Finished Booster Cover Tops, Grooves for Booster Cover Bodies

Today I put some time in to drive the booster covers to completion.

I started by trying out my new 5/8" radius cove bit. I wisely decided to test it on the spare booster cover head pieces that I gave up on earlier.



Uh oh! The curve is not supposed to go any higher than the top of the slots! I'm not sure exactly what went wrong, but I immediately switched back to the 1/2" radius bit that I used for droid #1.

I clamped a small piece of MDF on the side that goes through the router last, so that there wouldn't be any tear-out.



That's more like it.



While I had the router out, I decided to route the grooves in the booster cover bodies. I marked the end-point for the top of slots, and set my stop so that the slot length matched the blueprints.



I temporarily placed a 1/8" piece of MDF under the work, to align the center of the router bit with the center of the marks where the grooves go.



I got busy routing the grooves. I did the outer groove followed by the inner groove on the right side of each piece.



Wouldn't you know it! The very last groove I routed got messed up. The groove that's second to the left on the left piece is goofed up. I'll get to the repair strategy in a moment.



Done with the router for the moment, it was time to finish the booster cover top pieces by shaving three degrees from the front face.




I must say, I am very happy with how these pieces turned out. If someone told me a few years ago I could do this, I wouldn't have believed them.



Time to fill the mistake. I used Bondo this time instead of Evercoat, because Bondo seems a bit tougher to me, and I'll be running this through the router again tomorrow.



After the Bondo had dried for several hours, I sanded it smooth. I may use Evercoat to do some minor spot-filling before rerouting.