Bandsaw Steve Posted January 11 Posted January 11 Hello Peaceniks, In 1952, for reasons we can discuss later, the world driver championships were run to F2 rather than F1 racing standards. The change from F1 to F2 greatly favored the Ferrari team because Ferrari had been concentrating on perfecting lighter-weight cars with smaller engines than were used in F1 races. The result was that the latest Ferrari model, the 500, dominated the competition and allowed Italian driver Alberto Ascari to win the championship. 🏁 To the best of my knowledge the Ferrari 500 has no military application. 🙂 I was one of the early 'sign-ups' to this group build and voted for it in the bunfight, so I feel duty bound to deliver something. 'Delivering' is not something I have excelled at in Britmodeller recently. Currently I have four projects underway on these pages (this is a fifth) and all of them are horribly dormant. The Mirage III and the Xantho are now becoming drawn-out embarrassments of inactivity. Each might be a good candidate for a KUTA group-build. It strikes me that time management is a problem for me with these projects. I always seem to massively underestimate how many hours of work are involved and how many months each of these will take, so I'm going to use this project as a time management exercise. I'm going to: Estimate how long it will take. Record how long it takes by keeping a project diary and itemising the hours spent. Be finished by the end of the group build even if I have to take some embarrassing short-cuts to do it. One of the reasons I have chosen this particular subject is that it is a relatively simple shape, at least for a car, and I have a good set of drawings. The drawings came from the magazine shown below; Scale Models, Nov 1986, Argus Publications. The Vivid Viggen might have to wait for another Scandinavian Group build. Looking at these drawings and assessing the coming project: On the positive side I'm seeing a simple 'fuselage', no wings, no tail, a roomy cockpit with no ejection seat and only a handful of instruments. Blessedly, there is no cockpit canopy! 🙂Compared with many other subjects there are relatively few exterior details. On the negative side I'm seeing spoked wheels and some 'busy' construction around the steering linkages. There are four oddly shaped exhaust pipes leaving the vehicle which then merge into two and then one. There is a large hollow volume between the driver and the firewall and the walls of the cockpit will need to be kept thin to be in scale. Racing cars typically have a near flawless gloss paint finish (which is a potential nightmare) and i think that the numbers will have to be painted on rather than decaled. There is no option to build this with the undercarriage retracted. Overall I'm guessing that about 60 hours work should see this done. Let's see how that estimate works out. I hope some of you will come along for the ride. Bandsaw Steve 19 3
Malc2 Posted January 11 Posted January 11 Wow, looking forward to seeing this! I would not worry about the paint finish too much, contrary to modern 'restorations' the original Ferraris of this period were quite rough and ready with less than perfect panel fit! Malc. 1
Bobby No Mac Posted January 11 Posted January 11 Wow, I love the ambition of this one, it will be fascinating to watch 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted January 12 Author Posted January 12 0.00 to 10.00 hours: Build a Skeletal Frame For this build I have decided to use MDF as the primary material. MDF is inexpensive and comes in flat sheets of varying widths and is easily cut and carved to required shapes. One of the reasons I've chosen MDF is that building the model using a series of sheets of this material will allow me to create the hollow volumes at the radiator intake and around the cockpit more easily than by carving a solid block of wood. In the photo below I'm working out exactly what the shape of the long-section piece of MDF should look like and cutting out the paper template accordingly. As always, the paper template gets glued onto the required piece using spray-on photo adhesive. Bandsaw work begins. Any small final adjustments can be achieved with a belt sander. As you can see below I intend to build this model a little bit like how some folks build ship models. There is a centre section and a series of cross-sectional formers and a single plan view cut-out which together will define the basic 3D shape of the car's body. I'm sure you can see where this is heading. If you look carefully at the underside just behind where the driver's seat will go you can see the end of a piece of brass piping. This is where the rear axle will be seated. Surprisingly, just getting this far is ten hour's work. Since this subject matter and the building method are both new to me I think that much of that time was spent contemplating exactly how to do each step and also correcting errors. So if I was to do this again I could do it much quicker. See you soon. Bandsaw Steve. 