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1/32 1914 Dennis Fire Engine


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Lovely work on the front axle for the steering. Ejector pin locations are a constant source of puzzlement for me, do the kit manufacturers not care that they put them in reidiculously visible locations that are almost impossible to fix?

 

Good luck with the remedial work!

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Trolley duly cut apart and remade, now ready for the spray booth.  The only bit I am slightly worried about is that longitudinal rails are not quite straight on one side.  I'm hoping that once the ladder is in place I can pull that back in line.

 

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Thought I'd have a look at the crew figures.  I'm still not convinced that I will sue them but I'll take that decision once I've had a go at painting one or two.  Any way the driver is interesting.  How does anyone drive a vintage fire engine with no power steering one handed?  Especially when that hand looks, with apologies for being a bit non-PC,  like a stump that is missing a hook?

 

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I can rectify the stump with Milliput but I'm not sure I fancy trying to cut away that whole right arm that is attached along its full length.

 

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First pass of the Millipuit.  Will shape this once it's set.

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Almost one month in (for me) and a little more work done although a couple of steps backwards

 

Put the bonnet together and once it has set confirmed - as I had half expected - that owing to the engine detailing the bonnet now no longer fitted.  well what do you expect when the bonnet plates are around the equivalent of 40mm thick - that's armour plating not an thin steel bonnet!  Anyway, out with the trusty Dremel and the offending bits were thinned down and it just about fits.  Whether it will still do so after a couple of coats of paint is another matter.  But in trying to fit it, it forced the chassis longitudinal members apart and released one of the front leaf springs.  So some remedial repairs needed there.  Fortunately I think it'll be invisible.

 

Finished off cleaning up the ladders ready for paint and built the ladder extension frame.  Just need to find a decent video on YouTube as to how to best paint wood effect.  Sinces its got to be 20 years since I built anything with a wooden propeller, its not a skill I've really picked up so this will e a good chance to learn.

 

Made a first pass at carving the driver's milliput hand.  I'll see what its like after primer.

 

And finally got most of the major parts that needed primer out to the spray shop

 

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Thanks.  Not much done this weekend as I was out all day yesterday and busy much of today.

 

However I have managed to get most of the major items that needed praying through the paint shop and I now have a interesting issue.  Why is the airbrushed red, from the same bottle as the brush painted red just with some thinners added, a distinctly darker shade?  You can see specifically what I mean if you look at the pump housing in the second photo, contrast that to the pipe that feeds it on the left hand side.  I've had this happen before and never quite worked out why.

 

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3 hours ago, Ventora3300 said:

The subtlety of the paint shading is lost on me but the detailed painting of all the mechanical bits isn't ...it's looking fantastic. Outstanding work!

:ditto:

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Here's an interesting question then for others who have made one of these in the past.  What's the part next to part 44 on the sprue?  It's a cylindrical object with what appears to be bolts around one face, but it has no number and as far as I can tell, there's nothing like it in the instructions. 

 

Progress being made.  I thought I'd do a dry fit of the main body to see what iot looks like (and ensure that it fitted between the cab floor and pump)

 

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Edited by Chewbacca
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Is your mystery part number 38, a part of the pump system, at the rear.

The tank you added would have been for the acetylene (aka carbide) for the head lights

The fuel tank on this was under the front bench seat

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On 8/14/2018 at 4:16 AM, Chewbacca said:

Thanks.  Maybe its just me being fussy!

What is it they say about Artists not liking their own work? I think that rule applies to most of us.

 

Not enough BM time of late has found me being a bit snobbish of non-aircraft posts, however this Bus and Rays QE Ship has made me stand up and take notice. I’d better check in to see what Big X is up to with is Pontoon Bridge, I bet it’s another corker! 

 

Cheers.. Dave 

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20 hours ago, Black Knight said:

Is your mystery part number 38, a part of the pump system, at the rear.

The tank you added would have been for the acetylene (aka carbide) for the head lights

The fuel tank on this was under the front bench seat

I wondered that but I found 38 on the sprue - or more to the point, I fund the part of the sprue where 38 had been before I cut it off.

 

Thanks for the info on the tank.  I did think that it was perhaps a little small for the fuel tank and now I look at the reference pictures I can see a pipe going to the headlights. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 15/08/2018 at 21:49, Chewbacca said:

I wondered that but I found 38 on the sprue - or more to the point, I fund the part of the sprue where 38 had been before I cut it off.

 

Thanks for the info on the tank.  I did think that it was perhaps a little small for the fuel tank and now I look at the reference pictures I can see a pipe going to the headlights. 

There's a mystery here that I'm dying to know the answer to...what is the pipe going to the headlights and does it come from the pump system as suggested? Looking forward to the next update. Cheers. Mike

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On 29/07/2018 at 09:38, Chewbacca said:

And finally, the rear of the radiator has also been built up with plasticard as the original was way too thin (but no photo I'm afraid).  Unfortunately I have no reference photos of it so have no way of knowing whether the core tubes were visible or not.  in the interests of simplicity I've assumed that you can't see them.

