kurtvd19

You can also use the one piece bottom provided. Please do yourself a favor and read the instructions all the way through before you glue a single part together. I always tell newbies this is always step #1. You can weight the center piece on top of a piece of glass or wax paper and put a bit of glue on one of the side pieces, push them together and weight the 2nd piece till the glue cures. Repeat with the third piece. I have a metal assembly fixture with magnets for this kind of work but weights work just as well.

Actually the hose jacket is canvas and the texture is not real rough - remember the firefighters need to be able to drag it and rough ='s hard to drag. It is a heavier canvass than used on roofs of boats. I just looked at the roll of solder-off in my shop and it's way too coarse. The texture will not be very noticeable at 1/24 or 1/25. Smoother would be less noticed than too rough. I forgot that some FD's use extruded hoses - not in this area though - smooth except for the longitudinal grooves. Check this suppliers photos - https://www.edarley.com/fire-hose/ They actually show yellow booster hose now! Never saw any but it is made.

Look for flat shoelaces. When the hose is packed into the hose bed it stands on edge. I don't know what size shoelace to tell you but today they all use 3" hose for supply/attack lines many times with a "WYE" that branches off to two smaller lines - 1 1/2 to 1/34" dia. that is easier to get into a building, up stairs and around corners.

https://thenrgstore.org/collections/guild-products/products/model-ships-2021-calendar

Price Reduced - just a few left.

One of my local club members is a member and former President of the Association Professional Model Makers www.modelmakers.org and two others in the club were employed in the field. They have taken a tremendous hit with the advent of 3D printing. One is retired - not by choice but he got his SS within a few months. The other two had shops with machinery and all. One switched to a related production field - making mold boxes for castings and is doing fine. The other still has his shop and the work he does for the Chicago area museums keeps him going. But their prototype work died. They both did display props for trade shows - all gone in 2020. The APMM newsletters are a great resource.

I was interested in both the home ex for cooking and shorthand. Back in 1961 home ex was for females only. No exceptions. I wanted to learn shorthand so I could take notes in classes. NO had to take typing before shorthand. At the time I never envisioned a need to learn typing - if I knew then what I know now I would have taken it. Back then girls were not allowed to take any shop classes except drafting. What should be mandatory is a class on life skills. How to make a budget. How to balance a check book - realizing only dinosaurs actually write checks. How to cook. I had a friend who wound up damn near starving to death when he and his wife separated. W/o carry out delivery he would have starved.

Congratulations. It looks great and you learned from the experience. That's a win-win for sure. Kurt

Tim: I too frustrated my Father after becoming a ME and doing drafting by hand long before CAD, I left the field to go onto the Fire Dept. Actually followed after my Father and Maternal Grandfather going the FD route though they were volunteers. My education sure did help down the road when I became a Division Chief in charge of Fire Prevention and part of the job was to review drawings for commercial buildings. All hand drafted and I was right at home. Then we got our first high rise building - 9 stories tall and they were CAD plans. I became a convert instantly. I am still so many years later trying to learn CAD and resort to the drawing board because I can do it quickly. Those first CAD drawings were so different in their presentation and I haven't seen this method used by any other firm since then but the electrical, HVAC, plumbing, sprinkler and other systems were duplicated on transparent sheets that could be laid over the floor plan one at a time or combined - one could see how one system crossed over another or couldn't because it was blocked completely. Now the CAD programs can check for interference's, etc. that just can't be done by hand drafting. But I have never sat down and looked at a set of CAD plans and marveled at their beauty like I have with hand done drawings. Looking at ship plans done in CAD cannot compare to studying plans done in the late 1800s up to the 1930s where draftsmen showed wood grain, coal in the bunkers, etc. Some of these hand drawn plans are worthy of framing. And I actually do have a large ink on linen drawing of a small sloop designed and drawn by Fred Martin dated 1903. I see new stuff all the time - or maybe I forgot I saw it before - age can do that. Kurt

Right on. Lack of research - even a cursory look at photos would have helped the colors - except the pump being hidden from easy view. I initially got up to walk over to my stash of kits when I realized this is a new kit - not a recycled AMT kit - enclosed jump seats are much more recent than the AMT kits.

