1/35 Trumpeter BR86 Dampflok

[bentwaters81tfw]

Hi Amanda

Good to see you back.

How's that dune buggy?

[bangle]

It's still going strong, at the moment it gets taken out fortnightly for food shopping.

[Bullbasket]

Hello Amanda. I've not seen this thread before as I didn't join until late 2016. Some great work you've done there. I hope this build will be continued.

BTW. Excellent face painting on the French tanker. The eyes look really good.

 

John.

[bangle]

On 4/28/2020 at 11:28 AM, Bullbasket said:

Hello Amanda. I've not seen this thread before as I didn't join until late 2016. Some great work you've done there. I hope this build will be continued.

BTW. Excellent face painting on the French tanker. The eyes look really good.

 

John.

I'm hoping so too! I do enjoy painting the figures, though I have to try when the mood takes me otherwise it doesn't go well. Eyes are most tricky, it being pretty much a case of a tiny slip and i'm scrubbing the paint off and doing them over again!

 

I've literally just got the kit out again today to blow off the dust and take stock of what I want to keep and what I want to re-model. Thankfully i'm happy to keep a fair amount, but I do think i'm going to do a complete remodel of the cylinders at the front, though at least I have a profile diagram I made for my scratch building attempts so it's not all going to waste. I'm also thinking of making a complete boiler part for the cab, there's a few bits that are just difficult to do by hand that I can really get my teeth into now. I think the work i've done on the outside back section of the cab is acceptable though so that's staying. I'm also going to have another go at some of the frames that I modeled in plastic card. I'm also hoping to do a rough 3D model of the main chassis and the boiler so I can work out a plan for busying up the underside with all those pipes.

 

Basically lots of time on a computer and not as much hard modelling for now, but i'm going to commit and stick a few bits on first. Hopefully i'll have some photos to show this week. I have less time at the moment due to the whole home schooling thing but it's half term so i'm using this as a good opportunity to get some wheels rolling in the right direction.

 

[Bullbasket]

11 hours ago, bangle said:

Eyes are most tricky,

You could always cheat and use the Archer Decals set of eyeballs.

 

John.

[robw_uk]

nice work on the figure, whats your process for figure painting?

[vaoinas]

Hi, 

Just found this build. Like John, I also joined this forums long time after this thread was paused.

It is a wonderful build and a great attention to detail. And after catching up all the thread from the beginning I'm glad that you've decided to carry on with the project.

 

I know by the hard way that Trumpeter kits may be an awful lot of work if one wants the model to be more or less accurate - I've done Trumpeters Brückenleger many years back and ended up using only some few Trumpeter details on my model.

 

 

5 hours ago, Bullbasket said:

You could always cheat and use the Archer Decals set of eyeballs.

Archer eyeball decals are way too large for the 35th scale. I've bought a set in the same hope some while ago but it turned out to be pretty useless purchase for me.

 

 

Kristjan

[Bullbasket]

1 hour ago, vaoinas said:

Archer eyeball decals are way too large for the 35th scale. I've bought a set in the same hope some while ago but it turned out to be pretty useless purchase for me.

 

Not in the set that I bought. It consisted of eyeballs of various sizes. Admittedly, only the smallest were of any use for 1/35th scale, and although they did look a  bit too big, that's because it's of the whole eyeball. Once in place, and you paint in the upper and lower eyelid, it works fine.

 

John.

[bangle]

My figure is pretty much done, ready for a clear coat

 

to be honest a decal sounds like more hard work, i'd much rather paint it. I'd imagine the success varies with the figure. This guys got pretty small eyes and they're quite irregular. I've never seen anyone paint this particular figure, which is a shame as he's quite well detailed and in proportion.

[Bullbasket]

Great job with the figure, especially the leather jacket and grubby trousers.

 

John.

[bangle]

As for BR86, here's my progress for today.

 

 

I'm doing a fairly rough rendition of the chassis and the boiler. I got most of the chassis i've built so far done.

 

Just in case anyone is interested in just how, I used a scan of the sprue set up from the instructions, drew out the outline of the parts I wanted, made a duplicate, then scaled one in the length direction and the other in the width, then extrapolated the lines to get a true scale, then checked and adjusted each part against the real thing. It's only a rough version though as I left a lot of the holes square and didn't bother to exactly duplicate them as I only need a rough guide on where they are. The reason I scaled in both the length and the width is that scanning, even at a high DPI so slow scan rate distorts the length and width disproportionately to each other, the effect being worse at the edges than the center, having a fairly standard flat bed type scanner. The 3D making after that is pretty simple and takes the least time.

 

The reason i'm making this is so I have something I can either make 3D parts from or have a really good 3D map for the pipes and things as I just couldn't get my head around it all last time just from photos. This will also help me make sure the parts I make to print from my image references are correctly scaled. I also bought a book in Germany called 'Dampflok Technik und Function' which has some great pictures and diagrams as well as all the German words for the parts (the rest also being in German, some of which I can read and some I can't). For my diagram I have also checked the dimensions I am going to use from this 3D model (surprisingly few actually) are accurate according to the model itself. I'm done for today but I hope to have a boiler shape tomorrow. After that I will just model what I need and leave the rest as I don't need a complete render of the whole model.

