Aston Martin DB15 ? Okay then... 3 DB5's. COMPLETED!

[triumphfan]

Just caught up with this build. Superb work as always. The 3D printing and seat detailing is very impressive.

 

Atb, Steve.

[The Spadgent]

Those new springs look rather scrumptious. 😀 In fact it’s all shaping up rather nicely Mr Bond. 🐈 

[Brandy]

Very nice Alan!

I do like those rear springs, here's hoping the ride height is good!

 

Ian

[hendie]

Greetings and salutations and all that stuff to you all. 

Lots of stuff going on this episode though it's a bit all over the place to be honest.  I was grabbing half an hour here and there and working on whatever came to hand, or appeared to be achievable in a short space of time.

Once again I seem to have focussed on the Airfix kit while ignoring the other pair. Oh well.

 

The engine bay got glued in position - an easy job.  I knew things were a little warped but I didn't appreciate just how badly warped things were until much later. I suppose that's only to be expected for a kit that's been stuffed in a box for 60 years or so.

 

 

With the interior structure in place it was time to offer it up to the bodyshell to see what further work was going to be involved.  Straight away I spotted that the rear parcel shelf wasn't going anywhere near it's location points. A quick looksee found the culprits - the trunk lining.  The trunk lining had square corners which interfered with the curves on the bodyshell so that was an easy fix. How a 7 or 8 year old would have assembled this half a century ago is beyond me.

 

 

Some agricultural carving of the liner soon took care of that issue allowing the interior tub to sort of fit here and there.

 

 

Though I do have a rather large gap along the side of the window. Don't worry, there is a plan, of sorts.

 

 

Talking about gaps.  Ouch.  That's a bit nasty.

 

 

To be honest, those gaps looked a lot worse than they were. I glued a strip of 0.02" styrene on each side then carefully sanded all around to match it up to the boot lid curves. The styrene is a lot softer (obviously) than the kit plastic so it's going to need a coat of primer to tell me how well it's worked, but judging by this photo, it's not too far off.

 

 

But I wasn't prepared for this one. I think that's one of the worst gaps I've ever come across.  This one had me perplexed for a little while. 

The gap is varying widths all the way along that hinge line. My first thought - another strip of styrene, just wasn't going to work in this situation. No sirree, it wasn't. The more I concentrated on that gap, the more I was convinced it was the bodyshell that had the issue and not the boot lid itself.

 

 

My pictorial solution, of which I am sure I took a couple of photos, appears to have been eaten by a hungry camera, so you'll have to bear with a written version.

I stuck a piece of masking tape along the hinge line on the inside of the boot, sticking out about 3 or 4 mm.  I then applied Tamiya plastic putty to the edge of the kit plastic along the length of the boot - the tape acted as a support for the putty and stopped it drooping or falling off.  Yes, there was plenty of putty, and it was messy.  That was left overnight to harden up and cure.

This morning I carefully peeled away the masking tape and was pleasantly surprised when the Tamiya putty stayed in place (I really wasn't sure it was going to work).  After that it was just a simple, but not really simple, job of sanding away the excess until the boot lid would fit back in its hole again.  It's not perfect but it's a darn sight better than it was yesterday.

 

 

I may end up having similar issues with the front end. The bonnet sort of fits at the back, OR... it sort of fits anong the front, OR it sort of fits along the sides - not both at the same time though.

 

 

I'm leaving that one until later. The boot was enough for now.

 

Oh, I did do something on the Revell kit this week.  I printed and painted up the super secret spies selection box of tricks for the center console and stuck that in place.

 

 

I also printed one for the Airfix kit and after spending ages painting it badly, realized that the Airfix kit doesn't have enough room between the seats for one. Perhaps that's why they never included one in the kit then?   This is one I'm going to have to mull over for a while to see if I can figure out a way to fudge it.

 

 

You'll no doubt have noticed how skeewiff that engine bay firewall is in relation to the rest of the kit in that last shot. Yup! That's how badly this is warped. 

 

Moving on though.  I have this imaginary milestone in my head of getting the Airfix interior finished and ready to fit, but there are a few things to address first. The first of the first is to get the dashboard sorted.

In a moment of stupidity I drilled out all the gauges as the kit part was just naff with no real detail. I then had to spend ages looking through my supplies before I realized I didn't have any rod of the correct diameters so had to resort to bits of runner and other scraps.

 

 

I thought I had struck it lucky as the Revell kit supplies both waterslide decals and stickers for their kit. Obviously, I'm going to use the waterslide decals on the Revell kit, so I grabbed the stickers for the Airfix kit.

