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Scratch Build of 1951 Pullman Carriage


hendie

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Fantastic work. You must be very pleased with the result you have. It really looks as if it’s a 1:1 model. 

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2 hours ago, limeypilot said:

Wonderful! While you're having that whisky, be sure to stock up the shelves...

 

Ian

It’s not allowed now.  Corona.... you know

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Wow! When I look at this overhead picture including a glimpse into the bathroom, I can't help but marvel at all of the pieces and know that every one of them is hand made by one means or another. Nothing is from any other kit that, I can recall and that is a extremely impressive feat! And, we're only talking about what we see there; that doesn't include the whole rest of the build including all the artwork inside and outside! Well done!

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On 4/20/2020 at 1:22 AM, JeroenS said:

Congratulations! What a result! That looks totally believable.

 

On 4/20/2020 at 3:49 AM, CedB said:

Stunning hendie - amazing job :worthy:

 

On 4/20/2020 at 9:37 AM, Pouln said:

Fantastic work. You must be very pleased with the result you have. It really looks as if it’s a 1:1 model. 

 

On 4/20/2020 at 3:10 PM, Pete in Lincs said:

Well deserved. It looks very good indeed.

 

Thanks guys - appreciated!

 

On 4/20/2020 at 11:09 AM, limeypilot said:

Wonderful! While you're having that whisky, be sure to stock up the shelves...

 

Ian

 

Hopefully in the next few days bottles and glasses shall start to be produced (if I don't get side tracked)

 

On 4/20/2020 at 2:05 PM, Pouln said:

It’s not allowed now.  Corona.... you know

 

:rofl2:

 

 

On 4/21/2020 at 5:58 PM, larchiefeng said:

Wow! When I look at this overhead picture including a glimpse into the bathroom, I can't help but marvel at all of the pieces and know that every one of them is hand made by one means or another. Nothing is from any other kit that, I can recall and that is a extremely impressive feat! And, we're only talking about what we see there; that doesn't include the whole rest of the build including all the artwork inside and outside! Well done!

 

Well, my bathroom couldn't have been very good - 'cos that's the kitchen!  :D   Thanks though.

You're right, there's nothing from any other kit - at least not anything that hasn't been modified and repurposed.  The only things "stock" were the wheels - then I had to buy a lathe to turn them down as they looked like pizza cutters.

I do have a pair of couplers that I bought to use, but I may end up printing my own as the one's I bought were for G-Scale and look kind of toy-like.

 

and on to this evenings brief update - Paneling 101.

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before but I'm altering contrast etc on these photo's to make them a bit clearer, but that has the undesirable effect of making the wood grain look very coarse. In the flesh, the grain is not nearly as bad as it looks here. (Honest!)

 

Anyways.  After I had finished up on the outer paint work and started on the interior,  I realized that I had completely forgotten about the inlays on the paneling.  Had I thought of this previously I would simply have had Steve at Railtec do them at the same time as the others. However, knowing that Steve was very busy, and given current circumstances and uncertainties around international post and all that, I found a place closer to home that I knew would get through the post reasonably easy.

In the 1:1, several of the mahogany panels have a birds eye maple inlay that I needed to reproduce. At that scale you're never going to see the birds eyes so to make things nice and simple I chose a color that I thought was close to the maple, and just had the designs printed in a solid color block.

It was all a bit of a chance as I had never applied decals to wood before and had no idea how a decal would react to wood-grain.  You always hear that 'oh the surface must be smooth and gloss coated' and all that. So I gave the panels a coat of gloss, but wood grain is still wood grain.

Taking a leap of faith, I applied the decals to the panels and micro sol'd and set'd them following up with a gloss coat to seal them in, and later, a semi gloss coat for that satin look finish

Everything is looking good so far...

 

P4230001.jpg

 

Aaanddd the first panel gets glued in place, starting at the corridor

I'm very pleased with the decals - the carrier film has disappeared nicely into the wood

 

P4230002.jpg

 

Then more panels get slapped in place.