Closed cab - pretty close to identical to the one you showed.

I know where you can buy the 1956 ALF pumper I first drove if you still want a big red collectable. When I am in my shop here at home I can see the house but not the back yard where it is parked. I see the front end every time I leave the house and go south and wonder why it isn't covered or in a garage. The guy who bought it was on the FD with my Dad and for a couple of years while I was on the local Dept before going full time with the adjoining town. He's gone now and either his son or daughter now live there and don't know what they have. Or did you mean a 1/25 scale ladder truck?

It's going great. Nice work. The part in question is the pump panel - and the drivers side with the gauges etc. The Engineer controls the pump from this position. The other side has a connection or two for additional hose lines. There is nothing inside except the connections to the pump, the wiring for the panel lights, pressure lines to the gauges, etc. Also inside are the water pipe lines to the hose outlets on both sides of the vehicle and the pipe up to the hose reel that sits atop the box. The hose reel is for what we called a booster hose. I have never seen any color of these high pressure hoses except a muted dull red and black. The pressure on this line can be up to 1,000psi - depending on the pump mfg. Most city FDs around here don't use booster lines today but rural areas with field fires do use them. The engineer controls the pressure delivered to the hoses by engaging the pump before leaving the drivers position - if they intend to use high pressure on the booster line he engages the 3rd stage which delivers high pressure after the incoming water enters the 1st stage and the incoming pressure is increased there and then enters the 2nd stage where the pressure is increased further and then to the 3rd stage where it is increased yet again. If the fire is one where quantity is needed vs pressure only the first two stages are engaged. These pumps are centrifugal pumps and I have described how the pumps I have operated are operated. I never operated a pump after August of 1984 when I was injured on the job and when I came back they promoted me to Div. Chief so I might be a bit rusty on specific details. BTW, every fire pump I have ever seen is red. Doesn't matter if it's on a pumper or in a building. ALF purchased their pumps from a pump mfg. who make pumps for many uses. Fire pumps undergo extensive testing to get approval as a fire pump and then each pump is tested to strict protocol at the factory before shipping. Fire pumps cost a lot more than a pump with the identical components that isn't meant for fire service use. These other pumps cam be almost any color but red. I have been inside pump mfg factories and have seen green, blue, orange but never a red one outside the dedicated space they use for the fire pump assembly and testing areas. Most firefighters never see the inside of a pump mfg facility and my seeing the making and testing of fire pumps was because I was the Fire Prevention Division Chief and had to approve all fire pumps for the large buildings in town so their certification was something we had to take very seriously.

When I started driving I had to borrow Dad's car for dates - between 16 and 18 mostly only Friday nights because that was when the local FD met and Dad didn't need the car. The one drawback was the FD radio had to be on at all times - if I was late the radio would come alive with 'Kurt look at the time!" and I better be home very quick after that. I responded with my Dad from home to the fire scene from about 13 on until I got on the FD at 18 - at which point I drove to the firehouse on my own. My job at the fire scene initially was to ask a neighbor to use their phone, call the fire house and relay messages between the Chief and the firehouse. Then we got the first radios and the Chief's "portable" radio required a sling to go on the shoulder - so I got to stand next to him with the radio handy. Shortly after that we got radios in each piece of apparatus - I was about 14 or 15 then.

