albergman Posted January 23 Posted January 23 Well I confess, I was shaking my head and thinking "No ... I wouldn't do it that way" but look at that! Proving once again there's more than one way to skin a cat. Well done Steve! This is coming along nicely. 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted January 24 Author Posted January 24 32:00 to 41:45 Various Recesses Now with the very basic outline of the car's body under control, I need to start making some of the recesses from which various bits and pieces will stick out. One way to ensure reasonably easy and accurate carving of recesses is to do some '3D Chain Drilling'. Here I have drilled a dense pack of holes to the depth I wish to carve out. This both defines and weakens the volume to be removed making the carving job more accurate and much easier. Any residual roughness can be hidden under a slathering of blade putty... followed by some sanding. I have decided that this will be strictly a 'curbside' model and will not have a detailed underside. Nevertheless, I still need to add the lower sides on the car-body and these can be provided by 9mm thick MDF. I simply marked out the two shapes required, glued them into position and let the glue set. This leaves a large recess under the car body that hopefully no-one will ever see. Further recesses need to carved around each of the axles. This is the volume from which the steering linkages and suspension and various other bits and pieces will emerge. While all of that glue and blade putty was setting I stuck a few strips of evergreen plastic onto the 'Paw Patrol' wheels. Doing this adds a visible tread to the tyres, and increases the outside diameter of the wheels to exactly match the drawings. Although the underside is sparce, it is at least quite tidy. Don't be surprised if you never see it again though. 😁 Here's how my curbside model looks now. The rear wheels look like liquorish all-sorts but a quick blast with same paint will fix that. Don't worry about the fact that the nose is too short. I'll be working on that in the next post. I'm now 41 hours and 45 minutes into this project and have given up all hope of '60 hours' being anything like a reasonable estimate for completion. Oh well, that's how we learn I suppose! 👍 Peace dudes! ☮️ Bandsaw Steve 14 1
ArnoldAmbrose Posted January 24 Posted January 24 49 minutes ago, Bandsaw Steve said: The rear wheels look like liquorish all-sorts G'day Steve, the continual bands of white make the wheels look like they're spinning - to me, anyhow. This is a nice neat model you're building. Regards, Jeff. 1
wimbledon99 Posted January 24 Posted January 24 Love those rear wheels. Simple yet effective! This is such a different and enjoyable watch. 1
Stick Posted January 24 Posted January 24 Steve, I love watching your projects develop... simply marvellous. 👍 Stick 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted January 29 Author Posted January 29 41:45 to 49:45 An Errant Seat, an Odd Nose & Weird Blue Primer According to the drawings this Ferrari had a seat that looks a bit like this... It's made from MDF which is proving a valuable material that bridges the gap between wood and cardboard. Unfortunately I think that this seat looks a bit like something we would find in grandma's living room rather than in a hot racing machine. I think I might conduct some light research on this because I'm not sure this is convincing. Here is the nose radiator intake with the inside painted SMS Italian Red. I need to paint this now because if I paint it once it's attached to the front of the car the radiator grill will inevitably get red overspray on it. At this point I wanted to convince myself that the slightly rough MDF surfaces would be able to be smoothed out through the generous application of car spray putty. I went ahead and sprayed the whole thing blue despite the fact that this is a weird colour for a Ferrari. The follow-up sanding was reassuring. I think I'm going to be able to achieve a smooth final surface. At this point I decided to - perhaps belatedly - stick the nose assembly on the front of the car. This 'Titebond aliphatic' glue is brilliant and since I discovered it here on Britmodeller, due to a tip from @Bertie McBoatface, I have retired my PVA. Here is the unfortunatly odd-looking nose that results. It's more of a 'snout' than a nose. The whole project is looking decidedly strange at this point and not much like a Ferrari at all. See what I mean? It looks like a blue pig with lipstick. Fortunately a bit of carving, filing and sanding makes things look a little better. With appearances only to be ruined by the reckless application of pink filler. Well, OK - with the wheels on maybe this looks a little better. After some sanding this looks quite encouraging. If you blur your eyes the pink filler looks a bit like a 'flame' marking around the nose. This is very racy! To me though, the seat still looks out of place. This takes me up to 15 minutes short of 50 hours work. Unfortunately I am unlikely to be able to work on this project or post again for a few weeks as I am required to travel for much of February. Sorry about that Peace fans. I reckon I'm about half way through this now, so all going well I should be able to finish this towards the end of March. Best Regards, Bandsaw Steve 17 1
