hendie

and now it's back again again. I left my laptop logged in from last night - logged in on my work pc today - had to log in there also, then when I got back home this evening, my laptop had been logged out. s'getting annoying

oooooh... nicely pilfered and even nicelierally executed. It's great watching this all come together, particularly as you are not afraid to jump into new skills with both feet and no parachute. The BT has turned out remarkably well... well, better than that actually. One thing to be aware of coming down the pike is that once you cut the bottom door out, the structure will become a bit, maybe considerably flimsier. I'd start thinking ab out ways to add any internal cross bracing to add some rigidity back not so much sad as WTF !!!!

probably more towards the pork side, but I wouldn't say it was at all fishy.

and.... now it's back again

given your current state of globular pillockry, and in keeping with my memberary title - you do realize that you have drawn the station positions on the outside of the airframe don't you ? We wouldn't want you to go sticking all those frames on the exterior structure - it might interfere with the sleek aerodynamicalness of this lithe beast. you're welcome!

Dell something or other, Win 10, Firefox and all latest fixes/patches etc. Have to log in each time I visit - just started happening this weekend and now it's working okay

understandable. I dunno what's going on. As I said previously, I had issues trying to view photo's on this site this morning and I've seen at least one other post in another thread today talking about the same issue.

stunning as always

Nigel, I've never used Botophu.. oops these are all hosted on Postimage.org looks like our Pete can see them okay. I was having problems with BM this morning with pictures not loading no matter where they were hosted - seems to have sorted itself out now though now that you mention it, it does bear a passing resemblance doesn't it

Very nice again. I must admit to still being just a tad confused as to what is going on, but I am sure the next post or two will put me straight

okay... vacation over and now it's time to get back to the real world. Fortunately I managed to avoid that for a few hours this morning by quickly heading to the basement before anyone noticed I was up and about, and made some modeling advancement in a generally forwards facing direction. While the side frames are being manufactured I had a look around to see what else I could be phaffing about with in the mean time. I have a habit of jumping around in builds, particularly as I find my focus starts to wander a bit when I've been on the same thing for too long. I found a nice piece of potential scratch build in the form of some rotating ventilators that are perched on top of the roof. I had a basic drawing of the ventilators but was missing some vital information - thankfully some kind folks on the rmweb forum provided me with pictures which showed exactly the detail I was missing. I started out by turning the basic form on my lathe before realizing that I was making things difficult for myself. The shape of the ventilator can be seen below - the basic form is a circle tapering from two tangents towards a flat edge. On the lathe, I can only form circular shapes so there would have been a lot of joining and shaping to do. There was a much easier way.... I grabbed a piece of 1/8th inch styrene, drew out the shape on that and then cut and filed to size - that can be seen in the bottom of the picture. After that it was fairly easy to get to the shape I wanted - just one step at a time. (Numbers below refer to the sections in the photo below) 1) If you look at the side view in the photo above, you can see that there is a small lip on the underside - that was achieved by simply gluing another piece of styrene sheet on the bottom surface, cutting roughly to shape then using a file to bring the profile into line. 2) It's a vent innit? Therefore it has some ducting that goes through the roof into the car below. - I rummaged around in my spares box and found a tubular thingy that was the perfect diameter. (I think this was part of the Wessex gearbox that Italeri tried to pawn off on me). All that was needed was to notch a thin slice around half of the end, and that fitted nicely onto the underside of the now, almost recognizable ventilator 3) Perhaps the most difficult operations in scratching this part were 1) shaping the downwards taper towards the rear of the ventilator - trying to keep that nice and even, and 2) Cutting two slots through the ventilator. Cutting the slots was easy - it was keeping them straight and parallel that was the difficult part - that and not breaking off the thin outer edge. Now, why did I want to cut slots in it anyway ? 4) Well, the ventilator has two fins to help direct it into the airflow, and rather than trying to profile ridiculously small pieces of styrene to the exact profile of the ventilator, it was a much easier prospect to just cut a slot and then feed in a section of flat sheet, then... 5) Once the glue had set, it was just a little bit of care and some gentle filing to produce the two fins. All in all, an enjoyable piece of scratching. The thickness of the fins are slightly out of scale, but some concessions have to be made to scale effect here - plus I intend to cast these in resin so I wanted a reasonable chance of the fins being able to be filled inside the mold. Then it was time to add the final detailing. I drilled a small recess in the top and fitted a resin bolt head Followed by a quick squirt of primer to see what needs tidying up before making the mold. (thankfully not too much!). (Ignore the forward fin below - it's the paint and sanding that makes it look ragged in the photo - it's perfectly fine.... trust me, I'm an enginee not fibbing! Then it was out with my recently acquired Lego set to make up the mold base - I finally got fed up with having to search and scrounge for some kind of container every time I needed to make a mold ... and silicone poured. That will be ready tomorrow and then we'll see how successful the whole enterprise was. After that was set aside, I had a quick attempt at mocking up a torpedo vent - mainly to see how feasible it will be to make the gazillion of these little blighters that adorn the roof of Car 310. This was scratched (fairly obviously) from a piece of scrap runner, a punched styrene disc, and a piece of brass tube cut to length and squashed in the vise. While making just one of them wasn't too bad, I can see me getting mightily de-mojo-ed and quickly losing the will to live by the time I reach number three, if not sooner. I think I'll fettle the torpedo a bit more (or make another one), and once happy with the shape, I shall be casting the little boogers in resin - much easier. Punching the discs and cutting/squeezing the brass tube I can live with. and here endeth todays adventures in Tales From A Basement. Other tales are available.