 

P4230003.jpg

 

Add in an electrical cabinet and a heater box and it's starting to look as if it all belongs together. 

 

P4230004.jpg

 

Please ignore the skewyness of the paneling at the carline level - I'll even that off later and it gets covered by some cornicing anyway.  I didn't realize those two windows on the right were so bad though - not until I knelt down to take this photo.

The line directly above the windows also gets covered by the blind covers, but I'm still kicking myself for not noticing that earlier. My bench is at waist height so I'm always working from above and this isn't the type of build where you can simply pick it up and turn it around to inspect as you go.  Lesson learned - I need to pay more attention and look from different angles in future.

 

Overall shot showing the corridor and dining area

 

P4230005.jpg

 

Window cills added.  These close up shots are gruesome aren't they?

The white line on top of the heater box is diluted PVA again.  It will dry nice and clear and you'll never know it was there.

You can see here that I offset the panel joins.  I know they look as rough as a badgers wotsit but these seams don't need to be neat as they get covered by would you believe... cover strips

 

P4230006.jpg

 

Like these ones getting added here.

Believe it or not but this is my second go round with these.  I had previously cut them all full height and glued them in position before I remembered that there's heater boxes all along the wall at floor level and the cover strips start at the top of the heater box, so in a mild panic I had to gently prise the cover strips back off, remove the partially dried glue, cut 10mm off each strip, then reapply the strips.

Luckily I had a spare heater box from the opposite corridor that I could use as a template to position the cover strips

 

P4230008.jpg

 

This job didn't take long at all and has a huge visual impact on the carriage - I like those kind of jobs!

 

P4230009.jpg

 

That squiggle inlay at picture center caused a bit of a kerfuffle. It should lie in dead center of the panel, but the squiggle is not symmetric around either the X or the Y axis so trying to position it correctly was very awkward - and I didn't get it right.

The cover strips are 4mm wide and the cover strip to the right of the squiggle overlapped the darned thing slightly, even though I had tried placing covers strips on the panel when I was fixing the decal last night.  So rather than make a new panel and still have to guess the location, I trimmed half a millimeter or so off each side of the cover strip to reduce the width and be able to see the inlay properly.

 

P4230010.jpg

 

You'll also notice that there's still a cover strip missing from the window second from the left - that's because a heater box starts at that location and I'm going to have to trim the cover strip to fit around the heater similar to the one shown at the end of the heater box in the first window from left. There's also a partition adjacent to that window, but I'll need to fit the bathroom and the dinette to make sure I get the partition position correct.

 

more heater boxes next I think

 

 

 

 

 

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Those are the jobs i enjoy most too - the ones where all the long, tedious, small jobs get put together and it looks as though  huge progress has been made all in one hit! The shrunken panel cover doesn't show and I do like those heater boxes too.

 

Ian

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On 4/24/2020 at 1:50 AM, Pete in Lincs said:

Heater boxes? It was 20 degrees C here yesterday! Get the Aircon fired up! It's all coming together nicely. Your attention to detail pays off.

 

Ta Pete. It's warm enough here that all the neighbors are cutting their grass today   :fraidnot: so I hid downstairs

 

On 4/24/2020 at 1:54 AM, limeypilot said:

Those are the jobs i enjoy most too - the ones where all the long, tedious, small jobs get put together and it looks as though  huge progress has been made all in one hit! The shrunken panel cover doesn't show and I do like those heater boxes too.

 

Ian

 

Thanks Ian.   More heater boxes on the way.  It was a bit tedious though - I thought I would have enjoyed it more.

 

On 4/24/2020 at 3:11 AM, CedB said:

Marvellous. Love those heater boxes :) 

 

Great job on the cover strips - they look great after all the fiddling.

 

Ta Ced - can't beat a good fiddle eh?