ArnoldAmbrose Posted January 29 Posted January 29 5 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said: It looks like a blue pig with lipstick. Or some lip filler surgery gone wrong. 🤭 Where do you get these expressions? 5 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said: the pink filler looks a bit like a 'flame' marking around the nose. Actually, I thought that too, and we both can't be wrong. 🙂 The nose job has come along very well, it fares in very smoothly. I'm afraid I have no idea what race car seats looked like but I agree that what you've done initially looked like something taken from a Granny's front porch. But in-situ I thought it looked better, and would anyone else be the wiser? Good luck with your travels next month. Regards, Jeff. 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted February 28 Author Posted February 28 Hi peaceniks, This is just a quick note to say that unforeseen circumstances far beyond my control have conspired to keep me in New Zealand where I can make no progress on this project. I am still very keen to finish this one within the time limits of the group-build and will be back into this just as soon as I can return home to Western Australia. Thanks to everyone who has shown an interest so far! 👍 1
ArnoldAmbrose Posted February 28 Posted February 28 2 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said: This is just a quick note to say that unforeseen circumstances far beyond my control have conspired to keep me in New Zealand G'day Steve, Chinese warship live-firing exercises disrupting return flights? 🤔 Oh well . . . The model will still be here when you return. Regards, Jeff. 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted March 15 Author Posted March 15 49:45 to 61:00. Back in Town! Hello everyone. Following 6 weeks enforced leave of absence from this project I'm back in town and back at the workbench. Despite the loss of six weeks and my horrible under-estimation of how many hours this project will take, I'm determined to press on and do everything I can to finish this model within the group-build time limit. The next small and simple step is to make some pedals for in the cockpit. These are made from a combination of MDF, aluminium lithoplate and sculpting mesh and, now that I look at them completed, are both ridiculously overscale and absurdly mis-shapen. Too bad! There's not time to waste and these will be mostly hidden away inside the cockpit so I'm calling this job done! Following a failed attempt to make the cockpit cowling, if that's the correct term, out of shaped metal sheet I resorted to using plywood and balsa. Here the plywood side walls are being fitted. At this point they are absurdly too thick but they should file down to a better-looking thickness. The remaining hole is filled with a sheet of 4mm balsa cut to the correct shape, soaked in water and squeezed into the hole and bent into a conforming contour. it's then held in place with aliphatic wood-working glue which, when used generously, tends to harden-up the soft wood. A bit of rasping and filing and sanding goes a long way to establishing the requisite curves... Then a generous application of panel-beaters 'blade putty' fills the gaps. More sanding leaves this... And another blast of blue spray-on putty filler gives us this result. There's a bit of a 'dimple' in the contours just ahead of the cockpit opening that will need dealing with but other than that I'm happy that this is looking OK. 61:00 hours invested so far, which is just over my inital estimate for the entire project. Bandsaw Steve. 9 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted March 19 Author Posted March 19 61:00 to 66:15. Easing-cuts. Sometimes seemingly difficult curves can be formed from wood by using 'easing-cuts'. These are cuts made to assist the bending of something. All of the work in this post involves the use of such cuts. Here a sheet of plywood has been cut to a very specific 2d shape and then a series of easing-cuts made on that shape. Each cut slices through about 50% of the sheet's thickness. The original segment is still in one piece but is now much easier to bend. Without these easing-cuts the plywood would break when being bent into a curve. If you use balsa instead of plywood you can just soak the balsa in water to help it bend, but in this particular application balsa will not be resilient enough. This section now fits snuggly onto the front of the cockpit to form a pleasing curved sill. I have no qualms about slathering filler all over the newly fitted piece of plywood to ensure that all of the cuts and joints are thoroughly hidden. This is a great example of the difference between a model-builder and a wood-worker. Wood-workers generally leave the original wood visible in the final product. Leaving the wood visible makes this kind of bodging impossible and requires far more skill and patience than I will ever have. The rear sill gets the same