MFH Lancia/Ferrari D50 in 1/12th scale

[nick]

The eagle-eyed amongst us might have noticed that I’ve had an enforced break from modelling for a bit, and here it is:

 

 

not me, but my poor wife in the blink of an eye tripped over the dogs lead and did this 3 weeks ago. 2 hours of surgery and some serious metalwork later she’s just starting to come out of the most painful phase. 
 

so today, hanging up my nurses outfit for a bit, I got a little bit done.

Ive  been playing with my technique for low temp soldering and I’ve got the hang of it now. It’s very counterintuitive for someone who’s spent about 150 years soldering electronics together, it’s pretty much the opposite of how you do that.
Anyway, I like it now, in my head it’s more akin to welding than electronics soldering and I’ve been using it like lead-loading today (for anyone old enough to know what that is!) and the beautiful thing with MFH kits is that holes and gaps can be filled, broken bits re-built up and filed/sanded and then when polished, blend perfectly with the original white metal. 
 

I had entirely failed to grasp this until now. So I’ve reworked the front part of the chassis using these techniques and then dunked it my tumbler/polisher for a bit, it still needs finessing a bit more, but I really like it!

 

theres maybe 40 parts in that all soldered together and the joints and gaps have literally melted away! It’s a nice distraction from CAD for a bit anyway. 
 

thanks for looking!

 

Nick

 

 

 

[Bengalensis]

Oh that look both painful and complicated... Best wishes to your wife for a full recovery.

The rest looks complicated as well, but more under control. Lovely work as always!

[CrazyCrank]

Hi @nick

I am sorry to hear such bad news about your wife. She's got a really nasty fracture. 🥲

But I have no doubt that the surgeon did an excellent job 🤞

As did you, with the fitting of that front part of the chassis, which is quite simply a work of art!
It's magnificent!👍
 

[Noel Smith]

Some things in life are much more important than model making, and hope your wife makes a good full recovery Nick.

[nick]

Thanks everyone, Mand is finally starting to feel better now the worst of the pain is over. She’s had a hell of time though and we won’t ever get through an airport quietly ever again! 

 

staples out a couple of days ago and completely free movement already. Amazing really, as invasive and major as the surgery was, the upside is it’s that it’s instantly mended mechanically so no sling or cast or anything, ‘just’ the surgery to get over. 

 

[albergman]

Oh my what an awful break ... and just from a fall!   Glad to hear your wife is recovering so quickly.   I had a hip replaced a few months ago and in no time at all it seems, it was like it had never happened.   Just amazing how the body can rebuild and recover itself.

 

Now, I just have to look into this low temp soldering business.   Is it just for white metal Nick or will it work on other metals?   

 

 

[nick]

3 hours ago, albergman said:

Oh my what an awful break ... and just from a fall!   Glad to hear your wife is recovering so quickly.   I had a hip replaced a few months ago and in no time at all it seems, it was like it had never happened.   Just amazing how the body can rebuild and recover itself.

 

Now, I just have to look into this low temp soldering business.   Is it just for white metal Nick or will it work on other metals?   

 

 

Thanks Frank, she’s recovering extremely well already in fairness, although the surgeon said it would be a full year to get back to normal. 
 

im pretty sure (although I don’t know for certain) that the low temp soldering is just for white/Britannia type metals. I think it originated with model railway guys who seem to use it the most, I don’t mean model engineers, but the small scale lot, who make rolling stock etc like this I think. So maybe have a look around their forums for more info.

 

I got all my solder and flux from Langley Models who seem to be the place to go. 

 

I was talking to my friend last night who is an absolute expert welder about this  he used to do all the 1000feet deep pipeline repairs in the Scottish oil fields in his day, and he agreed that is indeed more akin to welding than traditional soldering/brazing, albeit at relatively low temps.

 

He knows a lot more than me, but basically normal soldering you heat the two or more high melting point metals you want to join, generally copper type stuff, then when they are about the same heat, introduce the much lower melting point solder that flows in everywhere and makes a softer fillet that joins the pieces.

 

When you weld, you heat the piece to about it’s melting point and introduce rods/wire of a similar or compatible metal that amalgamates with it to effectively grow the thing into its neighbour so it becomes one piece made of all the same stuff.

 

This welding process is more like what happens with low temperature soldering it turns out.
 

So you paint very liquid special flux where you want the solder to go, you melt the solder on the tip of the iron (an absolute crime in the electronics world) Then carry it to the joint, as the iron is very hot 400°+ the solder is very liquid, capillary action just instantly flashes it into the joint with very little residue/cleanup.
 

