gjdale

Thanks for the kind comments folks, and for the likes. Wheel Construction continued… Once all four wheels were assembled, they were given a light sand and a coat of Stynylrez grey primer. The next step is to shape the spokes. The aim here is to have the spokes go from a rectangular cross section near the hub, to an oval cross section at the rim. This is achieved by carefully adding a bevel to both edges on both sides of the spokes and then finishing off with sanding to smooth things out. The instructions suggest using a #11 blade in an Exacto knife to do this. I opted to use my Russian miniature carving tools instead. They made the job really easy! Here is the initial bevelling underway. Having primed the wheel beforehand makes it easy to see what is happening as you go. And here are the spokes after bevelling and sanding: The rims are then shaped by carving out a scallop between each spoke. Again the instructions suggest using an Exacto blade for this. This time I opted to use a couple of small dental burrs in my rotary tool for the initial shaping, finishing up by hand with some sanding sticks. As a final touch, a line is scored across the rim between every second pair of spokes to simulate the joint lines of the rim sections. Here’s what the completed wheel looks like prior to painting: I then needed to find a way to hold these while they were painted. Although the centre hole in the hub is exactly 1/8”, installing them on a 1/8” rod would be problematic as the wheel would still be able to turn. Instead, I found some 5/32” dowel in my stash and sanded a taper on the end until I could fit the wheel over and gently push it to a snug fit. Wrapping tape around the dowel after the wheel was in place prevented it from coming adrift during painting. Here’s the set-up: And here’s the painted wheel, still awaiting a clear coat finish. After painting two of the wheels, I ran out of Red paint. I ordered some more a week ago but it'ss still in transit. I'm now at a standstill until the new paint turns up…

Looking good Kevin.

Painting continues… This week has been a bit of a marathon in the paint shop. Here are those Copper, Leather and Black parts all painted up. I added some gold/brass to the buckles on the "leather" straps (bottom left in photo). Hard to see in the photo, but the wicks of all the lamps are also painted black. The engraving on the shield was also painted black. This was achieved by painting the entire shield face, and then wiping over very lightly with thinners to leave only the engraving painted. Next up was some parts that were partly Brass and partly Black: And here they are all painted up: Next up some all-Brass parts (some bits are deliberately unpainted). Note also the gauge face on the boiler gauge: Then some miscellaneous Red parts: And while I had the red paint out, here are the parts for the Brake Assembly: And finally, the Steam Regulator and Steam Whistle. In this photo the four hub caps are at the bottom left. Although there are cast parts for these, they are also provided as machined brass parts. I simply polished these and then gave them a gloss clear coat to stop them from tarnishing. The colour of the painted “polished brass” is a pretty fair match for the actual polished brass. I was about to paint the Axle Limit Chains, but when I looked at the chain provided in the kit, I was disappointed to see that it is nowhere near the correct scale. Here is a picture of the kit-provided chain overlayed on the 1:1 scale drawings: I have found what I think will be a suitable replacement chain and have ordered that. Should be here in a week or so. Coal Buckets… Next task was to make up the Coal Buckets. These are provided as photo-etched brass: And here they are after bending and forming: And after painting: That completes the painting of all the metal components (apart from the Chain). With that mammoth task behind me, it was time to tackle the construction of the Wheels. Wheel construction The wheels are made up from some laser cut ¼” plywood rims, some laser cut basswood spokes, and some machined hubs. The first task is to lightly sand the front and back faces of the plywood and basswood carrier sheets to remove the excess char. Then the back face of the Rims are marked with a reference mark, and the front face of the spokes similarly marked. The reason for this is that because the laser cuts at a very slight angle, by mating the front side of the spokes with the back side of the rims, the angles will mesh tightly. With that done, the parts for one wheel at a time are removed from the carrier sheet and all sides cleaned of excess laser char, being careful not to remove the index marks. The instructions then say to lay the rim over the provided template to mark the position of the centre of the spokes. It was at this point that I realised that the templates had been printed incorrectly and were not properly to scale. Easily fixed – I scanned the template into my computer and reprinted at 94% scale and voila! The spokes are then assembled into the machined hub. This is a clever design and makes building the wheels really easy. At this stage they are just a push fit. Note the reference lines on the spokes near the hub. The Rim is then added to the assembly, taking care to align the reference marks to the spokes, providing nice and even spacing. Once satisfied with the arrangement, thin CA is applied to the spokes, rims and hub and wicked into all of the joints. Here’s one of the front wheels: And now with one of the rear wheels also completed: Two more wheels to assemble to this stage, and then the fun begins with shaping both the spokes and the rims. Stay tuned…

Can’t answer your question definitively Andrew, but is it possible that the plans have a misprint - is it possible that where they are calling for .012” it should read .032”?