easing-cut process. Here is the teeny tiny saw I have used to cut the slots. I've used masking tape on the blade to mark the depth that I want to cut down to. This bends beautifully now... and forms the rear sill of the cockpit. The yellow paste is aliphatic wood-worker's glue which in this case doubles as an effective filler and adds considerable strength. After a bit of sanding this is looking OK. On the front right of the car's body there is this very prominent blister which covered... who knows what!? Since the car body is a compound curve at this point and the blister is carved from a flat sheet of paulonia wood I used another series of easing-cuts to ensure that the blister would conform to the shape of the fuselage. For more detailed filling I still like to use Vallejo plastic putty. This stuff has the same consistency as toothpaste when wet but sets rock-hard and sands beautifully. Despite being 'plastic putty' it works very well on wood and MDF. The body of this thing is starting to look a little bit more like the original, so I'm happy. Stay tuned folks, I'm determined to get this thing finished! Bandsaw Steve. 11 1
wimbledon99 Posted March 19 Posted March 19 This is coming along a treat. I'll never look at a wooden model the same again!! 1
SnøMotion Posted March 19 Posted March 19 It really is most enjoyable to watch the progress you're making Martin 1
ArnoldAmbrose Posted March 20 Posted March 20 19 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said: Sometimes seemingly difficult curves can be formed from wood by using 'easing-cuts'. G'day Steve. As you know I work with polystyrene which bends much more easily than plywood but I use a very similar method to you if I want a sharp bend, such as the dihedral for my small aircraft wings, or gull wings for aircraft such as the F4U Corsair or Ju-87 Stuka. I also cut half way through the inside of the wing bend, bend as required, add a thin bead of glue into the cut initially and finally fill the gap with 5-minute Araldyte. It works quite well. I think you've done a very good job smoothing in the two combings. From the outside of the hull fuselage body shell the join is impossible to see. 👍 Where would we be without filler? 🙂 This is really looking the part now. 19 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said: On the front right of the car's body there is this very prominent blister which covered... who knows what!? I don't know about Alberto Ascari but James Bond would have had a retractable machine-gun there. 😁 (I'll get my coat.) Regards, Jeff. 1 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted March 20 Author Posted March 20 A definite NO to the machine-gun idea Jeff. The hippie, peacenik, basket-weavers in this group build would have a breakdown! ☮️ 4 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted March 24 Author Posted March 24 66:15 to 75:45 Playing catch-up Having lost several weeks from the already strictly limited amount of time in this group build, and having already handsomely exceeded the total number of hours I thought this would entail, I now have to try to catch-up. Here I have scored a 'bend line' in some 0.75mm aluminum sheet and have found that it bends beautifully as shown below. I'm actually in the process of making two strips of aluminum, but I thought that I would put this photo in to show you all how this material would be ideal for making something angular. With a highly angular subject you could almost scour the bend lines and construct the subject like origami. If I was making another PZH-2000 I might be tempted to try this. Anyway, in this case all I’m doing is making a strip that will represent the lower side of the car's body onto which a series of vents must be stuck. The vents in this case are made from aluminium lithoplate and stuck on with cyanoacrylate glue. Cyanoacrylate seems to have a natural affinity for sticking aluminium to aluminium. TBH I'm not happy with these vents, they look far too 'flat' but am trying to work quickly at this point so might leave them for now. I think I might have a better way of making these and might try one day if time permits. Here are the side aluminium panels stuck firmly in place with with two-part epoxy glue. At this point I started experimenting with how to tackle the spoked wheels. The concept was to cut a ring from PVC pipe to such a diameter that it would fit snuggly in each wheel. Then I would drill a series of holes in each ring through which I would thread some stretchy nylon thread to make a 'spiders-web' of spokes. I would then insert each ring into the wheels and pop a 'hub cap' over the top to tidy the whole thing up... In the end I decided that since I was playing catch-up this whole rigmarole might have to wait and, in fact, might never happen. I apologize to any Ferrari puritans who might be following along. I took my digital calipers for a ride to my local opportunity shop and after careful measurement picked up a pair of plastic knitting needles of the correct width. Undeterred by their outlandish ‘50 cent for two' price tag and their frightful orange colour, I gently heated the first one in the requisite spots and gently bent it into the necessary shape. The process was remarkably simple and produced this without any difficulty. The production of the second pipe was equally successful and, despite this aspect of the build having worried me for some time, yielded this after only an hour or so's work. Here you can see the outlets leaving the body of the car and merging into the main exhaust. A few minutes with a Dremel drill produced a satisfying hollow termination to the exhaust pipe. So here is where we are up to at 75:45 hours - which is more than 3/4 of the way to 100 hours! Despite it's rather 'panel-beaten' appearance it's starting to look like a car. Perhaps I am starting to catch-up. Best Regards, Bandsaw Steve 10
