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Guest LGA

Pictures of Boeing guage faces I made

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Guest LGA

Hi guys, Here are some photos of guage faces(Boeing 757) that I have been working on for my project. I hope you enjoy them. What I have completed so far are 2 standby airspeed indicators and 3 standby guages, VSI, Alt, etc. There are others in the works but these are not completed yet. For those of you who like them and would like to know how I made them, here it goes. The first step was to draw them on paper. Using a compass and ruler that is what I did, and then made many copies. For materials I used clear plastic that I found at home depot. Placing what I drew as a sandwich between 2 pieces of plastic, I made the outer cuts with a jigsaw. After this I drilled the center and went on to cut a basic circle for the shape of the guages. The outside is where neatness counts, the inside doesn't really matter, because there will be a thinner layer of plastic to make the face. After the plastic is cut, I used a very thin sheet of plastic that I got here from work. It is used to cover books that have been binded. I was able to cut nice circles with an exacto knife, then cut around it the shape of the guage and sand it so everything blends. A little crazy glue to stick everything together and then an airbrused coat of paint make it look nice. For those interested, I hope the pics are somewhat self explanatory, otherwise in the next few days I will be posting all of the construction pics and perhaps a small tutorial, not that my technique is the best, but hey, not bad in my humble opinion! :+)I'll be looking around for some sutiable screws to add to the front of these guages as that might give them a more realistic look.

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Guest PoRrEkE

Lookin good !Now the thing I can't understand is how you managed to jigsaw such thin plastic. I think it is plexy from the pictures but maybe it's not. At least it shouldb't be cus plexy wouldn't hold such rougness as a jigsaw .. or maybe you got a special blade to mount on the jigsaw ?

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Guest PoRrEkE

sorry reporst ..agian, maybe you shouldn't have cut the inside of the big plastic .. now you got faces but no window to cover the gauges ...

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Guest LGA

Hi Phillippe, In response to your question, what I used was plastic, I can't remember off the top of my head what it is, Acrylic plastic, plexi? It is less than 1/4" thick. For the jigsaw I purchased a selection of blades and used one that had very thin teeth with wood in mind. I had a problem with blades ripping up my wood. The outer cuts have to be done with precision to avoid long hours of sanding, but the inside can be very crude. Another thing to keep in mind when cutting is to work fast or the blade can start to melt the plastic. Now for the faces all we need is a very thin sheet of plastic from which to cut out out the circle and outer shape of the guage. This is one part I left out, I cut out a circle slightly larger than the circle of the guage face to put directly behind so as to simulate glass covering the guage, alhtough I had not installed these when the photos were taken. Let me try and draw something up on paintbrush to better explain.

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Guest LGA

Something I left out Phillippe, the logic as to why I cut the hole, in the case that the plastic ever becomes scratched I can simply replace the slightly larger circle behind the face.

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Guest PoRrEkE

AHA-feeling comming up here :)Got it.Though wouldn't see why such a thing would ever get scratched in the first place ... maybe you are a wild pilot in the cockpit :(Anyway, it's your call. I'm going to do it differently. And this idea 'bout other blades for the jigsaw is a good option which I didn't think off before ! I'll go shopping asap !I had my round plexy windows cut out with laser via via.Now the news came (after 4 months of waiting) that they have sent the windows via taxipost to the person who was to hand them to me. They never arrived. All that is left now is the panel from which the windows were cut (even not by laser but with a .. "frees" euhm .. something like a drill but you slide it trough material somethimes not to cut trough it but just to make an engravement or something .. you get it, right ? :( )

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Guest LGA

lol.............very wild in the cockpit indeed Phillippe, I've been known to rip entire throttle units off the pedestial, which in turn have smashed through the cabin door and hit passengers while attempting to engage reverse thrust! :+) I thought about the possibilty of not cutting the circle, but liked the idea of a thinner sheet of plastic to cover the instrument as opposed to a thicker piece that might distort clarity among a few. As for the blades, I came across a set which contained about 12 blades for different purposes, metal, wood, rough cuts, etc. Early on when I was cutting my main panels I had a serious problem with my only jigsaw blade as it would really destroy the wood. More small teeth on the blade work better than a few big ones in this case. Sorry to hear about your windows........I hope that gets resolved soon. By the way, I've visited your website a few times and let me tell you, it is one good looking website!

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