Some great work there Andrew - looking sharp!

Looking good Bill. Glad to hear that Callie was able to help you out with the graphics - she is a class act!

Thanks for all the interest and the "likes". Meanwhile, Painting continues… While I was getting ready to paint these parts, I decided to also prep and paint some parts for the next step. The Coal Bin components: And the Smoke Stack components: And here are all these parts after painting: Here is a shot of the Smoke Stack components temporarily joined together to show the impact of the different colours together: At this stage, the Coal Bin parts are assembled, including the wooden step and its support brackets, the grab bars and the coal bin braces. The grab bars and braces, as well as the step support brackets are all attached using 00-90 nuts and bolts, which proved to be quite tricky. Fortunately, my experience building my Pocher car model recently meant that I had both some experience with this type of fastening, and also some tools to make the job a little easier. Here’s a close-up of the inside of the fastenings. Getting access to these became progressively more difficult as each part was added. With that step complete, the Coal Bin is set aside for later and preparation and painting of the next batch of parts continues, this time focusing on the Copper elements including the Expansion Tanks (large and small), the Headlight, the Hand Lamps, and some water return pipes, all shown here prior to any preparation. Also in this batch will be some “leather” components – the Seat, the Whip, and some hose retaining straps – as well as a couple more components to be painted black, including the Coal Door, the Spark Arrestor (brass photo etch) and the Boiler Shield (engraved). I’ll be back with the painted parts in a few days…..

Plus one for the Festool. I have one and use it for my larger hand held tools in the big workshop. It’s very quite but also very efficient. They also have a “cyclone” option, which I have, and that reduces the frequency of bag changes. Expensive, but worth it in my opinion.

Jacek, You might have misunderstood my sense of humour. I was making the point that paint spill or not, the end result looks very good.

Looking good Mark. As for the paint spill - what paint spill?

You are absolutely correct Wefalck, but to do so would mean scratch building about 90% of the model. The soft Britannia metal is proving quite challenging. The casting imperfections are annoying in some places and limiting in others. For example, all of the threaded parts are cast but if these are imperfect, it’s not possible to re-cut them with a die because the Britannia metal is so soft that any torque applied will snap the part (don’t ask me how I know this!). These threads are supposed to take a 00-90 nut, so they are very small to start with. Also, one of the axles was cast considerably oversize and it took a long time and a lot of patience to carefully sand this down so that the wheel hubs (which are in fact accurately machined metal) will fit. While I’m confident that this will still build into a nice model, I’m not a fan of this material.

Just exquisite Ben!

Thanks for the words of encouragement and for all the "likes". Assembly begins… Painting of these initial assembly parts is finally complete. Here are all of the polished brass parts: And here are the rest – red, black and multi-coloured parts: Most of these parts were then assembled to the Mainframe, beginning with the lower Steam Box, then the Flywheels and crankshaft, crankshaft support, slide assemblies, pushrods, and Steam Box Manifold. Then it was the Lower half of the Water Box, followed by the Upper half of the water box, the Steam Box cover and the various components of the Manifold assembly. I didn’t take any in-progress shots, but here are a few of the assembly to date, starting with an overview of the complete assembly: Here is a close up of the front end showing the water box top and the hose inlet: And the centre section – flywheels and pushrods: And the rear section showing the manifold detail: Here’s a view of the front section from the other side: And another view of the rear section: And finally, a view of the underside: Attention now turns to the Axle assemblies. Here are the parts laid out for the Front Axle assembly, ready for cleaning up, test fitting and painting: And the same for the Rear Axle: I’ll be back once these are painted and ready to go…

That looks fabulous Glen. Congratulations and well done!

