Continuing Construction

At the end of the last blog post, I had just tacked everything together and tested to be sure it all fit properly. The next step was to solidify all the leg joints and make both models able to support their own weight. So, without further ado, let's get right to it:

Below you can see all of the legs glued in place. For the tan legs on the right, this was a fairly simple matter of cutting the pistons to the correct length and then epoxying them in place. For the grey legs, I left them in place on the base and dripped a bit of thin CA glue into each joint, so that each leg was locked into its correct position.



Since that thin layer of CA isn't really going to hold up very well once weight is put on it, I then spent some time drilling holes through each joint and inserting brass rod. The idea was to get the rod all the way through each joint without actually poking out the other side. My hope was that this would give the joints something better than the friction of the CA glue to support them. So far, it has worked very well.

Below you can see a tiny drill bit mounted in the Dremel extension thing (easier to handle in small spaces than the whole Dremel). The little tape tab is there so I know how deep to drill.



Once the legs were all locked in place, I put a little extra spackle on the base and squished each foot into the ground so that they had little footprints to fit in to. This both made it look like the model is heavy enough that it is digging into the ground and gives me registration marks so that I know exactly where the model is supposed to fit onto the base. Below you can also see a missing toe on this foot. I have no idea where it went! I didn't notice when it broke off and, despite searching all over the place, I couldn't find it. So, I'm just going to put some extra rust there later and pretend like it is supposed to be like that.



Moving along to the leg armor plates, a number of them called for grab handles. This was just regular old brass rod, bent to shape.



The photo etch that comes with this kit is interesting in that it builds up into large shapes that fit into some of the vents on the upper body of the tank. Below you can see the component parts and assembled collection that fit into the main exhaust tubes.



There are similar etch assemblies in the smaller square vents. These fit well, but had the tendency to fall through the holes they were supposed to cover. As you can see below, I just glued on a few strips of styrene in order to give them a little lip on each side and keep them in place.



The instructions also pointed out various places where wire grab handles should be added. Like on the leg armor, these were just simple bent brass wire. In this case, though, the wire that I was using was a bit brittle and tended to snap when bent. In order to soften it up a bit, I annealed it with a torch. For those unfamiliar with this process, I took the brass wire in some pliers (it gets hot!) and slowly passed it through the flame of a butane torch. The goal is to get the metal red hot, but not so hot that it starts to come apart or distort. Letting the metal cool in the air results in a much more pliable bit of wire. The wire is far softer and much easier to bend.



With that done, it was time to start putting everything together. Below you can see the leg armor plates held in place while epoxy cures.



Below you can see the legs clamped in place while the epoxy cures. If you look at the base of the lower left leg, you can see various marks. I put those on there to keep the legs sorted, so that I knew which one went in which spot and at which angle. This should, in theory, result in the legs all being just right when I place the model back on the base.



I say, "in theory" because, after everything was glued and assembled, I placed the model back on the base and the leg that was in the left corner was hovering about 3/8 of an inch off the ground. Not sure if there was a good way to fix it, I decided that that was a good place for a rock!



Back on the future-y tank, the kit had come with a photo etch version of a little railing around the hatch. Given the scale, though, this rail seemed much too thin. I decided to have a go at building my own version from some brass rod and solder. I tried a few methods of soldering using the tools that I had, but it was pretty messy and I managed to incinerate a few pieces of rod by accident. What you can see below is the second version (the blackened surface came from the first version). I have since read a brief article in Fine Scale Modeler magazine about working with brass, so the next time I do, I'll be a bit better off. Anyway, with a bit of filing and sanding, some drilling on the resin, and a spot of CA glue, the railing was cleaned up and attached around the hatch.



A bit more wire bending got me some protective bars around the sensitive equipment hanging under the front end of this tank.



Similarly, the other kit came with some plastic-coated wire to act as hydraulic hosing for the leg pistons. Unfortunately, this wire was not easily shapable and when added, really seemed out of scale. Having just done a bit of soldering on the other tank, I decided to replace the kit wire with some thin solder, since it is so easily shapable. Also, instead of just letting it hang free (which seemed implausible to me, as far as tank design goes), I added a few styrene brackets on the sides of the joint plate, so that it looked like the hosing was held in place.



