Now we're getting somewhere!

After what seemed like aeons of marking out and routing (which took MUCH less time that the marking) we finally started "getting 3-D" on Sunday morning.

First up, we assembled the rear riser that's going to support the back straight. Despite a bit of cack-handed bandsaw use by me the finished article is remarkably straight and level. We screwed it down securely and performed a quick " have we over-engineered it?" test. Luckily Doug's relatively skinny so the answer would seem to be "Yes!". Thankfully. We didn't cut access holes into the support as the power is going to be fed into the track both just before and just after the staraight as well as on the start/finish straight so there shouldn't be anything inside the box at all.

Its worth pointing out that the first picture shows the entire table clearer that its been since Doug started this - we truly are masters of shifting junk back and forth. Sadly much of it seems to have found its way into my garage across the road. Hmmm...

Buoyed on by our success (and a mug of tea) we decided that now was the time to begin the cutting of the first board. Ulp.

We'd been debating the exact profile to cut around the track for a while. Doug has favoured "wiggly", with the edges of the board being cut to the profile of how the track will flow with the cut tracks being similar to the racing line. I, however, am far lazier and just wanted to cut straight - parallel to the routed tracks. We could then paint on the road and disguise the straightness of the cuts with some cunning landscaping. Eventually we decided to compromise and cut an initial curve near the apex and then straighten - the edges to be "roughed-up" later with the cunning landscaping.

I got a bit arty with the camera at this point, so whilst the photo's lovely it doesn't really show much more than what a nice model of a Supra we've been using as out guinea-pig car. Why? Because its both long and wide and so will give us an idea of the maximum space cars should take up as they round corners.

This whole cutting thing seemed much easier than we'd (well, I'd) feared so it didn't take long for us to trim out the rest of the board and get an idea of the levels. The straight at the back is 9 inches above the datum table level, but as the cars have about 10 feet of track to reach this level then traction shouldn't be a problem. In the 4th picture its worth noting that the lowest edge of the board will be trimmed back to meet up with the one remaining board to be cut - the start/finish straight that will then turn 180* under the flyover to join the bottom of this slope.

Later in the day we also made a start on cutting the second main board with the downhill hairpins to the start/finish line, but I'd put the camera to bed by then.

More pics to come next time...

A