 

To day was a bit of a drag all things considered.  I had a bit of a clean up which took a while and in no time at all it was back to its former state.  I just can't work in a tidy fashion. No sir.

As part of my clean up, I replaced the FEP film in the printer ready for a new set of prints.  I had come across an issue a week or two back and knew I had to deal with it at some point. I put it off until I knew I couldn't ignore it any longer.

Remember those fantastic little lamps that I got Shapeways to print way back when I was a young lad?  Can you spot the problem here ?

 

P4250005.jpg

 

Oh yeah - they're too big!   Now, while I have drawings for the structure and paneling etc. I do not have accurate drawings for the original hardware and I had eyeballed the lamps from photos.  Obviously, my Mk I eyeball was out of calibration when I did those. If only I had made it about three quarters of a millimeter narrower.  Sod's law in action.

Of course, this is one of only two panels where I am going to come across this issue, and I considered just trimming off the offending lugs so that it would nestle in there but the purist in me fought back.  They are too big after all, and I have a printer.  Ergo, the cleanup and new FEP film - ready for some clear resin (my first attempt using clear).

Fixing the lamps was no big deal, I just applied a 0.7 scale factor to the model and off we went. Since there was plenty of space on the build plate I threw in a few glasses as well.

Here we are fresh out of the bath - but don't get too excited yet.  I've heard things about this clear resin and we weren't out of the woods just yet.  It does look lovely and clear though doesn't it?

 

P4250001.jpg

 

Then I had to take a quick detour as this finally arrived.  Any guesses?

 

P4250004.jpg

 

Correct!  It's one of these, slated for a future build. I originally bought one back in December but it never turned up - got me money back and bought another from a different source - just a few weeks before this Covid nonsense started up and it's taken all that time to get through the mail.  It's here now so its safely ensconced in the stash

 

P4250002.jpg

 

But back to matters at hand.

In case you are wondering why the Shapeways lamp is all white - I had soaked them in IPA to clean up the residue that Shapeways hadn't cleaned out - and only then found out that the resin reacts with IPA.  New lamps shown here still attached to the build supports.  Can you see another potential problem?

 

P4250007.jpg

 

The clear resin has taken on a slight yellowish tinge hasn't it.  I've read lots of comments online about clear resins not staying clear once they have soaked up some UV's, however those don't look too bad.  Certainly not as clear as they were coming out of the bath but passable.

And they're the right size.  It's a shame you can't see the detail on them in this photo, but the Mars printer continues to impress me by what it's capable of.  The only problem I am going to have is painting something so small and trying to keep it neat.

 

P4250008.jpg

 

I did encounter one further issue and that was to do with the cavity in the lamp.  I had designed them hollow, but the viscosity of the resin was too high to allow the resin to drain out of the cavity so the lamps are almost solid. That cavity was about a millimeter deep by a couple of millimeters wide.  I wasn't too bothered as I had half expected that to be the case when I started the print.

But what about the glasses I hear you ask?

These glasses?

 

P4250012.jpg

 

Well, I was completely blown away by the quality of the print, really blown away.  Here's the same glass on my fingertip.

 

P4250011.jpg

 

And this is where I encountered yet another issue - those stems on the glasses are that fine - on one type of the glasses it's only about 0.3mm in diameter - trying to remove and clean up the supports is a nightmare.  Thankfully I have printed plenty extra.

Here's a glass or two on the bar top. (I just had to see what that looked like).  Passable, yes?  You can see that one glass has a slightly bent stem.  I may get around that by placing the glasses upside down on the bar top

 

P4250013.jpg

 

Or I could just fit them into the wall cabinets

 

P4250014.jpg

 

Let's get back to this yellowing phenomenon  - as a quick test I stuck one batch of lamps under my UV lamp for about half an hour - can you tell which one it was?  :giggle:

Hhhmmnnn.  That could be an issue.  Whether the clear resin will react like that under normal sunlight I don't know.  I suppose I should throw a batch on the window cill and find out.

