Merit…

[Kitkent]

Here’s my attempt at a 1/24 Merit kit. It’s the 1956 B.R.M,I’m going to do a Mike Hawthorn car. He drove a BRM 4 times that year and had three dnf results and one crash at Goodwood,so went back to Ferrari for 1957. I don’t know how long I’ve had this model,I can’t remember now! Anyway it was built,unpainted luckily and I managed to dismantle it without too much trouble. I will add more detail,but will be mostly stock hopefully,I’m not sure yet. I have sprayed the nose cone which is a separate part,I removed the number decals and I had trouble getting a smooth finish,but have done now. I’ve got a Jaguar British Racing Green,it’s a PPG spraycan. Chris.

[RossFMJ]

Well then, I'm quite cruising through this today.  Here's some scratch built head resty thing;

 

 

It's now got a hole to let the exhaust out and if I'm brave enough I may open it a tad more on the morrow;

 

 

There were some bonnet catches which looked a bit vague;

 

 

So I lopped them off and pinned the hood for something else at a later date;

 

 

There were a couple of features marked out by raised panel lines, like the fuel filler, so I opened this up till I can come up with something else;

 

 

There was a ventilator in front of the cockpit which I scribed out, I'm new at that so look kindly;

 

 

and I even got some primer and aluminium down, admittedly the ally looks like the grey kit plastic;

 

 

Ross

 

[RossFMJ]

10 minutes ago, Kitkent said:

Here’s my attempt at a 1/24 Merit kit. It’s the 1956 B.R.M,I’m going to do a Mike Hawthorn car.

That's a nice start Chris. I don't envy you having to do a restoration job.

It'll be a nice tribute to Mike H.

 

[RossFMJ]

And finally test fitting what may or may not be an Argentinian into the cockpit;

 

 

 

I think we're going to have to do something about those arms 

[RossFMJ]

And like the proverbial penny, here I am back. I am wondering if these can solve my spoke problem, I just need to work out how to liberate them from the rims;

 

 

First job today, after a strong cuppa, was to mask off some bits, hoping yesterdays Alclad aluminium might stay put.  I was going to put some light stone on some internals and affix the leatherwear;

 

 

 

 

And after painting, demasking ("I'd have got away with it if it wasn't for these pesky kids") decalling the dash and chroming the bezels, I think it's coming along nicely;

 

 

 

 

Now to go and spokerise and do some limb surgery on Juan........

 

Ross

[Kitkent]

You’re racing ahead of if I may say! You’ve added to the suspension? I like the dashboard,mine will just be plain decals I think.As for your  wheels,I don’t know,you’ll have to try them with the car to see how they look. Chris.

[RossFMJ]

30 minutes ago, Kitkent said:

I like the dashboard,mine will just be plain decals I think.

 

Thanks Chris.

Apart from your photo I've not seen the BRM kit. I suppose it might be less detailed than the Alfa. The Alfa and I think the Talbot Lago were their "Super-Kits" so I get the benefit of their extra details.

Luckily I'm not working so I can rush ahead at a fairly slow pace.🐌

[RossFMJ]

On the front was a nub of plastic representing the starting handle apparatus. I thought it could be uprated convincingly with some slide fitting tubing I had;

 

 

No matter how gently you try to cut tubing, it'll take every route to prevent being the same size. Anyway after a certain element of faffing, I ended up with a small piece of tube inside a larger piece of tube which would fit into an even larger piece of tube;

 

 

and after a fair amount of extra faffing it started to look like the proper starter wotsit (it looks nicer in real life)

 

 

The next thing was to chop the driver's arms round to fit the steering wheel, on the left it went pretty well;

 

 

 

On the other side things went astray, the seat seemed to be getting in the way so it seemed like it might be better to have Nelson in charge.  Hennyway, I'm sure some progress might happen tomorrow................possibly............... At least the poses/sizes of the driver seemed to match reality.

[Admiral Puff]

3 hours ago, RossFMJ said:

On the front was a nub of plastic representing the starting handle apparatus. I thought it could be uprated convincingly with some slide fitting tubing I had;

 

 

No matter how gently you try to cut tubing, it'll take every route to prevent being the same size. Anyway after a certain element of faffing, I ended up with a small piece of tube inside a larger piece of tube which would fit into an even larger piece of tube;

 

 

and after a fair amount of extra faffing it started to look like the proper starter wotsit (it looks nicer in real life)

 

 

The next thing was to chop the driver's arms round to fit the steering wheel, on the left it went pretty well;

 

 

 

On the other side things went astray, the seat seemed to be getting in the way so it seemed like it might be better to have Nelson in charge.  Hennyway, I'm sure some progress might happen tomorrow................possibly............... At least the poses/sizes of the driver seemed to match reality.