I was even able to correct all my clumsy, earlier melting accidents by carrying additional material this way and even applying bits of rod very quickly. The trick is having a very hot iron - my mistake was that I assumed I needed to lower the temp as much as possible initially, which is completely wrong it turns out, the hotter the better, and then  work VERY FAST also clamp everything as you can’t adjust things on the fly the way you can with normal soldering. 
 

then you work the built up stuff just the same as the original white metal with Dremel, files etc it’s identical, the same strength, hardness, pliability, colour when polished  everything. It’s my new favourite thing at the moment.

 

I'm now wondering what else I can do with it, I’m going to see if I can laser cut a thin sheet of white metal shim kind of thickness, as all the cut-outs on the suspension towers should have lips like this:

 

 

so I’m going to attempt to cut out ‘washers’ with the correct external diameter, and smaller internal diameter to give myself a chance, solder in place and drill out the centre.

not confident, but hey nothing ventured. 
 

watch this space!

 

[Noel Smith]

Alec Tiranti is another company that I remember selling very low melt solders.

They used to be in Theale near Reading when I used to visit a relative there. I think that they have moved a few miles West along the A4 to Thatcham.

There was an outlet shop of theirs in London I believe, but not sure if it is still operating or not.

[nick]

well that was a long gap! I've really got into low temp soldering now and its a marvel. So far its worked with brass, copper and completely unexpectedly nickel photo etch.

 

Not only that (and for all the folk that think I'm a techie one-trick-pony 3D printing nerd - which of course I am  ) I've finally understood the old-school attraction of white metal and I'm completely converted now. The thing I never grasped was how important soldering is, bottom line, it makes it infinetly re-useable, so you mess something up - drill a hole oversize, take too much material away, break something, you simply add some more with solder and just build it up again, and have another go.

 

The down side of this is that if you are obsessive like me, you can have unlimited attempts at reworking things, which of course I have done.

Anyway less talking more photos.

 

 

So here was the first foray into soldering brass. This strip that supports the fuel tanks was just so fragile when it was drilled with all the lightning holes and thinned to scale I broke and remade it literally about twenty times. so eventually I thought I would make one from brass and see if it would solder. This is more like proper soldering, where I got heat into the brass first, then just touched it onto the white metal. It worked great and seems really strong.

 

 

I didnt really expect this to work, but next I thought I would have a go at soldering the nickel Photo-etch leaf spring supports to the chassis, and using the same technique, this worked perfectly too!

 

 

So as for the raised rings on the suspension towers, I found some 3mm copper tube in my stash, and cut it into 1mm rings 

 

 

Heres what drops out...

 

 

I then whittled a little tool to locate the rings

 

 

Solder applied to the ring and tower

 

I also punched a disc out of white metal to make the raised portion

 

And here it all is soldered up before cleanup

 

Everthing can be filed down to the correct height now its firmly attached.

 

heres the original again

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking!

 

Nick

 

[HK-500]

you really did a fine work here ! 👍  you're doing justice to this milestone of a car !

[keefr22]

Very neat micro engineering!

 

Keith

 

 

[nick]

I'm  not sure what's got ino me lately, but I seem to have gone all 'old-school' all of a suuden. I even got my old steam lathe out today, all knobs, levers and analogue very-near gauges, not even a DRO in sight!

why? well, I didn't like the looks of the front shock absorbers. Firstly, the bottom brackets were cast into the lower chassis rail. That's a bit Airfix IMHO for a kit of this quality and price.

 

 

So I started out just making a couple of brackets out of Brass so I could file them off. I'm going to use my own 3D printed correct fastners throughout, so I'm removing all the MFH ones anyway in case you were wondering.

When I looked at the white metal shock absorber casting, It needed turning IMHO as it was missing a step one end, so I was thinking about how to mount it in the lathe, and thought if I'm doing that I might as well make a correct brass one. Also I wanted to use steel for the shaft so I could polish it up. I drilled all the way throught the brass shock I just turned whle it was in the lathe and used the bottom of the shaft to pick up on the brass bracket, which I then soldered. Finally, I drilled out the MFH casting for the top connector (after making a little ring from copper to go under it which was omitted in the kit version) and lastly threaded the end of the rod.

 

The left side is original so far, so you can see what I'm doing.