I am following. The first truck I ever drove (1965) was a 1956 American LaFrance Suburban Pumper - the Suburban model had the pump panel on the right (curb) side for the protection of the Engineer. I got on the local volunteer FD the day I tuned 18 and the next Friday night I took part in driver training. The truck we had was of course much different than this model - more rounded front end and the jump seats behind the driver and officer were single back facing seats w/o doors on the side just open to the rear. Nice and toasty warm returning from fires in cold weather but pretty darn hot when the seasons were reversed. The big V12 engine put out a lot of heat. Dual spark plugs from dual magnetos. I was told they used a old Packard engine. The American Lafrance Fire Apparatus Museum is filled with various types and years of American LaFrance apparatus at Charleston, SC. It was about 1/4 mile from the NRG Conference hotel when we met there in 2013. If you are in the area it's worth seeing. There is even one truck there I have ridden to fires on - the old Snorkel Squad One from the Chicago FD was built by ALF on a GMC chassis - we used to ride with Chicago for training and SS1 was the busiest CFD unit. http://www.northcharlestonfiremuseum.org/ Back in 1956 when they got this pumper American LaFrance presented my Father with a custom built Tonka Toy version of the pumper (made strictly for American LaFrance) that had a plunger type of pump with a coiled Booster Hose that squirted water from a small tank. I wish I had the foresight to put it on a shelf back then but what 9 year old kid isn't going to play with it instead? I used to put on my leather Kairns fire helmet (we each got one when the FD got new helmets) a rain coat and play fireman - I even used the helmet to carry water to the play area in the back yard - at this stage I don't remember what the water was for but I have vivid memories of carrying the water in the helmet and how that eventually ruined the helmet - there are also collector items but not as much as the truck. I have two of the leather helmets that made a comeback (pre-OSHA applying to FDs) exactly as they were originally made that I wore during my career. One is real nice condition the other has the metal piece that holds the shield with the Dept. Name and ID number on the front smashed down distorting the leather shield a bit - a floor above came down on a couple of us w/o injuries other than minor burns we didn't even notice until later. Adrenalin is wonderful - at times. The photo shows my helmets from my career. The leather helmet I got when I first joined the FD where I spent the next 27.5 years - is at the right. The helmet they issued me when promoted to Engineer (the driver and pump operator though I spent most of my time as an Engineer driving the ladder truck) is at the left. The white helmet is my last helmet when I was promoted to Division Chief. Just noticed the cobwebs - this is above the man door in the garage at the bottom of the stairs from my shop. Will get to them someday.... Sorry to have hijacked the thread but get an old fireman feeling nostalgic and I am surprised I didn't go longer.

Maybe Gus would loan you his trained rigging fleas to hold the buck for riveting.

Yes. At least in front of the table - spill some paint = BIG trouble. If you are using acrylics your only issue is spilled paint. Acrylic over spray will be dry before it hits the floor - you may need to sweep up some dust. If using solvent paints they are not always dry before hitting the floor and make sure the fan at the rear is explosion proof.

Better use some sort of drop cloth if not using acrylics.

Pat: Thought you and others who followed this great build would like to see that Hemingway's boat is being revived in a new design. This is from the Dec./Jan. issue of Professional BoatBuilder magazine (a Wooden Boat publication). Kurt

Can you please let us know what issue it was?

I haven't used a view camera in a long time. Got rid of my darkroom when I concluded that spending time in it took time I could be shooting so farmed the darkroom work out to the pro lab and concentrated on the photography. Sold the 4x5 and the RB67 just in time before you couldn't give away film cameras (and a 4x5 digital back is just too much cash. Anybody want to buy a few Canon F1's and a bunch of Canon lenses (that don't work on my digital Canons)? Enter the digital age and knowing the limitations of a TS lens decided that focus stacking was the way for me to go. A bit of hassle but it does work. Kurt

Check the TAMU site too. They have done stuff in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain (the 6th Great Lake)

The Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M Univ (TAMU) also has students thesis available for download. https://nautarch.tamu.edu/academic/alum.htm

I am working on a kit review as I write this - actually I can't do both at the same time...😎 It will be just a bit before it is posted but it's a great Level 3 kit.

Do a search for build logs of the Billings Vasa kit here. There are more than one. Should help you just by looking at the logs but feel free to ask questions.