And, with the exception of the gatling gun that goes on the front of the grey tank (and that is fragile!), that wraps up construction on the two models. Below you can see the unprimed models, on the incomplete base.



Turning back to the diorama base, it was time to start adding things to it. First was the guard rail. If you recall from the last post, this was made from some sheet copper that I had in a bag of scrap metal bits. In order to attach it to the styrene posts, I just used a small drill bit in the Dremel and drilled through the copper, into the posts. I then made some small bolts out of the top 1/8" of straight pins and used those, with some thick CA, to attach the metal parts.



Next up, it was time to add some different sizes of rocks, gravel and sand in order to start to blend things all together. I picked up a few bags of model railroad decoration from the local hobby shop.



Below you can see the three stages, from clean to primed. I simply worked from large to small. First I added the largest size of rock, clustering them around the base of the hill, then the next size down, clustered around the larger rocks, etc. I decided that the road needed a bit of texture, as the base spackle was just too smooth. I was going with the premise that this bit of road has been long since abandoned, so it wouldn't be super clean and smooth. So what I did was to add a layer of the finest gravel/sand that I had onto the road surface. It ended up a little bit rougher than I had hoped, but I think I'll be able to make up for that with a bit of weathering and dirt on the road later.



With a couple coats of primer on the tanks and base, that should wrap up construction. All that is left now is a great deal of painting and an attempt at flocked grass.



Tune in next time (very soon!) for my attempt at a new (to me) weathering technique and my shot at building a flocking device out of a few cheap parts.

Thanks for reading!

Resin and More Resin!

So, at the conclusion of my last post, I was all ready to spend a bunch of time practicing car paint finishes. Well, I did that briefly and discovered that it was pretty boring. Without a real end goal to aim for, I lost interest pretty quickly. So, since I am dealing with some resin-related things in a side project, I decided that I should to a side-by-side build of two resin kits that have been in my collection for a while. They are similarly themed, both being walking tank sorts of designs, but they are very different kits.

First of the two is a heavy walking tank kit from MIG Productions, who are more commonly known for their pigments:



Along with that kit, I'll be building a more futuristic walking tank kit, the Rook, from Industria Mechanika:



Before I get into construction, let's compare and contrast the two kits. Industria Mechanika's kit consists of a very large number of parts (many of which are in the bags seen below), cast in an opaque grey resin. This is accompanied by a few pieces if brass rod, to be bent into grab handles and two sheets of photo-etch. It also includes two figures in the form of pilots that fit into the cockpit seats.



The casting quality is some of the best I've ever seen on a resin kit, with most of the parts having a small tab left on them, which doubles as part identification numbering. Generally, though, there are almost no large pour blocks on any of the parts. There are a few areas where a thin sheet of resin is left, that needs to be trimmed away, but I personally find this to be much easier than having to cut/sand a large block of resin away. The quality of the resin on this kit is very plastic-like, in that is is not too brittle and carves easily with an x-acto blade.



The MIG kit is cast from a tan resin, which is a bit more standard in cast resin parts. This kit is nearly all resin, with a bit of tubing for hydraulic hoses.



This resin is a bit more brittle than the grey resin seen above and has the more commonly found pour blocks, bubbles and need for a great deal of clean up. It also requires a good deal more shaping, drilling, etc in order to get it all to go together. Overall, though, the fidelity of the parts is still good. Below you can see some of the parts with their pour blocks still attached.



I decided to get started with the MIG model, beginning with the legs. I found that most of the leg length, on the outside, would eventually be covered by an armor plate, so I did a fairly rough clean up job. Below you can see the trimmed parts, with the various hinge holes drilled out.



These legs are held together by resin pins that go through the drilled out holes. Then, the leg position is held by hydraulics, part of which needs to be cut to length. This means that each leg consists of four main parts and a bunch of pins and cylinders that hold the big parts together. Below you can see the four legs with the pins in (not glued yet), but without any of the hydraulics.



Next, I put the hydraulics in place, but just kinda stuck on there, so that the legs were easily positionable. Then, using some museum tack, I stuck the legs onto the central body part, making sure that they all fit, etc. Below you can see it standing on it's own (although precariously, since nothing has been glued yet).