[bangle]

4 minutes ago, Bullbasket said:

Great job with the figure, especially the leather jacket and grubby trousers.

 

John.

Thanks! I rather enjoyed the mucking up part, though it did take a couple of goes to get just the right look.

 

[bangle]

On 5/26/2020 at 12:46 PM, vaoinas said:

Hi, 

Just found this build. Like John, I also joined this forums long time after this thread was paused.

It is a wonderful build and a great attention to detail. And after catching up all the thread from the beginning I'm glad that you've decided to carry on with the project.

 

I know by the hard way that Trumpeter kits may be an awful lot of work if one wants the model to be more or less accurate - I've done Trumpeters Brückenleger many years back and ended up using only some few Trumpeter details on my model.

 

 

Archer eyeball decals are way too large for the 35th scale. I've bought a set in the same hope some while ago but it turned out to be pretty useless purchase for me.

 

 

Kristjan

Sorry I seem to have missed replying to you before, welcome aboard! Progress is slow, it having been a few years but i'm hoping to push on through this time.

 

I've been doing quite a bit of measuring of parts and there are plenty of convenient exact millimeter measurements in this one so I imagine they just design them to look about right and stop when there's enough to confuse the eye into believing that it's a good kit. There's certainly going to be a large increase in resin parts on this one. I'll still scratch build where it's easier but I now have the means for some fine detail so I might as well use it.

 

I didn't get much done yesterday, my main computer being commandeered to try out Meshroom, which creates a 3D image out of your photos. The test was only supposed to take 10 minutes but it ended up taking all morning. After a few PC crashes (my motherboard being about 10 years old now so not really up to all that punishment) we managed to get a pretty impressive scan of a trilobite. However I only managed to get the boiler segment made in 3D (I don't have any photos as it's a bit dull, being mostly a cylinder with some shapes on it as I only need a rough guide from this anyway).

 

This morning, having the PC to myself again I did some fairly time consuming work on mapping out the boiler back in the cab. As per usual the trumpeter part is just annoying me in the whole inaccuracies front so i'm mapping out the major parts size and distribution. I've been using a mix of some reference photos i've collected over time, a diagram from my Dampflok book and a rather handy picture of 333 from abut 2017 having a boiler recondition. I've been using it to get the main positioning of 333 specific items. I've found out since it's been rebuilt they've gone a fair bit more modern inside so my final model will date to around about 2016 and not the latest incarnation. Depending on how all this 3D stuff goes, I have plans to remodel my diorama base to be a bit more dynamic, but i'm going to ignore that for now and carry on, the diorama being no good without the main model and all.

 

 

Still it's small steps for the moment. I pan on bouncing back and forth a bit with the cab work as it's going to get quite intensive. When it gets a bit much i'll have a go at a nice simple element then come back to the tricky stuff. I haven't decided how much of Libor's resin will be used but if it's still good and within scale then I don't see any point in making extra work for myself. It will be very much 86 333 specific as they all have some small variations and Trumpeter have used a much older type as their reference.

 

[bangle]

I'm making some very hard won progress today. Due to my inexperience, I found placing a part on a tilted boiler, with the sides also tilted inward with a chamfer completely blew my mind. Having struggled with it for many hours, I finally cracked it. Naturally actually doing it once i've figured out the process was simple. The great irony being that this particular part is blanked off by a plate on the bottom of 333 so i'm going to undo this and put it back to being solid. I can now translate the complete part higher up though so only a little wasted effort. Though of course seperate triangulations are required for the ones higher up.  I've also kept the nuts as separate entities for now so I can give each of them their own slight variation.

 

However i'm pretty fed up of faffing now, though considerably wiser in CAD techniques. Sometimes the only way to learn is the hard way, especially with a program like mine which no one ever makes free tutorial videos for. Basically if you're stuck your on your own, which can be infinitely frustrating to someone with no prior 3D CAD experience.

 

[bangle]

Things have sped up a little since I managed to get the tricky angles sorted. I've only had a little time today for computer work but my progress is a little more visual. The design is starting to show the differences in the kit part and 333. The boiler plugs (for lack of a better name) have holes. There's a few more holes to dig and extrude in the main part but these are all simple ovals, circles or squares on a single plane so shouldn't be too hard.

 

[bangle]

Work on the BR is progressing during breaks between home schooling. I'm beginning to stress my PC out with all my expectations! The poor thing is over 10 years old so is doing admirably for its age but i'll probably be moving over to a new one soon.

 

I think I will get the surrounds for the central 2 plugs sorted then move on to looking at the scale of the resin parts I bought so I can work out where to put supports if they're needed or little flat spots or cut in profiles and also work out what I need to design from scratch. The more I look, the more I can see that should go on so i'm nowhere near finished yet! I may sort out the hollowing for resin saving purposes first though as I don't want to get to a stage where it gets to be a pain and doesn't want to do it nicely. worst comes to worse I could let blender handle it but I have a feeling that will be more faff.

 

 

[bangle]

PC building has been taking a fair amount of my time last week but now everything is in order I can carry on making the fire door. I've gone with some simple shapes for now so it looks a bit boxy but I want to keep them for as long as possible to make modifications easier. I may also want to change the orientation of the fire door. Theres still plenty of detail to add as well.