Bandsaw Steve

Wow! Thanks for that @Bertie McBoatface Makes me feel like I should have been a bit more diligent and looked it up myself. Interesting though; on face value it’s going to cost roughly 555 times more to repair and conserve than it did to build. Is anyone else not convinced about the quality of modern money?

35 million pounds worth of repairs. No complaints from me, but I wonder how much it cost to build her back in the day?

Wow! If metal then metal!

A 1/72 SS Xantho would be very handy for me right now! and Aquitania in 1/350 scale of course!

Mate! That is one seriously impressive bit of model-building, and a favourite subject of mine too. Congratulations on this excellent work and thanks for sharing it here.

Mate! Those wheels are just awesome! I’m getting inspired about various future projects looking at this!

No doubt all factors in the rarity of its use as an anti-tank gun but - as I understand it - just as important was the fact that these guns (and their highly trained crews) were so valued in their primary role that there was great hesitance to risk them on the front line.

Great work! The 3.7 in particular looks wicked! But then I’ve always had a soft spot for those particular guns. When I was a kid, dad was a member of a museum that had one and I thought it the most awesome thing I’d ever seen… which TBH, at the time, it probably was!

Rear End Now that the wheels and tracks are on this thing I can fully enclose them. I'm going to start with the large track cover / fender things at the rear of the vehicle. Before I started though I used some of my favored 'Valeho' plastic putty to close up the gap between the edge of the hull and the vertical armour plate skirts. There was also some grey primer sprayed over some of the green paint at this stage, so from some angles the nice green paint is getting messed up. It's all part of the plan though. A few months ago I was in my favorite Gundam / 'pop-culture' modelling store (they have all kinds of very groovy stuff for scratch-building) and found a bag of these things for sale. They are long strips of grey styrene with a single, precise 90 degree corner. They are manufactured by 'Wave Corporation' , the same Japanese folks that made the gridded plastic sheet that earlier on featured prominently in this build. These are intended to be internal corner brackets when building with styrene . I gave them a try. The red arrow in the photograph below points to the corner where I used a small length as a bracket to strengthen the side-skirts. These make good brackets and they work well, but straight after I'd used it I realized that I also had a bag of perfectly cut cubes of wood purchased -for next-to-nothing - from a craft store for the purpose of holding things at 90 degrees. Cardboard is another inexpensive product that I'm using more and more. Here I'm developing a cardboard pattern that will ensure that I cut more expensive sheets polystyrene to exactly the correct shape. Here is the finished pattern in position. Now the pattern is traced onto the polystyrene and the sheet is cut. As an aside; during the cutting process I realized that a small belt sander provides a lightning-quick way to round off unwanted styrene corners. It's a surprisingly accurate also! In the end I used a combination of wooden and plastic brackets to create a strong, 90-degree, box-like structure. Now just add the rear panels as shown... Add some surface detail... and now the rear end is finally starting to look something like the real thing. All going well the next post should be something very similar with the front fenders / track covers being constructed. That step should mark the end of the construction of large structural items. The rest will be details and additions. So we really are starting to get to the rear end of this project. Best Regards, Bandsaw Steve

Amazingly, despite being a high priority allied strategic target, due to careful concealment of factories deep in Bavarian forests, German umlaut production actually increased over the course of the war.

By the later stages of the war relentless allied bombing coupled with severe frontline attrition had caused a critical shortage of letters and numerals throughout the third reich. Factories were forced to use whatever letters were available at the time of manufacture, frequently leading to irregular and unpredictable sequences.

‘Only one prototype was built’… All things considered, I think that may have been a sage decision.

I often say that ‘inaccuracies’ in models are a great way to find people who know the subject well and maybe to start a conversation with them. This is a great example of that! Small ‘Inaccuracies’ of this nature add ‘character’ and are not something to be concerned about, especially given the outstanding quality of this work. Congratulations on the whole project BTW it’s highly original and beautifully executed. Just out of interest. Do you have any schematic drawings of the vehicle or are you working solely off photos?

Great job! Well done.

I’ve thought about scratchbuilding motorbikes but have always thought them way too difficult. If you can build this you’re a better man than I Gunga Din. It’s looking brilliant so far!

That poor aeroplane - they’ll still be flying it next century…

Often real-life water is quite opaque but If you really want some transparency I would be considering a sheet of clear perplex with a void underneath and a thin layer of liquitex on top. TBH I’ve never actually done this but I would start there with a series of experiments. Sold resin seems too heavy and too expensive for my liking. just saying…

Kiwi Magic!

Well… that’s new to me!

This IS the way!

Looks VC-tastic mate!

Yes- I think we are on the same wavelength…

Thanks @BIG X. Mostly thanks to your enthusiasm I have just ‘Won the day’ on BM, which is only the second time I have ever managed this!

Ditto! I picked up that mistake just in time. Had I missed it there would have been a much larger intake of breath followed by a long, loud exaltation of two-syllable words. It seems that in such cases ‘grabbing which ever is nearest’ is not a method that guarantees success.

SS Xantho - Western Australia's Fifth Steamship. Hi Xantho Fans Since I'm now coming to the end of the pure research phase of this project I feel compelled to clear something up. When I started this project I accepted the simple assertion that Xantho was the first steamship in W.A. but in fact - it turns out - Xantho was definitely not W.A.'s first steam propelled vessel. Whether or-not it was our first steam ship seems to depend much on the definition of the word ‘ship’ and is therefore open to discussion. I'm going to leave the heading of this thread as it stands and don't really want to argue one way or the other but in the interests of transparency and completeness here are the facts as far as I know. The notes below are drawn primarily from Keith O. Murray's 'From Oar to Diesel on the Swan' Published by the Western Australian Historical Society in 2004. Here are the contenders: 1854 - Speculator. On the 13th of October 1854 a paddle steamer - the 'Speculator' - was launched into the Swan river. Apparently this vessel and its engine was entirely locally built and despite some understandable maintenance difficulties it was actually quite successful. As far as I can gather it was only used in the river and was not sea-going. 1855 - Le Trois Amis. On 15 March 1855, 'Le Trois Amis' arrived at Fremantle , although I'm not sure from where. She was a small screw-driven steamer of just 70 feet long. Unfortunately she drew 1.5m of water and therefore had too deep a draught for many of the jetties in the Swan river. Consequently she was soon sold to a Mr George Green who apparently made use of her in some unspecified capacity along the W.A. coast for several years. She was lost off the coast of Timor in 1884. 1856 - Lady Stirling. Parts for this vessel were delivered to Fremantle on the 17 Nov 1856 and she was launched at Fremantle on 21 Feb 1857. She made her first trip from Fremantle to Perth on the 16th of May that year and was still operating in 1881 when the Guildford to Fremantle railway opened. This vessel also seems to have been employed almost exclusively on the river. 1869 - Black Swan. Black Swan was a steam driven dredge that the government imported in 1869 to assist in keeping the shallow waterways of the Swan and Canning rivers open to shipping. Apparently she was not well suited to work in such very shallow waters and was laid up in 1878. A contemporary painting of her is currently on display in the library of the W.A. Historical Society and is shown below. So, strictly speaking - as is normally the case in history - this topic is open to interpretation and discussion. In the meantime the Museum is sticking to it's story that Xantho was the first steam-ship out here. Fair enough I suppose; it helps make the Xantho story much more compelling. Bandsaw Steve