 

P4250016.jpg

 

I do have a plan B though - the glass on the 1:1 lamps is frosted white.  I'm hoping this resin reacts to IPA the same way as the Shapeways resin did so I've thrown a lamp in a small bath of IPA and will wait and see.  If it does react the same, then that solves the issue, though if it yellows over time I don't know there's anything I can do to prevent that.

 

The reaming time today was spent working on more heater boxes - and I had to order more mesh as I'm about to run out.  I also spent an inordinate amount of time making the 4 pelmets for this side of the dining area. For whatever reason they seemed to take forever.

 

P4250010.jpg

 

The pelmets have now been stained and a coat of semi matt applied. 

Looming on the horizon though are the soft furnishings, and curtains to be precise.  I would have already started those but every scrap of material in Walmart and elsewhere has been snaffled to make masks and I can't lay my hands on anything suitable - but there's a plan B, or is it C by now?  Covid stole my curtains - whodathunkit?

 

Anyways, must dash... the printer is kicking out some more lamps and some bottles and glasses, then I had a Yoda to print for my daughter

 

stay safe you lot

 

 

 

 

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Wow. Again! :) 

 

That 'clear' resin is a pain though - the parts out of the printer look excellent. 

Is there no solution on the 'problem pages' you found? Hard to believe they get away with selling something that obviously doesn't do the job :( 

 

Are you going to print some curtains and paint them? I would think it'll be hard to get 1:1 material to fold just how you want it…

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Great prints you have there! The resin will for sure yellow further under the influence of sunlight. I did a test with my supposedly white resin and it turned out pretty yellow after only a few minutes in direkt sunlight. It also hardens more and more to the point of becoming very brittle. One suggested method is painting to stop UV-light hitting the resin. So I wonder - maybe in the fine art world you can find some clear varnishes that block UV-light? I guess they have to protect their original artwork against UV as well as many natural pigments are very sensitive to UV.

 

What is the clear resin you use? Might have to pick some up at some point as well.

 

A solution, though lots of work, might be printing in whatever resin, than taking forms and cast in usual casting resin. The clear ones have problems with yellowing as well, but at least there are some that don't do it for sure.

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7 hours ago, JeroenS said:

The atmosphere of the car's interior is really starting to show now, lovely work.

 

Thanks Jeroen.  It's all coming together piece by piece though some of those pieces are taking longer than others.  More bits shall be added today if I get a chance.

 

6 hours ago, CedB said:

Wow. Again! :) 

 

That 'clear' resin is a pain though - the parts out of the printer look excellent. 

Is there no solution on the 'problem pages' you found? Hard to believe they get away with selling something that obviously doesn't do the job :( 

 

Are you going to print some curtains and paint them? I would think it'll be hard to get 1:1 material to fold just how you want it…

 

Thanks Ced.  The yellowing is a known issue with the UV cured clear resins.  I used the Elegoo Clear resin but other resins have the same issue.  I'd expect as these printers become more popular that UV resistant resin will become available - probably just after I've finished Pegasus!

I've drawn up some curtains and will try printing them today.  It's only a rough draft, so if it looks promising I'll fettle them a bit more and print a batch

 

3 hours ago, Schwarz-Brot said:

Great prints you have there! The resin will for sure yellow further under the influence of sunlight. I did a test with my supposedly white resin and it turned out pretty yellow after only a few minutes in direkt sunlight. It also hardens more and more to the point of becoming very brittle. One suggested method is painting to stop UV-light hitting the resin. So I wonder - maybe in the fine art world you can find some clear varnishes that block UV-light? I guess they have to protect their original artwork against UV as well as many natural pigments are very sensitive to UV.

 

What is the clear resin you use? Might have to pick some up at some point as well.

 

A solution, though lots of work, might be printing in whatever resin, than taking forms and cast in usual casting resin. The clear ones have problems with yellowing as well, but at least there are some that don't do it for sure.