nice to see you back in the fold Steve. Nice work as always in the casting and improving all those kit parts.

lovely work Bill. Still astounded by those seats I am. and so are we.... immensely

that's how I'd approach it and if possible find some feature that you can use to create an overlapped joint rather than just butt joining all the way around ditto. 5 minute has it's uses - but not for this. dunno but it seems like he's taken a shine to it

excellent job on the seats Bill. When I'm casting I generally fill about 75% then have a rummage around inside the mold with a cocktail stick trying to ensure that I poke into all those hard to reach crevices and wotnots, then top up with the remaining 25% It can be a bit of a challenge in this heat where I find that the resin starts to go off in around 60 seconds, but it seems to help eliminate some of those bubbles and voids on the finished part

ah... so it's not just me then

yep, just another fail in the colonial English exam

the things you do with seats.... is pretty darned amazing sir.. if I wore a cap, it would be doffed in your general direction

Sorry Nigel - I never noticed your question earlier - I really must read things better. We went down to New Orleans for a weeks break. Lots of bacon flavored bloody mary's for breakfast! My favorite was with bacon infused vodka, and a slice of bacon on the side. I did like the fact that you can go out for breakfast, have something nice to eat with a bloody mary - then get a bloody mary to go !!! It doesn't quite look the same in a polystyrene cup though. I had a bunch of hotel points crying out to be used so I got a week in the Waldorf Astoria gratis - even better, when I arrived they had given me a free upgrade to a suite - couldn't ask for better. I couldn't believe it on the first night when there was a knock on the door around 9pm - it was the maid service asking if I wanted the bedsheets turned down - We even had a "personal concierge" at our beck and call to organize anything we wanted - when we wanted it. - oh how the other half live ! We did the usual stuff... Bourbon Street (looked like , smelled like and generally was just - but you have to do it regardless - It is New Orleans after all...), swamp tour, jazz bands on the steam paddle boat down the Mississippi etc. The remainder of the French Quarter was interesting, and very picturesque, but Bourbon Street was pretty horrible - just tat, kitsch, and more But I did meet this intimidating looking fella... scary huh ? but he doesn't 't look anywhere near as scary when he's beggin' for a marshmallow does he ? Looks kinda stupid in fact. a bit wimpy if you ask me and the wild boar were kind of.. well.. boring the scenery was rather nice though. And on most evenings we got the roof top pool to ourselves. another bonus was letting SWMBO go and spend a day shopping while I went to tour the WWII museum. - Even got a discount on entry as I was ex forces - obviously I had no proof of service with me, but they took me at my word, thanked me for my service and waved me in. Very nice of them. Other than that, the week was spent eating crawfish in all their guises, various alligator dishes, Étouffée, gumbo, jambalaya, beignets, and oyster after oyster after oyster. I do like to try the local fare wherever I am. it sure sucks to be back and there will be no photomagraphic update this weekend I'm afraid. I only got a few hours downstairs and spent that cutting new vestibule ends which you've all seen before so no point in pikchurs. I'll wait until I actually have something that makes it look like this build is advancing in a generally forward direction

thanks Rich Well, back from my travels again, and getting ready to leave again on Monday for Chicago, I am hoping to get down stairs to do some modeling this weekend - that's after I've mowed the lawn, changed the brakes on the wife's car, and got the household chores behind me. on the bright side - I did get the brass side frames ordered so hopefully will have them within a couple of weeks I may be back later with some kind of update.. or may not - we'll see

love the work - and looking forward to seeing it all obscured by paint

oh, nice advancery on the sucking front there Baron. I don't know how visible the rippling of the plastic is when viewed by the Mk I in the flesh - black always seems to amplify any defect, and you're always going to get some extent of variation of the surface when sucking. Perhaps a nice coating or two of high build primer will provide the finishing touch when flattened.

a bit like myself it would seem. I haven't even ventured down stairs since I got back from me hols.

I corrected your typo Crisp. Just let us have the start date so I can put a reminder in my calendar

wunnerful styrenesquing there Bill. A little bit of fettling and some micromeshing around the corners and that will stand it's own with many an aftermarket offering. yes, I finally made it back from the big easy - just taking my time getting back into the swing of things