wefalck

Just read on their Web-site. It feeds indeed a nozzle coaxial to the laser-beam to blow out burnt material, so that it does not obstruct and scatter the laser, thus making the cut narrower with less charring (my interpretation, not their sales-pitch ...).
 
However, if I read correctly, it works from bit-images, not from vector graphics. I wonder, how well it would be doing on lines oblique to axes of the machine and on curves. 

Heavy and siege artillery pieces were usually broken down into several loads, as not only towing-capacity was limited before the around the mid-1930s, but also the load-bearing capacity of roads and bridges, not talking about moving them across fields.
 
The Austrians had a 38 cm siege howitzer designed in 1916, which was broken down into four loads:
Barrel 38 t, carriage 33 t, and two lower carriage/foundation trucks of around 37 t each. It took 8 to 20 hours to prepare the foundation in soft ground and several days on rock. Assembly of the gun took 6 to 8 hours. One of them is preserved in the Army Museum (Heeresgeschichtliche Museum) in Vienna. If I remember correctly, they used a diesel-electric tractor to have enough torque on the wheels.
 

Heavy and siege artillery pieces were usually broken down into several loads, as not only towing-capacity was limited before the around the mid-1930s, but also the load-bearing capacity of roads and bridges, not talking about moving them across fields.
 
The Austrians had a 38 cm siege howitzer designed in 1916, which was broken down into four loads:
Barrel 38 t, carriage 33 t, and two lower carriage/foundation trucks of around 37 t each. It took 8 to 20 hours to prepare the foundation in soft ground and several days on rock. Assembly of the gun took 6 to 8 hours. One of them is preserved in the Army Museum (Heeresgeschichtliche Museum) in Vienna. If I remember correctly, they used a diesel-electric tractor to have enough torque on the wheels.
 

So I got a lot of warping but once I got my head around what I need to do I but the bullet and made a start. This set is so cool. 

Jewellers (silver-)solder rings on a cone-shaped carbon-rod. While, it is not carbon, but graphite mixed with clay, one could perhaps use a lead-pencil mine as mandrel for soldering. They come in various diameters or one could just sharpen an ordinary pencil and put this into a vice for soldering. Solder paste would be the way to go.
 
I am wrapping (soft) wire around a drill shaft, pull it off and then cut the rings with a scalpel on a glass plate. In this way the kerf is on the inside of the ring, where it is less visible even when not soldered. In this way I can produce rings with 0.3 mm inside diameter, if needed. 

What laser-cutter do you actually have?

If you are using very small diameter wire just cut it with a hobby knife and a chisel blade (square ended). Fasten the drill bit in a vice and support the bit and wire coil before trying to cut. It really doesn't matter if the cuts run straight down the drill bit because all of the rings will be the same diameter in any case.
 
For soldering use a tiny bit of liquid solder flux in the gap (use a small paint brush). Then put a tiny bit of solder on the soldering iron tip and touch it to the joint. The flux will pull the solder into the joint. You should be able to pull the soldering iron tip away and have it carry any excess solder. You may get a tiny "spike" where the tip pulled away, but that can be removed with a file. Or wipe the soldering iron tip clean on a wet sponge and touch the joint again to carry away more solder.
 
I can't see a resistance soldering iron having any advantage in this case. You need two separate electrical circuits at the gap between the two pieces to be soldered in order to generate current flow and heat in the gap. The tiny ring is a low resistance loop between the ends to be soldered so there would be no potential difference between the ends of the ring and no current flow in the gap. The heat would be generated between the soldering tip and the metal ring, and not in the gap between the ring ends. This is no different from just using an ordinary hot tip soldering iron.

The technique that I read and stored in memory:
a drill with a shank diameter equal to the inside diameter of the rings
brass or copper wire that is the diameter of the ring body
wrap a tight coil of the wire around the drill shank
saw the coil = lots of open rings
solder
 
I am wondering if a resistance solder machine would play nice for this?
A plot devise in "Crash and Burn" had a primary character go loony from breathing the heavy metals in circuit board solder - so I good ventilation with soldering may be prudent.
 
