for the day.

Andy.  :-)
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RaaArtyGunner

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Re: Dickie's Don't Bounce! (AKA: Alex's Seaport)
« Reply #4 on: June 17, 2010, 01:55:57 am »

Alex,

You have my deepest sympathy - which is not a lot of help to you! As you say, it's not the cost but all that TLC that hurts.

Mike

So true,  ok2 when i saw my Doctor recently he informed me that TLC  :-)) stood for Tongue Lashing Constantly, to which I replied, yep Doc get lots of it. O0 O0
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