 

I'm using Elegoo's Transparent Resin - my printer is the Elegoo Mars.

Thanks for the suggestions.  I found that Krylon do a UV resistant Clear acrylic gloss (I'd post a link but BM is giving me an error message) so I may look into that.

 

 

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I love dem beautiful glasses H

 

I know it is a tad irritating to see bent stems but from long years of part-timing in bar work you can take it from me real stems do that too

 

Lots of glasses sit skew-wiff on shelves which is one reason many bars will hang the stem glasses from those dispensing rails, upside down

 

(then only the punter's good lady* will know about it being wobbly)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* yes this is probably a 'some kind of -ISH' thing, don't sue me, 'tis only meant in warm hearted jocularity…

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It's good to know that I was looking the kitchen instead of the bathroom! I'm guessing that the barman accesses behind the bar through the kitchen? The detail on the glasses is pretty amazing as well as all the little bits here and there. It all makes it look like the 1:1 real deal.

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On 4/27/2020 at 2:37 AM, perdu said:

I love dem beautiful glasses H

I know it is a tad irritating to see bent stems but from long years of part-timing in bar work you can take it from me real stems do that too

Lots of glasses sit skew-wiff on shelves which is one reason many bars will hang the stem glasses from those dispensing rails, upside down

(then only the punter's good lady* will know about it being wobbly)

* yes this is probably a 'some kind of -ISH' thing, don't sue me, 'tis only meant in warm hearted jocularity…

 

Thanks Bill, glad you appreciate them.  Upside down they shall be (well, most of them anyway)

 

On 4/27/2020 at 12:11 PM, Pete in Lincs said:

Glasses. Cut clear tube into suitably sized pieces. Simples.

 

It would be simples if I could cut things square Pete - it's easier for me just to print them.

 

On 4/27/2020 at 12:45 PM, larchiefeng said:

It's good to know that I was looking the kitchen instead of the bathroom! I'm guessing that the barman accesses behind the bar through the kitchen? The detail on the glasses is pretty amazing as well as all the little bits here and there. It all makes it look like the 1:1 real deal.

 

Correct.  Barman has access to the bar going through the kitchen.  I know I'll never make it look exactly like the 1:1 but I'm going to get as close as I can, by whatever methods I can.

 

 

So, just for you @larchiefeng, here's a shot inside the kitchen - the brass guard rail finally got fitted across the window.

 

P4260002.jpg

 

Brass mesh got fitted to the heater box and the heater box was installed using the old trusty diluted PVA. I love how it dries clear and leaves no tell-tale signs behind.  Very useful stuff indeed.

 

P4260001.jpg

 

Here's my patented method for ensuring the tables all sit at the correct height - the top of the "T" fits into a slot I machined into the resin tabletops

 

P4260003.jpg

 

Like so...

 

P4260004.jpg

 

and my method for ensuring all the table legs look the same ('ish) - I'm using cocktail sticks as table legs and I found that the taper varied somewhat with some sticks being sharper than others.

By dropping the cocktail stick into a small hole, I can then razor saw the tip off the stick, knowing that the diameter at the cut will be the same on all legs.

 

P4270005.jpg

 

But then I found that my patented method wasn't up to scratch.  Putting the leg in the middle of the T-bar thing made the leg sit too far back from the table edge.  Easy fix though - instead of drilling a hole in the center, I just cut a small V groove into the front edge which placed the table leg further forward.

I know it's hard to see here from this angle, but the table on the left has the leg too far back, while the table on the right has the leg much further forward and looks much better to my eyes at least.

 

P4270006.jpg

 

Time for another dry fit.

I placed the chairs on 5mm high blocks to see how everything looked.

 

P4270008.jpg

 

... and wasn't happy!   Dammit!