24 3 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted January 14 Author Posted January 14 10:00 to 17:00 hours: Wheels and Initial Bodywork As part of my preparation for this project I spent $5.00 at my local op-shop and bought this Paw-Patrol mobile crime lab. Apparently Paw Patrol mobile crime labs are critical assets when investigating chewed chair legs and buried bones. Alas as soon as I got it home I completely broke this one down to remove the rather fetching wheels. I had eye-balled these wheels to be ‘about the right diameter’ in the shop and as it happened my judgement was bang on. The wheels are only about 1 mm too small against the drawings and it will be easy to add 1mm by adding 0.5mm tread all the way around the outside of each one. The biggest advantage with these wheels is that they fit perfectly onto a perfectly-centered axle. By sliding one wheel off and cutting the axle to the correct length I can then slide the axles into the brass tube that I've already put in place for the purpose. Now I can remove and replace the wheels at will. The big disadvantage with these wheels is that they do not have wire spokes and therefore really don’t look much like the originals at all. If things go quickly and I'm really determined I will attempt to spoke them, otherwise I might make a very large cheat and just paint high shine chrome on the hubs and leave it at that. We shall see. Next I need to start filling the gaps between the cross-sectional formers. I considered using balsa for this because it would be quick to carve and very easy to fit but balsa is soft and I fear that I would inevitably end up with prominent lumps where the MDF formers are and hollows where the balsa was. So in order to try to achieve a uniformly strong structure I'm filling the gaps with more MDF. The MDF is held in place with blue joist glue used in house construction. This stuff is cheap, strong and very good at filling gaps. It sands beautifully. We are now 17 hours into this project (not counting the time spent shopping for the Paw Patrol vehicle) and already we can see the streamlined sleek lines of a first-class racing machine appearing.... Well, OK...No we can't... Stay with me - we will get there. Bandsaw Steve 19
malpaso Posted January 14 Posted January 14 Great choice. As driven to victory by Mike Hawthorne in one of the greatest races of all time! First four places within 5 seconds after 2&3/4 hours and 500km, virtually double a modern girls-blouse F1 race! 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted January 14 Author Posted January 14 30 minutes ago, malpaso said: Great choice. As driven to victory by Mike Hawthorne in one of the greatest races of all time! First four places within 5 seconds after 2&3/4 hours and 500km, virtually double a modern girls-blouse F1 race! Interesting stuff! The cruel truth is I know next to nothing about motor-sport. One of the great things about tackling an unfamiliar subject is we get to learn. When my daughter and I built the Hogwarts Express I learned a bit about steam locomotives and now appreciate them much more. Now I’m finding the same thing happening with racing cars.
Malc2 Posted January 14 Posted January 14 Great stuff, coming along nicely. 2 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said: I know next to nothing about motor-sport. One of the great things about tackling an unfamiliar subject is we get to learn. When my daughter and I built the Hogwarts Express I learned a bit about steam locomotives and now appreciate them much more. Now I’m finding the same thing happening with racing cars. Oh good - we will have you doing a Lotus 25 next!😁 Malc. 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted January 14 Author Posted January 14 29 minutes ago, Malc2 said: Great stuff, coming along nicely. Oh good - we will have you doing a Lotus 25 next!😁 Malc. Probably not. I know even less about flowers than I know about racing cars! 😀 7
CliffB Posted January 14 Posted January 14 A fabulous project, although I have to say that it looked better before, than it does now . 1
ArnoldAmbrose Posted January 15 Posted January 15 14 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said: 15 hours ago, Malc2 said: Lotus 25 next!😁 Malc. Probably not. I know even less about flowers than I know about racing cars! 😀 Flowers? I thought the Lotus was some meditation position. 🤭 Yeah, coat! 😏 Good point about the hardness of MDF versus balsa. Regards, Jeff. 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted January 15 Author Posted January 15 @albergman Hello Albergman, Just thought I’d tag you into this as I thought it might be your cup of tea.