albergman Posted March 24 Posted March 24 Glad to see you safely home and back on the project Steve. I'm smiling all the way through your pictures and always marvelling at your unique approaches to making things. Really looking forward to what you'll come up with for the wire wheels. One thing's for sure they'll be done as Frank Sinatra sang ... "I did it MY Way". Frank 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted March 24 Author Posted March 24 1 hour ago, albergman said: Really looking forward to what you'll come up with for the wire wheels. One thing's for sure they'll be done as Frank Sinatra sang ... "I did it MY Way". Or alternatively I might be singing Valma Kelly’s line from ‘Chicago’ 🎵’I didn’t do it’ 🎵 🤣
Bandsaw Steve Posted March 24 Author Posted March 24 Or maybe 🎵’Relax, don’t do it’ 🎵 by Frankie goes to Hollywood who is a Frankie that in some ways I think more admirable than Frank Sinatatra. I hope I’m not being too frank here Frank! 🤣
albergman Posted March 24 Posted March 24 5 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said: I hope I’m not being too frank here Frank! 🤣 Frankly, no Steve, but let me be earnest with you and speak frankly ... I like your work! Frank 1
bianfuxia Posted March 24 Posted March 24 This is such incredible work I'm kind of short on superlatives. What a great privilege to watch this unfold, literally from scratch. A real masterclass in the hobby. 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted March 24 Author Posted March 24 42 minutes ago, bianfuxia said: This is such incredible work I'm kind of short on superlatives. What a great privilege to watch this unfold, literally from scratch. A real masterclass in the hobby. The pictures and commentary must make this look and sound more difficult than it actually is! 🤣 1 1
Bandsaw Steve Posted March 30 Author Posted March 30 75:45 to 90:00: Inspect, Fill, Sand, Spray; Repeat Every one of my projects contains at least one 'Inspect, Fill, Sand, Spray; Repeat' entry. Sorry folks, for the Ferrari this is it. 🥱 Surprisingly the very small amount of apparent progress in this post has absorbed almost 15 hours of work. Here is my Ferrari after the next coat of blue filler primer. It's looking tidy but upon close inspection... there are still many surface imperfections that require filling with Vallejo putty. Remember this is a racing car with a smooth surface and tidy paint-job so any rough surfaces need to be eliminated. Sanding is essential. This 400 grit is pretty coarse so this photo was taken early in the sanding sequence which eventually progressed to 1200 grit. Here she is sanded down. At this point I thought I might have done enough to abandon the 'primer filler' and move to actual model primer. I was also sick of looking at a blue Ferrari and was thinking about moving toward something that might go better under red paint, and so... I broke out the 'Mr Hobby' 'Mr Oxide Red Surfacer' which I think looks much better. Of course no-one wants a brown Ferrari but it's a bit closer to red. Upon close inspection there were still surface imperfections and so another 'fill, sand, spray' sequence began. Here she is hung up and ready for a second coat of brown primer. Meanwhile I had noticed that the hollow interiors of the toy tyres were far too obvious. These had to be filled. My first pass was completed with two-part panel beating bog filler and, as shown below, was a bit rough. The second round of filling was completed by filling each wheel with talcum powder and then flooding the volume with cheap cyanoacrylate glue. Cyanoacrylate very quickly sets talcum powder (and numerous other powdered mediums) rock hard. It's an old trick but one worth knowing. After a bit of sanding the tyres were filled quite successfully. They are now very heavy, as is the entire model. After the second coat of brown and a blast of grey primer on the wheels here's how she looks at 90 hours. The basic shape is now complete. From here on most of the construction work will involve adding the many much-needed details. I'm 90 hours in and have now consumed 150% of my original 'time budget'; proof that this model-building lark absorbs much more time than I realized. Never mind, progress continues and I'm still aiming to have this thing finished for the close of this group-build. Best Regards, Bandsaw Steve. 7
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