It didn't go well.

The printing of the stickers is fine - nice detail and they look great. However, the registration of the die cutter was crap and all the stickers have a big grey border and none of the gauges are centered on the sticky part of the sticker that gets stuck on the dashboard.

Okay then, all I needed to do was to trim the borders off and we'll be good to go.

No!

Touch the sticker with a knife, and the ink/paint.whatever the colored stuff is just breaks away in pieces. Booger.

There was nothing for it at this point but to raid my decal stash and see what I had available.  Great - I found a speedometer and a tachometer left over from my Man from UNCLE Pirhana and they were the perfect size.

And the disintegrated as soon as they came off the backing paper.

About two hours later, here's what I ended up with. Not my finest hour, but beggars can't be choosers. At least there are gauges in there.

 

 

leaving that aside while I went in the huff for a while, I tackled the next elephant. Here we have a length of brass rod, a length of plastic tube, part of an old paintbrush (the green bit), a tiny piece of a seat frame from the Revell VW kit I built a while back, and a length of 0.4mm stainless wire.  Can you tell what it is yet?

 

 

Why, it's one of these of course... a steering column. The kit was missing both the steering column, and the steering wheel.  The steering column I can scratch, but for the steering wheel, printing is the way to go.

 

 

I also made a start adding some switches from some tiny stainless rivets I had left over from Pegasus. There's more to do here before this is finished, and that dash is going to need repainted since it's all mashed up with my grubby handling 

 

 

I did finish this session on an almost high. Ride height.

This is going to need a little bit of tweaking but I think I can get there from here.  Ignore the wheel colors - those were just test pieces.

Judging by photos of the 1:1 the rear wheels to bodywork is just about spot on with the top of the tire just disappearing under the wheel arch.  The front wheels are almost there with the top of the tires just visible in the wheel arch.

 

 

I think the body needs to drop a fraction at the front and it should be good to go at that point. Take in mind this is just a dry fit and I haven't really accounted for any of the warp in the body/chassis yet. No doubt when it all gets glued some of those relationships are going to change and I may need to take some drastic action.  I'll just need to wait and see, but at this point it's a lot better than it could have been so I'm calling that a win... so far.

 

 

 

 

[CrazyCrank]

Excellent job on the boot lid 👍

[Pete in Lincs]

A great update, Alan. Yep, drop it 1mm on the front and I think you're there. Good fix on the boot lid. I've tried that before and failed. The dash detail looks nice too. Carry on at flank speed.

[Brandy]

Nice job on the bootlid!

Peanuts ordered and eagerly awaiting watching you do similar to the bonnet.

 

OK, so there's just a bit of schadenfreude maybe, but heck, it should be fun for us lot!

 

Ian

[Neddy]

Strewth!  And I thought Tweedy Pie was giving me headaches.  Fine work combating the many issues and great results.

[Terry1954]

I reckon you mailed that boot lid Alan. Looks pretty good from here and I have to agree with @Pete in Lincs that dropping the front that small amount should do the trick.

 

Terry

 

 

[Toftdale]

Great work filling that gap.  Personally I would have never used putty as I would never have dreamed it would work, just show what I know 😀.   A tip definitely worth remembering - Andy 

[Terry1954]

11 hours ago, Terry1954 said:

you mailed

 

Oops, I meant nailed of course. We don't want you mailing that anywhere!

[giemme]

 That was some job fixing all those gaps! Love the dshboard, too  And great to see her on her wheels! (still no wings, though.....  )

Ciao

[hendie]

It must be the weekend - I almost have some time to myself in between family chores and demands.  I also managed to steal some time during the week and managed a little bit of progress on the DB5's.

 

On the Revell kit I managed to get the exhaust system painted and clear coated. The Revell kit offering is surprisingly well detailed, whereas the Airfix part is a blobby monster. I'm going to have to scratch an exhaust system for the old Airifix kit.

They won't be fitted until the wheels are on otherwise they'll just get scuffed during handling.  I printed a set of wheels for the Revell kit last night so they will get the treatment over the next week or so.

 

 

Remember that broken bumper?  I fixed it, started to address all the sinks and then promptly broke it in a different spot. I've tried to glue it together again, but it broke once more.  I really hope I don't end up having to model one in 3D and then print it - that would be a nightmare. Of course, I broke it where the over-rider extension pops through so it's at the point where there's almost no plastic to glue. Oh darn it.

 

 

I replaced some parts of the kit suspension system as the kit parts were misaligned and rather blobby.

 

 

Brake discs and calipers got painted

 

 

and surprisingly, they can just be seen through the wheel spokes, though I doubt they'll be able to be seen once fitted to the vehicle.