albergman Posted January 18 Posted January 18 On 1/15/2025 at 4:38 AM, Bandsaw Steve said: Hi Steve Thanks for the wake up call. I don't get on here as often a I should but (sneak preview) I'm about to show some stuff I've been working on ... it'll probably be in the railway section. Now, this is a lovely choice of a model and I sure do relate to your approach. Interesting choice to use MDF as your material. Yours must be sturdier than what we get here as I'm pretty sure our MDF would turn to fluff at the mere sight of a sander. Then again I've never tried to fabricate anything with it so might be totally wrong. Looking forward to seeing it develop Steve. Frank 1
ArnoldAmbrose Posted January 19 Posted January 19 2 hours ago, albergman said: Interesting choice to use MDF as your material. Yours must be sturdier than what we get here as I'm pretty sure our MDF would turn to fluff at the mere sight of a sander. Then again I've never tried to fabricate anything with it so might be totally wrong. G'day, if kept dry it can last a long time. Stuff I made with it many years (decades) ago is still going strong. It doesn't like getting wet though. I've found that you can screw through a sheet but it tends to split if screwed along a sheet. Regards, Jeff. 1
albergman Posted January 19 Posted January 19 1 hour ago, ArnoldAmbrose said: G'day, if kept dry it can last a long time. Stuff I made with it many years (decades) ago is still going strong. It doesn't like getting wet though. I've found that you can screw through a sheet but it tends to split if screwed along a sheet. Regards, Jeff. As I remember it it is very sensitive to moisture and could wreak havoc on a model if left in the wrong environment. Still, for a fun build like this it'll be fine. 2
albergman Posted January 19 Posted January 19 Anyone looking for a durable material to scratch build from would do well to look into composite decking boards. I've used it for a large model and it is extremely stable and almost as good as Ureol or Renshape which I now use. These latter products are very expensive however and I'm just fortunate to have a free supply of it. One more thing ... the decking manufacturers have free samples they'll send to you for the asking. 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted January 19 Author Posted January 19 17:00 to 27:00 hours. Contour the Body As it currently stands the body of this car is just too ugly. 🤢 The priority now is to carve this thing to a contoured shape that will not make Enzo Ferrari turn in his grave. A deeply curved gouge chisel is the first weapon of choice for this kind of thing. MDF is a relatively soft and workable material and carves quite well. Carving is followed up with rasping and filing to a surface close to the final contour. You can see the rasp in the background of this photo and the horribly furry surface left on the first section. MDF is notoriously furry and dusty. Do not breath the dust, it's not good for you. Using this particular construction technique the lateral 'bulkheads' form a natural template to carve to, so it's relatively easy to get the 3d shape correct. After a fair bit of sanding most of the fur is removed and the front half is looking reasonably presentable, although a few more blocks of MDF must be glued into the front corners. Now I turn my attention to the rear. I follow the same process to produce this. Note that the forward filler blocks are now also glued in place and a forward 'bulkhead' installed to hold them in place. Now comes the first application of panel-beater's 'knifing putty' which is a single-part filler-putty which does a great job of levelling out major surface imperfections. Overall I'm happy with this. This car is looking much more like a Ferrari than it did at the start of this post, so something is going right.👍 I have now used 27 hours out of my estimated 60 for the whole project (excluding the display base). This means that I have already consumed 45% of the estimated time. Unfortunately I don't think I'm anywhere near half-way through the required work. 👎 I fear my initial estimate may prove to be completely haywire. Best Regards, Bandsaw Steve 19
wimbledon99 Posted January 19 Posted January 19 That’s really starting to take shape!! Is that filler is a tease for the ‘red’ 🤔
Bandsaw Steve Posted January 19 Author Posted January 19 9 hours ago, wimbledon99 said: Is that filler is a tease for the ‘red’ 🤔 This Ferrari will - of course- be red but since there will be several coats of primer before the top coat the colour of the filler won’t matter much. 2
Bandsaw Steve Posted January 20 Author Posted January 20 4 hours ago, kitchentable said: Proper modelling! Thank you. But the big question is whether all this ‘proper modelling’ will produce a ‘proper model’. 🤔 Only time will tell. 🕰️
Bandsaw Steve Posted January 22 Author Posted January 22 27:00 to 32:00 hours. AIr-intake and radiator grill The leading edge of the air-intake (if that's the correct term on a car) was a worrying part of this project from the start. If the lips on the intake are made from MDF they will be vulnerable to damage. So I'm going to try to make them out of metal instead. I purchased some 2.2mm thick aluminium sheet from a local hobby shop and set about dealing with this -for me- unfamiliar material as if it was a sheet of plywood. The first step is to cut out the paper template shape of the big hole at the front of the car and stick it on the sheet metal using spray-on adhesive. After chain-drilling a series of small holes to outline the oval shape I used a jeweler's saw to cut the large shape. Here the rough edge has been cleaned up with a file. After more chain-drilling, sawing and filing I have this shape, and I am most pleased! 👍 This will sit on the front of a block of MDF as shown. Naturally the MDF needs to be cut to the correct shape and a big hole hollowed out. Once again I do some chain-drilling, although when working on the aluminium the holes were much closer together. Chain-drilling allows close control on the geometry of the final cut since the saw blade has less opportunity to wander. After a bit more work we have this. When the aluminium leading edge is added we have this. A rebate is cut out of the rear of the block so that... a radiator grill can be added. The grill is made from aluminium sculpting mesh. In the real Ferrari the bars on the grill were orientated vertically and horizontally, but I really like this more 'racy' diagonal orientation so I'm going with this. As you can see, once again, I'm making a lot of use of pink blade putty. This looks promising, although the leading edge needs to be sharpened up a bit more. I'm happy with this! I think that the metal leading-edge is going to work. I have used 32 out of my estimated 60 hours. I hope I'm more productive in the second half! 🤔 See you soon, Bandsaw Steve 13
Geo1966 Posted January 22 Posted January 22 It might be taking you longer than you thought Steve, but what you are producing is definately worth the time you are putting in. Keep up the great work. George 1 1
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