CDW

With your hard work and this detail set, this is the best looking 1:350 Fletcher I have seen to this date. The main reason I never started my Fletcher kit was due to a lack of detail items. With this set, one has all they need to do it justice. Is this the set you used/are using?: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Five-Star-1-350-FS350064-USS-Destroyer-Fletcher-for-Tamiya/253647720702?epid=16019614719&hash=item3b0e9510fe:g:hMYAAOSwJ7dbCG22

Great minds think alike. I had a Walleye sandwich platter today. 😎

Indeed it is. Denis is doing a number on this one. Amazing what can be done with spare parts and creativity.

😄

She looks great in primer, I like it a lot. Remarkable how large the ailerons are on this plane. She must have had a snappy roll rate I'll bet.

If you try it in the future, just let the brass cool slowly after heating it. Once it cools, it will be much easier to bend and will more readily hold the shape it's bent to achieve.

If the brass is first heated with a lit candle or something similar, it will soften it and make it much easier to shape/bend. Often, the brass as it comes stock without annealing is difficult to bend and wants to "spring" back to it's original shape.

Excellent work. Looking forward to your next project.

Torpedo tubes look like the real deal. Huge improvement over the stock, kit tubes. Do you anneal the brass before shaping it?

Morning Ken Really enjoyed seeing your train car models. I'll bet it's a lot of fun working those trains with a modern control system like you described. My local train line is a car hauling affair...all the train cars are car haulers, nothing else. My wife and I enjoy seeing the graffiti that covers each car. Real works of art. We wondered how that art work is done. It seems as though the train shipping company must allow it as the work is so elaborate, it must take a while to complete each one. What's the story on that, any idea?

No problem at all. The tops of the masts are Vellejo 71.074 Radome Tan, and the hull bottom is Vallejo 73.605 German Red Brown surface primer. Remember to glue in some blocks of wood inside the hull bottom before attaching your deck pieces. This will give you a secure way to screw your hull to whatever mount you decide to use. I found it was much better to secure the hull to the mount as soon as possible after the hull was painted. You'll be handling the model quite a lot as you build up all the pieces and this will make for safer handling.

Really like the gull wing and classic lines of the biplanes from this era.

Thanks for your kind comments, Kieron. The basic colors for my model were Vallejo 71.055 Black Gray Vallejo 71.119 White Gray

Sweet! Now that looks like a true gasser...all the way down to the "white shoe polish" on the windows for A/G. 😎

Very sharp markings on those two locomotives.

From Japan, there are a whole line of 1:50 scale steam locomotive kits. Beautiful models, I have been so tempted at times to start collecting and building these kits. So far, I have resisted the temptation, but your build here might tempt me again. Locomotives, particularly the steam powered ones, are so fascinating and cool looking.

I was plenty interested, just too cautious once I thought it through. It is designed to fly indoors almost exclusively. If I remember correctly, wind speed can be no more than 5 mph outdoors or you run the risk of the wind overpowering the propulsion system, then you'll have a runaway blimp on your hands! OMG

A friend tried to give me his RC dirigible model...the darned thing was almost 30' long! For real. I told him I couldn't afford the helium it would take to fill it. He said, no problem, I have some tanks full of helium to give you as well. This thing was complete with all the RC equipment and everything. It was designed to fly advertisement inside of domed stadiums. I did some reading on the flying aspects of these ships and realized what a huge liability they would be to fly one. I turned down his free gift. I learned that the professionals who use these things have a helium recovery system used to remove and restore recover the helium after each use. Way too expensive for me to play with, not to mention what would happen if unexpected wind direction sailed this thing over my local international airport. I'd be sitting in a small room in Leavenworth Prison behind bars.

Here is an example of the kind of plastic kits Williams Brothers was famous for. I happened to have some of these handy in a storage drawer, ready for a 1:5 scale biplane model I have yet to build.

Besides the line of 1:32 air racers and the Sparrow, Williams Brothers produced large scale WW1 machine gun and radial engine kits, designed primarily for scale model builders in the RC aircraft hobby. They were the only ones who produced plastic kits of this type and were a mainstay in the RC hobby.

She's coming out bee-u-tee-full Denis. 😎

Williams Brothers had some cool 1:32 planes. I've seen them finished and they look super good.

What you have with this engine is an example of 1960's Revell model car engineering. This is an old Revell engine used in several of their old '60's vintage kits, namely the Orange Crate altered dragster and the Mooneyes rail dragster. Both were modeled after actual race cars from that time period. Revell cornered the market for highly detailed model car and truck kits back then. Nothing else came close. Revell marketed "Part Packs", which were mini kits of engines, race chassis's, bumpers, grilles, and race car bodies such as T-Roadsters, Bantams, etc. On Ebay, you see these old part packs offered for sale though they command a premium price for the vintage items in their original packaging. More recently, others such as AMT have acquired these old Revell molds and reproduced the kits, your engine a prime example of that. All of their kit engines were highly detailed like this 283. In addition, they sold Ford, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and several different Chevy engines including the 409. The first photo etch for model cars I ever saw came out in the 80's. Back then, it was strictly a cottage industry. Vendors produced these items in their garage or very small businesses in small, and expensive quantities. The whole car model aftermarket thing never really took off in the USA for some reason. It never grew much beyond a cottage industry, mom and pop type operation. I'm pretty sure some of these things are still available but like I said, the cost is big when compared to what you get. Obviously, these are not mass produced items. Asia seems to have done the most in photo etch and other aftermarket items, but their products center around race cars such as Porsche, Ferrari, BMW, and formula one type cars. These sets are readily available from sources in Asia, particularly Japan and China.

Just go on Youtube dot com and search "the great train chase". You'll find similar videos on the history of the General.

This model is really coming along! I just watched a history show about the Yanks stealing the General and the ensuing chase. Very interesting history about that train.