The chair backs are too high.  When I compare to my reference photos the chair backs only come up as far as the center of the marquetry star thingy.  Here they are almost obscuring it.  Bother.  I'm not gong to all the bother of spending hours on fine marquetry if you can't see my handiwork now am I?   I followed Suzie's dimensions for the chair so I don't know where things went skewy. 

Time for a rethink.  I've already made these chairs twice and don't fancy gong through all that palaver again.

I did try cutting down the back of one chair and it was quite straightforward, however, getting the curves of those 'pleats' (wrong term I know) to flow nicely around the top edge just wasn't possible.

But hey!  I got a printer - what if I printed one?

So I did - with a couple of small changes.  Fast forward a day and here we are fresh out of the printer with support structure still in place.

 

P4280009.jpg

 

Remove the supports and things are looking promising

 

P4280010.jpg

 

While I was on the computer doing the chair CAD work, I thought I may as well have a go at a pair of curtains

I was going to try and make them from material, honest - had a plan and everyfink - but trying to get a hold of material these days is a bit difficult what with masked marauders everywhere buying it up for their masks.

Here we have a pair of freshly printed curtains.  Would you believe those curtains are only 0.3mm thick?

 

P4280011.jpg

 

Piece it all together - still got a lot of clean up to do on the parts yet though as you can tell by the chair backs.

That's looking a lot better.  The chair height is about right now, with the chair backs just below the middle of the star thingy.  I could maybe add another millimeter to the chair leg.  I don't think that would look out of place.

 

P4280014.jpg

 

A view from above

 

P4280013.jpg

 

and a more standard view.

 

P4280012.jpg

 

Okay, I know some folks may consider it cheating what with just printing the chairs, but after having made about forty of the buggers over the last few years I think I've paid my dues in the chair making department so printing them isn't a complete cop-out (I hope).

 

There's still a few tweaks to be made here and there.  The curtains may be a millimeter or so too long so I'll figure out if I'm going to take the hem up a tad or not.  I may just leave them as is.

The tables are more problematic though - being resin there are loads of little pin holes everywhere.  I thought I had taken care of them but when I sprayed them today I found that I hadn't.  I'm going to try dipping them in floor polish and see if that fills up the pin holes. 

I'm starting to wonder if I need to fit the other side frame as I need that to get the position of the bathroom and the dinette - but I know once that is in place it is going to be very difficult to work inside - but it may be the only way to get things done.

 

Things will probably slow down over the next few days as work is taking priority and I have a bunch of printing to do.  Stay safe and keep away folks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Curtains look fine to me, chairs too! Could be a little bit higher off the ground like you said. As for the cheating... printing the whole thing with everything in and on it would be cheating. Printing chairs and curtains is just making clever use of resources 🙂 

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Brilliant use of resources surely.

 

Have printer - print!

 

The new seats look far betterererer than the ones you slaved over into the night too, the backrest pleating and relief look spot on.

 

 

(Hmm taking orders for kilts huh? Should I boldly order one in XL in Anderson tartan? Think about it ...)*

 

 

 

 

*might be losing weight here in lock down, but probably not.

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Great stuff hendie!

 

I see no problem in printing stuff - you have to do the designs after all.

And those chairs and curtains look amazing - loving it!

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Nothing wrong with printing things. This is the Future!

Anyway, most of us buy cast/etched things to add to our models - you're just cutting out the middle man.

Do the supports appear automatically when designing/printing or do you have to add them to the plan?

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The curtains look great, I would probably just go ahead and print them all. I don’t think that you would be able to achieve the correct scale with real material. The chairs look much better and definitely more in scale between the seat bottom and back. The other seat backs look way too tall when compared with your recent prints. There is nothing wrong with using the new tools at hand to enhance and improve your scratch building. After all, isn’t producing the most realistic representation of your subject the goal here? Being able to learn how to draw a 3D CAD drawing and get to the printer and a slicer program is not exactly an easy thing to do! Using a 3D printer is just an evolution of scratch building.

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