Copper and brass are ductile - with a jewelers draw plate, theoretically one fat wire can be drawn down to any diameter desired.
There is more to it than that - for brass at least - working it causes it to harden - it gets harder to pull
Heat will harden Fe  -  I think heat will soften brass  and maybe Cu?

I made a bucket using the same method.
 

I used a false-bucket structure.  

I don't like barrels in kits. It requires heavy paint work to make it fine.
 
I have a fiber laser cutter, which can cut cherry wood up to 6mm. It is so useful that I already packed my Proxxon table saw. Also, I bought some thick cardboards for my next project. The brown paper on the picture is 1mm thick. I challenged to make a DIY cardboard cask to replace kits.
 

I spent several hours for measuring, designing, and CAM. Now I only needed five minutes to print each cardboard cask sheet.
 

The left design is final. It is very stable and easy to assemble. I used CA glue only.
 

I spent about 15 minutes assembling each cask.
 

After that, I glued a black paper strip and applied shellac as a varnish. I'll build another smaller cask in the same process.
 
cask 31x21mm.zip
 
These are my design files. It is free to use.  
 

What always puzzles me is, how utterly impractical from both, the handling and the maintenance perspectives these ships must have been - dressed to impress ...

What always puzzles me is, how utterly impractical from both, the handling and the maintenance perspectives these ships must have been - dressed to impress ...

What always puzzles me is, how utterly impractical from both, the handling and the maintenance perspectives these ships must have been - dressed to impress ...

What always puzzles me is, how utterly impractical from both, the handling and the maintenance perspectives these ships must have been - dressed to impress ...

What always puzzles me is, how utterly impractical from both, the handling and the maintenance perspectives these ships must have been - dressed to impress ...

Not sure what to call this structure. It took three attempts to obtain a satisfactory result, partly as a result of not understanding what the plan actually represented. Got there in the end. The "roof" has since been painted white.
I lightly glued two pieces of wood together (at the ends and in the middle of the cut outs), set that up on the mill, cut the slots for the "bars" top and bottom, then cut out the openings.
The rest was just gluing the bits together similar to the wheelhouse. The "glass" is cut from transparent photocopier film rubbed with 400 wet/dry to give a frosted (salt crusted) appearance.
 

 

 

 

 

 
Grant.
 
 
 
 
 

Greetings Fellow Modelers,
 
Thanks to all for the comments, "likes" and for taking the time to look.
 
 
The whole purpose of the shadowbox display is to provide a stage for interchangeable 1/87 vehicles. The first vehicle to take the stage is the Mack FK. Five different “F” series models were built from 1937 to 1947, and with a gross vehicle weight of 23 tons, the FK was built from 1938 - 1941. Trucksplanet.com tells me only 123 units of this vehicle were produced, so they don't show up at truck shows very often.
 
This model kit comes from Ralph Ratcliffe Models and is cast in resin. The owner individually casts each kit himself by hand and consequently the kits are expensive. I bought this kit on eBay some years ago for a fraction of the current list price of around $50 U.S. The company's products are unique in the sense that you can buy truck and fire engine parts À la carte - cab sets, frame and suspension kits, engines, transmissions, wheel sets, etc.  And the castings are very good and considering they are in HO scale, I would say they are excellent.
 
The instructions for building the kit are, let's say simple.
 

 
 
Here's the entirety of the kit and although the assembly is easy, the size and fragility of the model requires patience.
 

 
 
The suspension and drive train goes together quickly.
 

 

 
 
Everything is primed with Stynylrez gray then the cab and hood are airbrushed with a mixture of Tamiya primary flat colors to give me this orangish-red. I leaned orange because I'm going to fade the paint and faded red often reads pink, which I certainly don't want.  The frame is painted black.
 

 
 
The model is assembled - tanks, steps, chain drives, radiator, 5th wheel parts, steering wheel and other stuff.
 

 

 

 
 
The model seemed incomplete to me, so I scratched a few additions.  First, an exhaust stack made of brass wire with two different sizes of brass tubing soldered to it.
 

 
 
And support bracketry adapted from an example I found on-line.
 