 

 

Some filling and sanding has been taking place. When I say "some", I mean lots - on various bits and pieces.  These are the number plate thingies. I've spent a fair bit of time sanding the bonnet while completely forgetting to take any photos, but the fit is much better now and it's getting close to where I think it needs to be.

 

 

The dashboards are almost ready to be fitted. I'm quite pleased with the Airfix part despite it's humble origins I think it turned out not too bad at all. - even with my clumsy painting efforts.

 

 

More priming on a bunch of parts that I'd missed in earlier outings with the primer. The steering wheel in the center is the Revell part and the their two are my home grown versions. also shown are the knock-offs for the wheels, including the  tire slashers (which hardly show up in this picture).

 

 

Gear stick painted and fitted to the Revell kit, complete with flipped open ejector seat button.

 

 

Then I had to make a gear stick for the Airfix kit as there wasn't one... surprise! I've still to determine what to do about the gadget box that won't fit between the seats, but that's a problem for another day.

 

 

The wheels for the Airfix kit got assembled along with lots of dust that will have to get cleaned off later... somehow.  My workspace really is a mess.  I have about 6 different projects on the go at the moment but I really must make an effort to tidy up a bit more.

 

 

After all that I decided it was time to pay attention to the Corgi offering which has lain quietly being ignored for several weeks now. The primer was micromeshed to try and get a nice smooth finish prior to the gold application.

I painted this using Testors gold enamel. I already had their acrylic version but that gold was very pale so had to order the enamel version specifically for this.

 

 

A comparison with the original gold shows that the Testors version isn't too far off. It's not a perfect match, but it's fairly close. You can see a patch of the Testors acrylic gold on the the original  body just at the top of the drivers window... very pale indeed.  I'll leave this enamel for at least a week before I even think about clear coating it.

 

 

Well, that's it for the DB5 progress.  Updates over the next couple of weeks may be even more intermittent than usual as I've been roped into doing some commission work - these are just the initial test prints and revealed a few tweaks are required. I think you can guess what it is I'll be working on.

 

 

... and there we have it for this week.  The builds are at that stage now where it's more or less assembly work, and I keep finding things that I've overlooked during the past few weeks and all need attention of some sort before their final assembly. That all slows things down, but we are getting there. 

I must start thinking about the Silver Birch color soon.  I don't want to just paint the cars silver as that has a metal flake in the paint and from what I can gather, the 1:1 does not have any signs of a metallic type paint. Some experimentation may be required and we all know how that usually turns out.

 

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

36 minutes ago, hendie said:

I think you can guess what it is I'll be working on

Angel daleks?

 

Your Aston factory is looking good. Wheels and tyres are great. As is that chassis & suspension. 

It's odd how the two dashboards aren't quite identical. I wonder who got it right.

I like the gold on the diecasts. Even if it is the wrong colour. It seems a bit daft doesn't it, trying to find the correct shade.

I refurbished a Dinky Space 1999 Eagle some time ago. But I painted it as in the TV show.

[TheBaron]

On 05/05/2024 at 17:28, hendie said:

Please note that I do not intend to make these super accurate.

The gall of the man. Mocking us.

 

Seldom have tyres and seats been featured to such compelling effect Alan. Great to catch up with every every twist and turn of progress here.

 

 

[hendie]

Greetings all. Not much of an update this time around as I've been busy in the Batcave working on that other stuff.

 

The Revell kit got a small push forward with the dashboard finally getting installed.  I have also started on the steering wheel but completely missed taking any photos of that so you'll have to take my word that the wood effect is being applied in a Batcave not far from here.

 

 

The fit of the Revell parts is excellent it has to be said.  Since this is a snap-together kit, I open out the locating holes so I can dry fit and remove parts as required. Here, the interior slid nicely into place and  there's not a gap to be seen around the window openings. Very nice fit.

 

 

... as opposed to the Airfix kit with its gaping chasms all around. In an effort to reduce some of the gaps I have installed a brass spreader bar which will tuck in nicely behind the dashboard when it has its turn to be fitted.  The spreader bar is just sitting there under it's own steam at the moment but will eventually be held in with some epoxy glue so it can't go walkabout later once things are assembled.

 

 

Since the Airfix kit was missing a gear stick, I resorted to old school bodge one up as you go along. A piece of brass rod with Tamiya putty stuck on both ends. As the putty skins over very quickly its an easy job to form whatever shapes you need, in this case, a gear know, and the boot around the base.