It was at this point that I realized that in order to be able to glue the legs into the correct positions, I'd need to know what they were standing on. This meant that I needed to stop the leg building and start figuring out what the diorama was going to look like. I decided on a rough base size, and then made myself some handy paper cutouts that were about the size of the finished tanks. In order to get an idea of the Rook kits size, I rubber-banded together one leg, stuck it to the body and guessed from there. Below you can see my two tank cutouts and my indication of where I wanted a road to be running. I got the width of the road by taking a standard two lane road with and dividing by 35, since the tanks are 1/35 scale.



My idea was to have a road running through the scene, with a bit of a rocky hill next to it, separated by a guard rail. This meant I could have some interesting terrain, with both tanks in there, but separated a bit by both height and what they are standing on. I'm hoping to get a few figures in there as well, but that is for a later blog post. In order to get a base to work with, I just cut a piece if 1/2" plywood down to size and got myself a bunch of floral foam from the craft store. Below you can see it roughly cut and glued to the board.



Next, I kicked around a few ideas for large rocks and was planning to use some stones I found outside, along with some sculpting, but then I ran across these rock molds when I was at one of my local hobby shops. The mold was only about $10, and I knew my wife had some two-part plastic resin at home that I could appropriate, so I bought the mold and decided to give it a try. Below you can see the mold, which I believe was intended for railroad decoration building.

Completed: Morgan Three Wheeler

In the last post, I mentioned converting this model from an air-cooled engine to a water-cooled one.

When I began the project, I did my usual reference hunting on the internet. I pulled together a couple dozen images, made myself a printout of a collection of those and got to work. After a little while, I started to find large discrepancies between the model kit and my reference images. What I discovered was that there are a few different engines that all seemed to be used around the same time (mid 1930's). Of those, two were made by Matchless, one of which was air cooled. The differentiating features of the air-cooled engine are the fins on the cylinders and the smaller opening on the cowl behind the engine.



The other Matchless engine was water cooled, which can be spotted by the smooth cylinders, larger cowl opening and pipes going from the tops of the cylinders to the radiator inside the cowl.



The kit had an air-cooled engine, but, like many other parts on this kit, it wasn't a very good rendition. The detail was largely obscured by extra flash and poor mold alignment, even after all of the chrome was stripped off. Aside from that, I really just liked the way that the water cooled engine looked better. So, I decided to make a replacement engine.

I'd been toying with the idea of making model parts in the computer and then having them 3d printed, and this was the perfect opportunity to try it out. This presented a good test case for a number of reasons. First off, this engine is not very big, so many of the details on the engine are on the tiny side of what 3d printers can handle. This meant that I could see how well the details are reproduced when it gets down to the limits of the printers. Also, this let me get the same part printed in two different materials, to see if the higher-detail material was worth the extra cost (spoiler: it was).

So that said, I fired up trusty ol 3dsmax, and modeled up an engine that was sized to fit in place of the kit engine. This took a bit of quality time with the assembled kit engine, some calipers, and lots of careful measuring. What you see below is what I came up with and sent to Shapeways for printing. I sent them two files, one for the engine and one for the radiator.



The radiator worked just fine and moved from prep to printing pretty quickly. The engine, on the other hand, got kicked back to me for various reasons. Mostly, it was because of various areas being too thin. Instead of them just trying to print whatever you send them (which is what I thought they would do), they check the file first and let you know if there are any areas that could cause trouble. After a few go-arounds with that process I ended up with the engine model you see below. It has many of the thin bits thickened up, and the valve spring cap things removed entirely.



So, while the engine was being printed, the new radiator arrived! What you see below is my first 3d printed model part, cleaned and primed, next to a penny for scale.



A few weeks later, the 3d printed engine arrived and below you can see my first test fitting, as well as what the raw printed material looks like.



While the initial test fitting went pretty well, later fittings caused a little bit more trouble, as there were quite a few things to get aligned all at once. In the end, I ended up replacing some of the pins that were printed with the engine (the ones that go through the chrome plates) with small brass rod, for durability and so that I could reposition them slightly. Below you can see the final fitting, with radiator piping, made of brass rod and heat-shrink tubing, in place.



