So, I took a stab at installing these little buggers:
Heres what I did:
- Sanded off molded nuts and drill appropriately sized hole. I have a gap in my drill bit collection between .35 mm and 1 mm, so I used the .35 and the tip of a #11 blade to expand the hole. I'd guess .5mm ish? is right.
- Using a bit of fine wire, placed a spot of thin C/A in the hole, and installed the bolt & washer piece. The "bolt" made a good handle for my tweezers to hold the tiny bit of resin.
- Because the nut isn't drilled through (at least that I could see), I cut the bolt off at the washer, and C/A'd the nut in place. I am sure with better eyes and a steadier hand you could drill out the nut, slide it over the bolt and trim to size, but that didn't happen.
So, the picture reveals lost of faults: nuts misaligned, bad cuts, etc., but the only way I could see any detail like that involved an Optivisor and a
very close working distance, and that would be tough for me to sustain for all 30-odd nuts on my DVII. I don't plan on allowing anyone with an Optivisor to inspect the finished aircraft anyway. As I mentioned above, I didn't assemble my nut & bolt pieces the way the Taurus instructional image seems to indicate that I should have:
That said, glueing the nut in place was not hugely challenging, other than my poor eyes not being able to see that some were misaligned until I put that picture up....
I have to say, as beautifully detailed as they are, my honest reaction to them
in situ is that they look too big... they really stand out on the workpiece in a way that I am not sure matches the 1:1 version. I sprayed the whole thing with a bit of gray primer since the darker resin really accentuated the effect, but it didn't completely remove my concerns. The nuts, as close as I can tell, measure approximately 1 mm in length (some of mine are probably closer to 1.25 - 1.5 mm due to the inexact cut), which means 32 mm in scale (or 40 - 48 mm for the longer ones). I am sure Lukasz did his homework on the prototypes so I defer to him on the size, but to my eye at least, they are much more noticeable than I expected (when I look at the panel, or at the photo above, the first thing I notice is the nuts, but maybe I am just used to the molded on nubs I have looking at for all of these weeks).
I'd welcome any opinions regarding the nutted panel's appearance, as well as any pointers towards any dumb mistakes I may have made. Hope this is helpful,
Chris