 

 

Then on perusing the Airfix kit leftovers, it would appear I'm going to have to resort to 3D'ing again. The shiny chrome at the front is the Revell part while the dull blobby bit behind is the, you guessed it, Airfix part. I also see a lot of de-chroming in my near future.

 

 

More missing parts I'm afraid.  The rear lamp cluster mechanism or rather, one of them, is another item that's gone walkabout over the years so would have to be replicated.

 

 

To be honest, I'm kind of glad about that as the kit parts were pretty horrible and the "gadgetry" involved the entire lamp clusters hinging open.  I'm going to go with something closer to the 1:1 with just the lamps opening.

The lamp clusters needs a tweak or two, or three before they'll be ready for prime time. No doubt with a nightmare job of blending in to all those curves surrounding the cluster.

 

 

While I was de-chroming some of the parts I somehow managed to lose one of the kit vent trims. Thank heavens for 3D printers. It was a simple job to knock one up based on the remaining kit part. Looking at this photo though it still needs a little tap on the digital bits before it'll be ready.

 

 

The printed wheels for the Revell kit got their chrome coat, which somehow seemed to come up a lot better than the previous set for the Airfix kit.  The knock-offs also got chromed. You can just make out the inner knock-off sitting against the wheel

 

 

I don't know if this shot shows it up any better, maybe's aye, maybe's naw. Who knows.

 

 

I'll be honest here and say that I'm stunned at the quality of those wheels and knock-offs.

 

Now it's back to Batmobile stuff over the next week - there's more and more stuff getting added to the list, and to be honest, it's quite fun to do - as long as it goes right that is.

 

I'm swithering on the finish I should apply to the Corgi model. I gloss coated the ejector roof a few days ago and it came up brilliantly - very glossy. Now I'm not sure if I want the DB5 gloss coated, or whether I should go for a satin coat.  I think the originals were more of a satin finish.  I'm not trying to replicate the original release in every detail (since I've already removed a bunch of seam lines) but I'd like to keep it in the spirit of the original release, so ... shiny? or satin...y?  Thoughts from the hive please?

 

 

[Stick]

+1 Satin...y

👍

[Jo NZ]

My Corgi repro is satiny.

[giemme]

Excellent job all round, but those wheels are outstanding!   

 

Ciao

[Brandy]

I have to agree with you on the wheels. Stunning is the only apt description!

 

Ian

[klubman01]

Great finish on the wheels!

Satin finish on the Corgi gets my vote.

Trevor

[PeteH1969]

On 18/06/2024 at 08:53, klubman01 said:

Great finish on the wheels!

Satin finish on the Corgi gets my vote.

Trevor

All original wire wheels of the 1950's & 60's were finished in satin silver painted finish, this was done as it was easier to identify cracks in the rim and damage to the spokes and the application of the chrome finish was not as good to wheels then as it is now it was better used on bigger items like bumpers.

 

Pete

[hendie]

Well, that's very handy- I gloss coated them last night and the chrome finish has been knocked back to more of a silvery finish.

[Pete in Lincs]

Can I just say that I think the seats should look like they've been satin? No? Oh well, I tried

[hendie]

It seems like it's been forever since I was in here but it's only been just over a week so I can put my guilt to the side for the time being.  It's been a bit hectic at Chez Hend and the Bat printers have been churning out bat bits which has taken up most of my time leaving very little for my own modeling activities.

 

Things did advance albeit at a very slow rate. In the occasional half hour I managed to slip away to the basement I spent most of that time just looking at bits wondering what was next in the scheme of things. Not having any real length of time to spend in the man cave meant that it didn't feel worthwhile starting jobs that I'd have to leave after such a short time.

These bits did get finished though. Revell steering wheel on left along with two of my home brewed versions. The Revell kit decals are nice to work with, and since this is a snap together kit, not only do you get a sheet of traditional waterslide decals, you also get duplicate sheet, but stickery adhesive backed decals - which are really pretty terrible. However I managed to salvage the Aston Martin steering wheel logo and use it on one of my printed versions (center). The wheel on the right just has a blob of blue'ish paint.

 

 

The Revell interior tub...

 

 

and the Airfix tub, complete with weeks of dust.

 

 

The Revell kit also got the beginnings of the exhaust system. The quality of the Revell molding overall is very good. There's a little bit of flash here and there and some visible seam lines, but in general, very little remedial work is required on parts.

 

 

I thought it was about time the Corgi made another appearance. I seem to have been neglecting it and in theory since this was only a refurb, it should have been the quickest build. I ordered a new set of tires from one of the many sellers on t'bay and they arrived last week. While waiting on them I spruced up the wheels a bit.

