[Sailor Steve]

The main assembly is done. All that remains are the wheels and rigging and some touch-up. It's hard to see, but one of the finest pieces of detail work I've ever done is on this model. They give you a pair of nice little resin pieces for the wheel supports, with replica coil springs and all. Once they were glued to the top of the lower skid I started to worry about how easily they could break off. I looked at a bunch of photographs and found that while the real ones were bolted to the skid, they were also supported by a thin rope running over and under the axles, three times each. That gave me the idea to do the same with the thin monofilament line I use for rigging. It wasn't really all that hard, and it adds strength to the axle support as well as to the appearance. There's no way they're gong to break off now, and they look cool. Tomorrow's first job will be to paint them white to match the rope in the photos. Also invisible are the many holes I drilled for the rigging wires. Very visible is the tube for mounting the model to the stand. I'll paint it to match the linen when I do the final touch-up.