The roof has been shaped now, the next stage was to make the box section at either end which I believe contains the horns and headlights. My original plan was to construct these as a box from flat card, that was just a fantasy, it didn't work well due to difficulties in shaping it to the profile of the roof, in 7mm? yes probably, but in 4mm just too fiddly? After some thought I decided to make a solid box and let it into the roof. This meant carving a chunk out of either end, so out with the scalpel and get to it.

It went much better than i'd thought it would, here's how it looked when done.

The darker part is where I had to extend the length of the roof which for some strange reason had come out 3mm too short. I made up some filler by mixing card dust from the sanding with PVA adhesive, it proved very tough to cut through.

Next I cut the rectangular pieces for the box and laminated them together until I had a slab 4.5mm thick, this I inserted into the slot and secured with glue. I then filed the chamfers on the corners.

i had drawn up the various access panels, fan housing, exhaust ports etc, I cut these from some scrap card and working from the drawing attached them all to the roof.

This next picture shows the results of that and the box sections on the ends of the roof.

The body in that photo had been given several brush coats of acrylic paint to fill in the grain of the cardboard, I used different colours for different coats so when I rubbed down I could determine where the high and low spots were, here it's carrying the colour it will be when finished.

I've taken delivery of the etched brass detailing parts, from Peter's Spares, they carry a full range of shawplan's extreme etchings parts, seen here.

Once the roof panelling was dry I gave the whole thing a coat of Tamya light grey matt acrylic, I departed slightly from my original spec and used some plastic strip for the hinges on the panels because the ones I cut from card just weren't rigid enough to stay straight.The etched fan proved tricky, I merely soldered it on to a short length of brass wire, pushed that through a hole drilled in the roof and then bent it over underneath.

I cut the round duct the fan sits in by hand, having forgotten it in the original drawing, here's the result.

That brings us up to date, I'm working on fitting the windscreens at present, I'll post that part up later.

more later.

Roly