The main damage was done using a wire brush on a rotary tool to remove decades of crusty bits and return a hint of a shine to them again.  I have two of these cars so I chose the best wheels from the two.  There were hunerts and hunerts of little dings and scratches all over the wheels and the only way to remove those would have been to machine the wheels - and likely cause more damage in the process so I chose to run with what I had.  Once the wheels had been cleaned up I hit them with some chrome spray and a coat of clear gloss to try and protect the finish.

 

 

Then it was on to chassis work. I had stripped, cleaned, primed and painted the base plate and now it was time for assembly work.  Since these were originally riveted during assembly the only way to disassemble the car was to drill out the rivets - that was an easy job, wot wiv being a trained (ex-)rigger an all that.

My plan for reassembly was to drill down into the rivet stubs and tap them to accept screws that I could then use to reassemble the car.  My first attempt didn't go to well and I drill right through the chassis.  

In my defense... I'm an idiot.   There is really only two or three millimeters to work with, and I went to far.

 

 

It's a lovely neat hole though innit? Sign of a good rigger that is.

Actually since this is for my own display/collection/nostalgia purposes that hole is really no big deal and there was nothing preventing me from using that chassis and I could probably have filled that hole easily enough for an invisible repair.

But since I have two of these I opted to use the second chassis and this time had a bit more success in hole drilling.  I also found that I don't have any taps anywhere near the size I needed. - I am using spectacle screws to hold this thing together, so, being an ex-rigger I used the tools of the trade, and just used brute force.  I found that a 1.2mm drill bit left a hole that with the right amount of force (I.e. lots) you could force these teeny tiny screws to cut their own thread.

 

 

Note in the above photo that I remembered to fit the two actuators before the plastic retainer was fitted.

The found I couldn't fit the wheels - but proving that the screws would hold up to any future nadling abuse.

 

Just as well I used screws, eh?

 

 

With the Dremel clone in action I decided to spruce up some of the other bits as well.  The surface finish on the machine guns, bumpers etc. that were all left unpainted in the original had suffered over the years so I tidied up some seams and gave them a bit of a shine

 

 

The bullet shield is still in process but getting there.

 

 

Corgi now put to one side while back to the other two.

It appears we have settled on a satin finish for the Corgi - my next question is around the silver painted parts. I did consider should I use chrome instead? but have opted to go with the original silver paint finish.  The bumpers, headlamps, and radiator grill were all painted silver. Should I consider painted additional parts like the door handles and that trim piece on the wing vent silver also?  (I think I'm talking myself out of it here) - thoughts?  I guess I can always try it on the spare car to see what it looks like.

 

It seems I can't go much further without painting the body shells, and before I can do that, the body shells need to be in a condition suitable for painting. There's minimal work required on the Revell kit,, but the Airfix?  On the whole, the Airfix body is in reasonably good shape, but the headlights? Oh dear...

The kit parts are disastrous. It's just sort of, well, blobby. It's also a different shape from the headlamp aperture, and a completely different size too. After much cogitating I opted to go with the same method I used back on my Aurora Super Spy Car build.

I had spotted the kit was missing that downward curve of the front wing as it reaches the headlamp so this was also an opportunity to try and address that. I found some styrene tubing that was a close fit and a quick test suggested it was possible

 

 

JB:     "Q, don't you think those machine guns are just a bit conspicuous?"

 

 

The tubes were glued in with whatever araldite equivalent we have here. It seemed the wisest choice since there was so little contact area between the tubes and the kit. I also used the epoxy glue to fair in the front edge - which in retrospect might have not been a wise decision.

Trimmed back and initial sanding

 

 

First inspection seems promising. We now have more of that downward curve. ANother thing I didn't like on the kit was that the lower edge of the headlamps almost touched the indicators when in fact there is a sizable distance between the two. Going down this route had added that space between the two.

 

 

and a squirt of primer reveals there are a couple of areas that need further work. 

 

 

Not visible in these shots is that on close inspection I can still make out the edges of the epoxy versus the kit plastic so I'm not sure if that was just my poor sanding effort or whether the epoxy doesn't like fairing in to really thin edges. I should maybe have used the epoxy for fixing the tubes in place and faired in with milliput.  I'll have another bash at sanding and see where that ends up before making any foolish decisions.

 

 

You can now see that space between the indicators and the lower edge of the headlamps

I know this now means that I'll end up with smaller headlamps, but at least I know have something I can work with. Hopefully this won't be as noticeable once it's all colored in and blingy bits added to distract the casual observer.

 

Happy weekending folks.