Pre-WW2 radiator cores had hexagon shaped fins between the core tubes. Post-WW2 it became the familiar zig-zag fins. Size for size the hex finned radiators cool better

I had to get a new core built for my 1930 Austin 7 Ulster. The old one was a post WW2 zig-zag finned one; I had cooling problems all the time. The new one has the hex fins; no cooling probs, the Austin runs at the correct temperature.

On both sides; inside and out, you can see the core and fins.

Many modern users of vintage vehicles fit an anti-stone damage mesh to the front side. A new rad core costs anywhere from £500 to £1000. A mesh costs £15.

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On 8/31/2018 at 4:23 PM, Black Knight said:

I had to get a new core built for my 1930 Austin 7 Ulster....

Not many of those about! Do you know Chris Leach? He has the remains of the only known original bodywork.

 

Ian

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On ‎31‎/‎08‎/‎2018 at 13:23, Black Knight said:

Pre-WW2 radiator cores had hexagon shaped fins between the core tubes. Post-WW2 it became the familiar zig-zag fins. Size for size the hex finned radiators cool better

I had to get a new core built for my 1930 Austin 7 Ulster. The old one was a post WW2 zig-zag finned one; I had cooling problems all the time. The new one has the hex fins; no cooling probs, the Austin runs at the correct temperature.

On both sides; inside and out, you can see the core and fins.

Many modern users of vintage vehicles fit an anti-stone damage mesh to the front side. A new rad core costs anywhere from £500 to £1000. A mesh costs £15.

And there was me thinking that a TVR radiator recore was expensive!  Thanks for that.  In the end I've gone with a blank inside face - there comes a point when some compromised have to be made to get things moving along (and I suspect my scratchbuilding skills would max out well before I got to trying to build the radiator core).

 

So back on with this now that I've returned from leave

Edited by Chewbacca
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  • 2 weeks later...

Work has progressed though few updates.

 

The kit dashboard is very simplistic and unrepresentative as I showed above in #22.  So all of the detail was chiselled off and over the weeks I have been slowly scratchbuilding the various dials, switches and so on and printed some decals for the dial faces.  That finally all came together this week:

 

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I've also now finished off the seat and got all of the brass fittings on the body.  Ladders are base-coated with a light sand and I've spent some time this week topcoating with a thinned wash of Vallejo burnt umber.  I did try the oil paint technique to replicate wood but it proved just too fiddly with the rungs all moulded in place to get an accurate representation so I opted for a simpler solution.  Not sure yet if it will work.

 

The gas tank that I also scratched in #22 was next to go on but although it was a perfect dry fit when I originally made it, I hadn't allowed for the mudguards/running boards.  When I came to marry it all up the tank fouled the front mudguard and although I looked at whether I could modify it, in the end it was simpler to just start again and make another about 20% smaller.  I'm waiting on the paint to dry and then that will go on.

 

Neither the sidelights or the headlights are glazed and so the former were simply hollowed out some more with a Dremel to give a more representative outer shell thickness (still way too thick but better than the original) and then had a small disc of clear acetate glued over the front face.  The headlights were slightly more complex as they had a separate front face so I had to drill out the centre leaving the outer ring and then sandwich the acetate between face and the main shell.  Sidelights are now in situ (you can see the back of one of them in the photo above), the mounting yokes for the headlights are now drying and will be going on later today.

 

More photos to follow later

 

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So the new lighting gas tank has been completed and fitted as have the headlights.  All ladder sub-assemblies now painted and ready for assembly and then rigging.  No parts are now left on the sprue so with a fair wind this should be complete this week without the figures.  They might get done next weekend if I'm lucky.

 

Finally found some very fine mesh (from a small netting bag that contained a wedge of lemon with a meal while we were on holiday!) so cut off the solid strainer end of the suction hose an made a new one from the mesh netting.  First of all I soaked it in thinned down PVA and when that was dry it gave it sufficient strength to hold its shape when cut and folded.  Its looking good so far but I still need to add the endplate and then paint. 

 

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Edited by Chewbacca
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Thanks for that,

 

Managed to finish the ladder last night after much swearing as the guide horns that allow the ladder to slide into the trolley kept falling off.  And then I found out that despite fitting when I dryfitted them on their own, now they were attached to the ladder the fouled the guide rails.

 

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It's amazing how you don't spot mistakes until you photograph them.  I finished the ladder quite late last night and took a couple of photos to post on here.  despite having checked and double checked the work, it wasn't until I looked at the photo that I realised the angle of the top stays was different.  The left stay correctly goes to the bottom ladder but the right stay in this photo incorrectly goes to the middle ladder.  That has now been corrected.

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Almost there - in fact if we still had the original deadline I could call this finished and get it in the gallery!  The fire engine itself is complete save the final coat of Klear over the decals once they've dried.  Just need to finish painting the crew figures (which should be done tomorrow) and make the diorama base which I looked at doing today but there was no way I was getting power tools outside in the rain we've had today to cut the MDF base!

 

More photos to follow once everything is truly complete.

 

Unfortunately, despite it being gloss paint with 3 coats of varnish and copious quantities of MicroSol, I still think the age of the decals means they are going to silver.

 

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