Once I was sure everything would fit, it was time for paint. Below you can see the painted engine, with some valve springs made from wound wire and the front frame plates attached.



And finally, the finished engine, in place, along with some plumbing (although the radiator pipes are not glued on in this photo), ignition wiring and some wiring to where the headlights will go.



Overall, this was an informative project, and a good test for the 3d printing. Click on the image below to go to the galley of photos of the finished model:



Next up for me is some practice with car paint finishes.

I've also got something bigger in the works, which I'll reveal here once it's a bit closer to being ready ;)

Thanks for reading!

Beginning the Build: Morgan Three Wheeler

On my continuing quest for a better car paint finish, I've chosen a Morgan Three Wheeler model, from Minicraft, as my next build.



Often, when I pick out kits to build, I do so because of the difficulty and complexity of the kit. I look for well-engineered kits, with lots of extras like photo-etch, metal parts, great decals, etc. This kit, on the other hand, I picked out because I really like the Morgan Three Wheeler. I've seen a few in person and always though that they were just really cool vehicles.

As a result of that method of kit selection, this one ended up taking quite a bit of extra work to make it acceptable. Below you can see the parts as they came out of the box: A few trees of a fairly soft grey plastic, some hard-ish rubber tires, some clear parts, a length of tubing for the engine and one tree of thickly-coated chrome parts.



First and foremost, I knew that the chrome parts were just not going to cut it. The varnish/primer that they use under the chrome was on there pretty thick, and in combination with the chrome paint, was filling in many of the details on the parts. That's not evening mentioning the fundamental problem with parts that are painted on the trees: The spots that are left unpainted on the parts once they are cut off the sprue. I decided to give a technique a try that I had read about online and in magazines: de-chroming the parts with Bleche-wite. Bleche-wite is a cleaner that is meant to whiten the whitewalls of tires. It's a pretty aggressive cleaner, so should be handled with care, in a well-ventilated area. I used a baking dish, with the bottle of cleaner emptied into it. I dropped the chrome sprue in there and covered it with plastic wrap. I found that it took a couple multi-hour sessions to get all the chrome off, but because this solvent isn't as aggressive as something like lacquer thinner, I didn't have to worry about the plastic itself dissolving. If you are going to try this yourself, I recommend giving it a few hours in the cleaner and then giving it a light scrubbing with a toothbrush (don't use the brush afterward, despite the tooth-whitening potential), and repeat that process until all the chrome and underlying varnish is all gone.



With that out of the way, I should probably mention something about this kit: It is a mess. Compared to many of the other kits that I have built, from the likes of Tamiya, Hobbyboss and Dragon, this one is of markedly lower quality. There is heaps of flash, the registration between the mold halves is not very good, there are ejector pin marks and sinks all over the place and it just requires a great deal of work to get into shape.

That said, I began by getting the body into a state that is ready for primer and paint. There were sinks on the exterior of the body in every place where there were structural braces on the inside. I ended up thinning some green Squadron putty with some lacquer thinner and spreading that over these areas. After that, I worked my way through various grits of sandpaper, wet sanding until it was smooth enough to be primed. Below you can see the exterior has been sanded, but the rear tire area still needs to be cleaned up.



Also, while consulting some reference, I determined that the way the instructions wanted me to put the wheel halves together would have resulted in wheels that didn't really look like the real things. The 1:1 car's wire wheels look to have an offset pattern, making for a much more visually-dense criss-cross pattern. The way the parts aligned resulted in all the spokes lining up, making for a much simpler look. I wanted the more complex look, so I shaved off the locator pins and offset the halves a few degrees. Below you can see the stock and offset locations of the wheel halves.



Some thing unusual about this kit is that it is constructed very much like the real car, with an underlying frame that the body sits on top of. While I'm not sure if this was the best idea, since the plastic that this kit is made of is pretty soft and not the best structural material, that is how it is made, so that is what I had to work with. While assembling the front end, I did notice that one of the bracing bars was cast out of scale, so I just replaced it with some extra brass rod that I had laying around, bent to match.