 

 
 
I replaced the kit supplied rear-view mirrors with these made of .010” stainless wire and thin slices of styrene rod. The rod was warmed over a candle flame and stretched to gain the diameter required. Extras were made to replace the ones that would surely jump from my tweezers. In the center you can see one of the kit supplied mirrors.
 

 
 
A couple of tow hooks for the front bumper were fashioned from brass wire.
 

 
 
Slices of thin-wall brass tube were cut to represent fender mounted directional signals. These things are about 1.5mm in diameter and less than a .5mm thick and boy were they ever fun to cut from the tubing. They would collapse and required reforming into a ring by slipping them onto a sewing needle. They were filled with a tiny drop of amber Gallery Glass.
 

 
 
I modified the kit supplied headlights. The lower piece in the image below shows the original with a flat featureless face and the upper one that was drilled out to provide a little interest.
 

 
 
The pieces were painted with a steel-colored enamel while the cavities were painted in chrome and filled with clear Gallery Glass.
 

 
In full disclosure, and as far as I can tell, most of the Mack trucks of this era were painted with red frames and I have never seen an FK painted in the way that I have here. But, I'm not claiming the truck is original and the decision on colors as well as the add-on items simply reflects my personal taste. Because the model is so light (.423oz or 12 grams), I did have to torque the frame a tad to get all the wheels to sit on the ground, but overall the model went together well.
 
I didn't want to turn the thing into a rusty pile of junk, so I used a light hand putting some age on it, using only oil paints and pigment powders.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Here's a good look at the headlights. The chrome paint in the cavity with the Gallery Glass on top, catches the light in a decent way. I think the radiator and mirrors need dulled down a bit.
 

 

 
 
And finally, the obligatory gigantic spectacles photo.
 

 
Thanks for stopping.
 
Be safe and stay well.
 
Gary

Well, failing that, we would be content with some progress report on his railway adventures ...

Looking very nice, well done 👍
 
One thing that puzzles me, however, is the orientation of the saw-blade versus the rollers. I would have expected that the rollers feed (planks) into the saw-blade ...
 
And a little technical detail: the ends of leather drive-belts were attached with special metal 'agraffes' and they don't overlap. If they did overlap there is a jump and slip on the pulleys.
 
Sorry to say, but I am bit disappointed over technological progress - a boring electric motor and not a little horizontal steam-engine, the boiler of which is fed with saw-dust and off-cuts   

I wonder sometimes what is more difficult, to build a model or the real ship/boat? Measuring parts should be easier on the smaller parts than on several metres long pieces of the real thing. But then accessibility and measurement tolerances are an issue in models.
 
Well, 18 to 20°C would be far below my comfort zone ... at least for working sitting down.

Nice, clean turning! Steel?

Brian,  “Maybe Some Day” might be now as your Caroline is a steel vessel.  The brass sheet metal work that I am doing is not difficult and I find it easier in some respects than wood.  The only special skill that you need to master is soldering and you probably know how to do that after building your Cairo model.  .010in thick brass is stiff enough for structural strength but still cuts easily with ordinary scissors.  For structural shapes; angles and channels, I started with square or rectangular K&S tubing.  I did need my Byrnes Saw to rip these into required shapes but I believe that if you look hard enough you can find very small brass angles.  There are two advantages to using brass.  First, at 1:96 scale you can work with materials thinner than possible than if using wood.  Second, when painting there is no need to hide wood grain.
 
Roger
 
 

I wonder sometimes what is more difficult, to build a model or the real ship/boat? Measuring parts should be easier on the smaller parts than on several metres long pieces of the real thing. But then accessibility and measurement tolerances are an issue in models.
 
Well, 18 to 20°C would be far below my comfort zone ... at least for working sitting down.

Nice, clean turning! Steel?

I wonder sometimes what is more difficult, to build a model or the real ship/boat? Measuring parts should be easier on the smaller parts than on several metres long pieces of the real thing. But then accessibility and measurement tolerances are an issue in models.
 
Well, 18 to 20°C would be far below my comfort zone ... at least for working sitting down.