Starlight's progress...
Following on from my last post....
Unfortunately whilst doing unusual and ambitious projects such as making a light sculpture out of a large fibreglass elephant, things are bound to be a bit of an experiment.
Challenge 1: The plastic pipe inserts that I spent a lot of time cutting to size, filing, sanding etc, didn't stick into the holes. The super glue did actually glue them in the first place, however once I tested the rope lighting going through them, they heated up slightly and the glue unstuck. The glue works in temperatures from, -65 to 300° F (-54 o 149° C) so it shouldn't have unstuck. Although it says it works with most hard plastics, excluding Polypropylene...(which the pipes happen to be!).
So I had to remove all of the 62 inserts, and tried using epoxy resin on a couple of holes to test it's strength whilst heated up. Unfortunately this also came unstuck once the lights went through.
In the end I decided on taking the inserts out, cleaning the glue off and sanding down all the holes, then re-painting them. Luckily the fiberglass is a LOT stronger than I first expected, especially with the amount of holes drilled through the body. So the inserts were more for aesthetics rather than strength, so I abandoned them.
