Bondo Squishin' The Hinge Wells

On my last post, I lamented the fact that I had neglected a detail on the hinge wells. They were of varying depth. So In this post, I'll explain how I fixed it.

The idea was to use the Bondo Squish method I described in an earlier post, but this time, I would do it in the hinge well.

The first step was to figure out how deep the shallowest well was. I did this by finding a piece of styrene that matched the approximate depth.



I found a thickness that was close, but not perfect. I needed to glue a very thin shim of styrene on to this piece to make it the right thickness. To do this, I used my favorite glue from Plastruct, which is custom designed to go on thin, and to hold together styrene.



Here's the finished piece, all ready to go.



Now I mixed up some putty, and used my spatula like x-acto blade to put a tiny amount into the hinge well.



And then the squish! I placed my sytrene strip on a large sheet of styrene, set the tricorder part on top of it, and pushed down on it. The extra putty squirted out the sides, and I was in business.



Once it had a chance to dry, I carefully peeled the piece away from the styrene. It turned out very nicely. Only a bit of clean up to do, and I'll be all set.





Since I was all rigged for squishing, I went ahead and did the other well too. That way, it should all be pretty well balanced out.



Next step is to get the hinges prepped and installed.