New skirts started

Today with the great help from Victor I've started recreating the hovercraft skirts using the vinyl material that came with the skirt replacing the cheap plastic practice ones.

There was a little bit of sanding left over but the bottom of the craft looks good. And it's good to see the craft back flat in the garage.

Back horizontal, but on blocks for work

Laying out the old skirts on top of the new material we've cut oversided elements. After attaching them we'll cut them down. The skirt material cuts in half nicely to form the size of the skirt for each side.

Side skirt laid on top of the new uncut materaial

The new skirt material compared to the test skirt templates.

The attachment battons worked out well. Though we had to find a way to make holes in the right places. But it turns out there's a good tool in inventory for that, a hole punch ;-)

The very specialized tooling.

And even better the standoff distance needed from the edge was approximately the same as the depth of the hole punch so you just had to line up the lateral alignment.

The first side took alittle while to put on, and we put the batten on the wrong side up at first. But the 2nd one went quickly. And we stretched it out the full length first, then slide it up to punch the holds and put in the intermediate holes for the batten screws.

First side attached.

And we briefly tested the vinyl cement that looks like it will be fine to just cement the joints without stitching. And it nicely sets in a few minutes so gluing the corners shouldn't be too much of a challenge.

Here's the final view with skirt material dangling from both sides.