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Sunday, July 24, 2005

Living life on the edge - cutting and drilling the torso




The (terrifying) challenge of today was drilling and cuttting the torso. I will admit I was very intimidated to cut the torso. Especially since Brad had a problem with his drill bit chipping his torso while drilling his chest buttons. But he told me what he did wrong so I was able to successfully cut all my holes and bezel square with his tips. He also loaned me the correct drill bits. His advice (which worked) was to lay the torso down and make sure your drill is centered correctly over the markings. Do not push down and gently but firmly hold the drill. We used Dennis Wilbur's template. His templates have crosshairs on them which show the exact center of all the holes. This allows you to perfectly center the drillbit. Brad's other suggestion was to get a hobby knife (x-acto) and score the areas you're going to cut so the gel coat and fiberglass don't shatter.

By the third hole, I loosened up and felt pretty confident. All the holes and the bezel opening turned out fine. Fortunately, that was all I had to cut since the torso I got from Mike Joyce already had the backplate area, arms and vents cut out.

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