Good evening all gents ! ( and any ladies...)
Well-- the weather in the UK is now cold
so the hull and its promenade deck overlays are experiencing the full gamut of
( very !) warm central heated evenings , pleasant daytime heating
and stone cold nights ( heating goes off at 11:30 pm and comes on at 8am)
modelroom has large windows and is
not well insulated-
-so when heating goes off temperature falls drops very effectively to around 10 -12 deg C deg
I have studied the hull when cold at night ( with some trepidation in case of ' snaking')
and in the very warm evenings in the modelroom et al
amd I can report no sign of differential movement that is visible.
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In the meantime I have been busy preparing the lifeboats; the kit items being rather undersized
and not completely correct in shape-
but the biggest issue was that the kit lifeboats are single boats--whereas the real ship has smaller boats nested inside the larger boats
and in the early version--at all times the boats had a cover that went over both boats
( light grey canvas for the pre-rebuild-- and a rather lurid orange for the second half of her career )
the launching methodology for the nested boats is illustrated here
I am fortunate in actually having a ( dog-eared!)
copy of the 'SHIPBUILDER Magazine of 1935 )
so was able to see how the real boats should look...
Now I was also fortunate in having a " friend " who drew and 3-D printed the required boats ,
in fact more than double the number required were printed.
just as well-- !!! as despite effective packing from France-- the combined postal carriers of France and the UK had contrived
to drop something heavy on my boats-
- the result being a pretty spectacular rate of breakage of rudders and screws.==> requiring careful, finicky repairs
simply finding and keeping the broken parts-( On the sticky part of a post it note! )
-and identifying which boat had which rudder ( almost forensic examination of break patterns...!)
the boats were attached to the printing runner at the bows
which was a tricky bit of cleaning without loosing the contours of the bow and hull
handling the detached boats was another challenge
after clean up they were impaled on pushpins red and green...
The pin hole will not be visible ( on the
inboard under side ) on the installed boat in the davits ( at least not without and endoscope and a mirror!!�)
I prepared double the required number so as to be able to pick and choose the best ones
( some of them had small printing defects which needed filling )
the airbrush was unable to shift the 3-D print material waste from paring,
sticky>?)
so resorted to self help tack sticks !!
They have had a coat of light grey as a guide coats which highlighted where more work was needed...
2 x white coats and the canvas next
will update.
in the meantime some other progress...
). 