 

 

 

 

Full size Original again for reference

 

 

I think it looks a bit better anyway. I'm long past asking 'was that worth the effort' and I just do everything I can see these days regardless. It amuses me

 

Thanks for looking

 

Nick

 

Just looking at my own post, those top actuating levers are nothing like the real ones, so theres the next job. All not very MFH at all, I'm starting to get disappointed with this kit, I'm re-working a hell of a lot it  

 

[HK-500]

2 hours ago, nick said:

'was that worth the effort'

well , it's always worth it : first of all , the achievement is good for self satisfaction and even more so if someone notices that very effort 😉

 

funnily I grasped this at a very young age when my father , surprised that I was painting the chassis and its components on one of my models, said to

me :  "why do you put so much effort and precision in doing this ? nobody will notice..."

 

anyway it's a pleasure to see you sweat and succeed on this build 👍

[nick]

Just found a decent photo of the top of the shock absorber mounting. The MFH thing is nothing like it. That’ll have to go then. 

 

[Noel Smith]

Nick, what make and type of machine is that where you are cutting the small metal rings on?

It looks like you are using a fine abrasive cutting disc on it instead of a fine circular saw blade.I

 

Your MFH Ferrari is coming on well. Very interesting to follow.

Edited October 27 by Noel Smith

[nick]

51 minutes ago, Noel Smith said:

Nick, what make and type of machine is that where you are cutting the small metal rings on?

It looks like you are using a fine abrasive cutting disc on it instead of a fine circular saw blade.I

 

Your MFH Ferrari is coming on well. Very interesting to follow.

you're the second person to ask me that in 24hours . it's one of those tools I wasnt sure I would use when I bought it, an now I wouldn't be without it.

 

Its got a high speed sanding disk on the back which is amazingly useful too. the dust extraction can be plugged and there is a little sealed chamber under the blade to collect very small things in.

Heres the plate on it, cant see a model number though?

 

 

it comes with 3 blades, coarse, fine and the diamond dust one you've seen.

[nick]

Thats more like it...

 

 

To the printer!

[Malc2]

For your mini table saw, it would be worth making a zero clearance insert (replacing the current insert), to stop cut off parts going down past the blade which can be quite dangerous on a large table saw, also possibly damaging the part you want to keep.

[nick]

20 minutes ago, Malc2 said:

For your mini table saw, it would be worth making a zero clearance insert (replacing the current insert), to stop cut off parts going down past the blade which can be quite dangerous on a large table saw, also possibly damaging the part you want to keep.

Not sure about that. There is a nice smooth walled chamber under there where all the things that would otherwise be making an airborne bid for freedom collect nicely. I have no complaints with this little machine. It’s pretty stiff and true and smooth running for a fairly low cost thing. 

[nick]

making a start on the fasteners now.

 

Here's the wisbone pivots with grease nipples which are quite distinctive, these things:-

 

 

This is short as I'm using a steel pin for mechanical strength that will be just capped off with these.

 

For any fusion 360 heads out there, if you haven't discovered 'Insert McMaster-Carr component' yet, its an absolute Godsend for stuff like this - I didn't draw any of this, just modified a couple of standard parts.

 

The fun continues...

 

Nick

 

 

 

[Noel Smith]

Nick. Thanks for putting up the picture of the mini table saw where I can read the manufacturer's name on it.

Looks a nice piece of kit.

Cheers Noel

[nick]

8 minutes ago, Noel Smith said:

Nick. Thanks for putting up the picture of the mini table saw where I can read the manufacturer's name on it.

Looks a nice piece of kit.

Cheers Noel

It’s on the label - novel life. It looks to have changed slightly since I bought mine, but this is basically it 

https://amzn.eu/d/c7HgxQc

[albergman]

For a brief moment there I thought there was a chance you were going to become an actual scratch-builder ... but I see you found your way safely back to the technology road.  LOL.    Nice work Nick.

[nick]

31 minutes ago, albergman said:

For a brief moment there I thought there was a chance you were going to become an actual scratch-builder ... but I see you found your way safely back to the technology road.  LOL.    Nice work Nick.

Hehe. Funnily enough I was just looking at how you did your steering wheel. I’ve got some nice hardwood sheets in my stash and I’m going to have a crack at CNC cutting the rims out of it. I reckon they are 12 separate pieces, 6 on the front and 6 more knobbly ones on the back. Held together with rivets. 
 

 

I am making some more brass brackets  ‘the hard way’ in my defence. 😎👍

 

Im just very flexible in my working methods - horses, courses etc. 

[albergman]

Yes, hardwood is the key (I've used cocobolo, padauk and ebony).   You need a tight, dense grain that won't come apart at such small dimensions and yours will be even smaller than mine!  The rivets were "a bridge too far" for my skillset but maybe a CNC can manage them.   It'll be interesting to see if you can pull this off Nick ... another very marketable product!