A Minor Setback… In painting these parts, there are a few components that are called out as “unpainted - polished metal”. Okay, no problem…. The parts circled in the photo below are the Crankshaft Sleeves – they secure the Flywheel crankshaft to the Mainframe. These are some of those “polished metal” parts. I thought the easiest way to polish these would be to mount them on a mandrel and then chuck the mandrel in my rotary tool for quick and easy polishing. I found an appropriate piece of brass rod in my stash to use as a mandrel and secured them using a touch of CA glue, figuring I’ll just de-bond them from the mandrel after polishing using Acetone. Great theory. After polishing them, I gave them a good soak in Acetone and then tried to separate them from the mandrel – no dice. Then I remembered that when I was building the steering wheel from my Chris Craft runabout, I had done this numerous times by heating the brass parts to de-bond the CA. Great, I thought, I’ll do that……forgetting that I was working with Britannia metal and not just brass. Here is the result of that ill-fated decision: After calling myself all sorts of names that amounted to: “you fool!”, I had no choice but to make these parts from scratch. Fortunately, I had a piece of ¼” Aluminium rod in my stash that was exactly the right diameter for the outer ends. I was able to take some measurements off the drawings and after about an hour at the lathe I was able to come up with these replacements: Of course, I polished these while they were still on the lathe… Painting has been progressing well, albeit slowly. It seems to take longer to do the masking up than the actual painting as some of the pieces require two or more colour combinations. More pics once painting is complete.

Nice to see you back at this lovely model Bob. I look forward to seeing you finish her.

Seat Structure and Flywheel Assemblies The next step is to prepare and paint a number of parts for the Seat Structure and the Flywheel Assemblies. I also read ahead and opted to prepare a few parts from the next step as these will be needed for the next assembly stage. I spent a fair amount of time today prepping these parts – cleaning flash, test fitting, re-boring some holes, and finally scrubbing with a toothbrush and soapy water. They are now ready for painting. No fancy photos today – we’ll save that until they’ve been painted.

Distractions I have been a little distracted over the last week. My wife decided to re-organise the pantry and in helping her to do that, I suggested that the addition of some “stadium seating” would assist in being able to see/find things at the back of the cupboard, and hence keep it all more organised. I knocked up a quick prototype and was quickly instructed to get on and make a “proper” version. It doesn’t look like much, and indeed is little more than a series of boxes. But while the prototypes were simply pin-nailed together, these are all properly joined with finger/box joints and the front/back panels are all housed in rabbets. And then of course, they had to be painted. Making these gave me the perfect opportunity to test out my recently completed home made edge-sander. I have to say, it works a treat! Once that was completed, I decided to try to up my game in the photography department. I have acquired a new backdrop and dug out some lighting that I had bought some years ago but not used much. Here’s some samples of some testing using the main frame as the test mule. I had to prop it up at an angle to try to get the best view. The blue background, combined with some better lighting, certainly seems to make a difference. So now at last, the build proper begins. And it starts by adding some of those small parts to the Lower Steam Box and the Upper Water Box. You can see that a decal has been added as a gauge face on the Upper Water Box. These are now set aside for later use while more parts are identified, cleaned up, dry fit and painted. Stay tuned…

Glad to see your painting repairs worked out. That’s fascinating about the swastika decals!

Given that you got the ship in AND successfully raised the masts, I’d say the score is now Man 2 - Model 1. 👍 Well done Glen!

Sorry to hear of the mishap with the masking. One trick you might try “next time” is to paint a clear coat along the edge of the masking prior to your colour. That will prevent the bleeding/wicking of the colour and any bleed will be the clear coat.

This should be an interesting project Jeff. I’ve grabbed a front row seat.

I’ll be interested to see your take on this model Mark, so I’ll come along for the ride. Plus, someone might have mentioned you have a well-stocked bar in the corner……

Looking good Mark - I hope it's not too long before we see more of this one. I'm sure you'll enjoy the break while you do the Sphinx.

Thanks Paul and Craig. Craig - after much experimenting I found that the trick with the Stynylrez was to use a 0.5mm needle, with air pressure at 25-30psi and paint flow reduced to a bare minimum. Then, as Kurt and others have suggested, spraying multiple light coats (in the one session). It seems that this combination of the three factors (needle size, air pressure and paint flow) are needed to get a nice smooth application without blocking up the airbrush. It took me a while, but I'm pretty confident with it now and it really does produce a nice even, smooth and durable finish that can actually be sanded if you so desire (unlike some other acrylic primers that shall remain nameless!). For cleaning the airbrush, although you can use water, IPA and/or acrylic airbrush cleaner, I've found the quickest and most effective is to use some lacquer thinner (generic from the hardware store). Of course, you need to take the appropriate precautions with this, but if you're spraying lacquer paints as I am anyway, then you've already got these precautions in place.