Below you can see a painted wheel, tire mounted, attached to the rear drive assembly. This whole assembly ends up being covered by the body, though, so there were some things here that I would usually fix, but decided not to bother with in this case. As a side note, to anyone else who may attempt this kit: The instructions mention dipping the tires in warm water in order to soften them before stretching them around the wheels. Use HOT water. It took me a few tries, with increasing warm/hot water to get the tires onto the wheels, and I managed to damage a few spokes. Using very hot water from the start would probably avoid any damage.



Below you can see the fairly simple dash board, with decals applied. The kit came with some very thick lenses for these gauges, but I decided to just use some clear parts cement to coat them instead, so that the graphics could still be seen.



Below you can see the frame all together, and the body painted with the interior painted and attached.



Here I'll touch upon something that will be addressed more in the next blog post: conversion from an air-cooled engine to a water-cooled one. The first part of that involved reshaping the front cowl a bit. The model part also had a very large raised band where there should have been a barely sunken weld bead. I reshaped the front opening a bit to give some curve to the sides and then cut off the raised ridge and used a heated sewing pin to carve a bit of a weld bead. Below you can see the reshaped cowl along with a few other parts after getting a coat of primer, black gloss and Alclad chrome paint.



Finally, below you can see the rear rack mounted and a general indication of the quality of the paint job on this one. It's generally better than the SLS model, but still not quite what I was hoping for. This one is Tamiya british green and clear paints right from the can. I've decided that after this model is done, I'm just going to get a bunch of cheap car kits and just spend some time practicing my painting techniques on the bodies of those models.



Thanks for reading, and tune in for the next post, which will have some interesting new developments in model building!

Repairing a few Older Projects

Before I move on to the next model build, I wanted to put up a quick post that had some updates from previous projects.

Repair #1:

So, after I completed the Panzer and BMW motorcycle models, I put them together into one display case, and took them to my office at work for display. I was bringing various other models in at the same time, in various other display cases. Some of those cases had the plastic tops that snapped to the bases and some had the tops that just sat on the bases. Unfortunately, when I picked up the case that held the tank and motorcycle, I THOUGHT it was one that snapped together, but it wasn't. This resulted in the lower half of the case dropping to the table and then bouncing onto the floor, doing a bit of damage to both models, which were wired to the base.

I was pretty mad at myself for making such a mistake and, after a great deal of cursing, decided to put the models and all the broken pieces back in the case, and the case back into its box, to be fixed later. Fast forward a year or two and I finally felt like I was able to open the box up and see how hard it would be to repair the models. Fortunately, it turned out to be pretty easy! Below you can see the two models and their detached parts all spread out, ready for fixing.

The tank lost a few hatches, some road wheels and some chunks of track. A bit of time with some plastic cement and it was good as new. I also took the opportunity to repose some of the hatches into a more natural position, but forgot to take a picture of the finished project. Just imagine that those engine hatches are no longer sticking straight up :)



The motorcycle just needed a few small parts reattached.



Repair #2:

The Hornethopter model itself wasn't damaged, but the base that I built for it ended up throwing me for a loop. I have since learned that the chunk of wood that I bought for the base, which was a 'turning block', was actually pretty wet wood. The turning blocks come with a wax coating, which keeps the moisture in the wood, presumably making it better for turning on a lathe. When I prepared the block, I burned off the wax, cut the shape that I needed and carved it a bit. I put some polyurethane on there, attached the brass name plate, tube for the model and some felt dots on the bottom and called it done.

Fast forward a few months, after the model had been sitting under a bell jar at work, and the moisture had all evaporated from the block of wood. As the wood lost its moisture, it also shrunk. It shrunk enough to significantly buckle the brass name plate. I brought the model home, thinking that I could pop the plate off, and re-glue it into place. Unfortunately, the plate didn't really want to flatten out properly, so I decided to go a different route. I scanned the hornethopter logo and printed it out onto clear decal sheet. I sanded the glue off of the front of the wood block, made it smooth again and gave it a coat of gloss polyurethane. Then I put the decal on there, where the plate used to be, and gave it a few more coats of gloss polyurethane. Good as new!