Or just leave it off, on the basis that Archie Scott-Brown was making a guest appearance ...

[Noel Smith]

Interesting build going on here. 

The ex Merit Alfa Romeo and Talbot Lago kits are the only ones to my knowledge have been made by other subsequent manufacturers like SMER. Not sure if Atlantis ever did a run from those moulds, but I saw the Alfa in Hobbycraft recently  under another maker's name that I cannot remember..Just to confuse matters, Heller brought out a Talbot Lago some years back, but it was from their own tooling, not Merit's.

Apart from the Alfa and Talbot,  all the other car kit moulds were sold on to a toy company in Italy and nothing seen of them since. Maybe the Italian toy company ceased trading shortly after acquiring the moulds. Who knows?  My guess is that they were scrapped many years ago.

 

Merit as far as I can remember was the only company to represent wire wheels using clear plastic discs and decals simulating the spokes.

 

Just out of interest there was a book published back in the sixties named Plastic Model Cars by Cecil Gibson that devoted to building and detailing those Merit kits from materials of that time. It's a nice book and illustrated with good plans and drawings showing the detailing process. We take for granted the plethora of add on items available today, so describing  making the Aston Martin engine using wood and other commonplace items from the time described  in the book was a bit of an eye opener.

Edited June 10 by Noel Smith

[RossFMJ]

7 hours ago, Admiral Puff said:

Or just leave it off, on the basis that Archie Scott-Brown was making a guest appearance ...

I had to look that one up 

[Admiral Puff]

11 hours ago, RossFMJ said:

I had to look that one up 

Makes a man feel old ...

[RossFMJ]

Some progress has occurred, not a lot, but better than nothing.  A bit more leather and it's been painted;

 

 

Now you may have noticed a limb in the background. Juan was starting to get a bit difficult to place properly in control of the vehicle and things started going awry;

 

 

As you can see in the next picture, he has been thrown from the vehicle and will be recovering for some time, unfortunately he won't be fit enough for my rendition. I intended this to be a quick fun build and keep on mucking that up by too much intervention. By this point I'd also glued the thing closed;

 

 

Nextist I'd slathered on some bodyfiller to try and mitigate the join marks;

 

 

...and here's a glimpse of the dash, I think the "office" is starting to look okay;

 

 

I also scribed in some panel lines missing from the kit (keep it simple, keep it simple );

 

 

Next I thought I'd break the screen surround and knock the gear stick off;

 

 

....and here we are up to now, sprayed with Mr Surfacer 500 to fill in scratches and to help identify the worst of the defects before a final prime and stick the colour on.  Now which colour shall it be .

 

 

 

Edited June 16 by RossFMJ
forgot a picture

[Kitkent]

Just a  very small update on the B.R.M. I’ve been trying to work out the chassis tubes on this car,not easy but I’ve been guided by the extremely rough diagram below. This is a copy of the parts that are in the 1/43 BRM P25 kit,it’s quite hard to find pictures of the interiors of these cars,the gear lever is on the left. Also I’ve found an original 1956 postcard of the car. Chris.

Edited June 17 by Kitkent

[RossFMJ]

I've now glued the wheels together and sanded the working surface and applied various paints;

 

 

Mr Surfacer followed by Mr Color Super Chrome Silver 2

 

 

And then Tamiya Rubber Black

 

 

And you know how it is when painting the body, a careful rub down of filler primer, gentle degreasing and a final brush-off of dust.......er no

 

 

I rubbed it down then wiped it over with filthy kitchen roll then sprayed it , so I re-rubbed it down, re-cleaned it, dusted it, sprayed surfacer and repeat, this time ready for the colour coat;

 

 

Looking at original colour photos from the 50s shows a number of shades, from slightly orangey to maroony, and anyway there's no chance of these being particularly accurate, so I found some Alfa paint I had, which should be a bit more Alfa than Ferrari. It's a hobby and a fun quick build after all.

Anyway, after a bit of splurging it seems to have come out okay, it's actually more maroon than the photo shows, I put the wheels on as well, just loosely;

 

 

 

The transfers had been stuck to the window pointing South but were still quite yellowed and then I discovered Le Mans Decals had a set for this car with the driver's colours included, so I'm waiting for these to turn up.

Additionally I've given up on the faff of spoking the wheels and I'm going to use the original arrangement of clear discs.

 

I'm looking forward to the other creations so we can have a proper Grid.

 

TTFN

Ross

[RossFMJ]

I'm wondering if this should be a WIP, due to it being a WIP, however I still think it belongs with the original post for some reason.

Hennyway, since last we met, I did some panel-lining and masked off the grill and painted it. Nextist, I started putting the aftermarket decals on. Being a bit thick and new to this, I didn't realise they needed cutting to size, so a certain amount of faffing and "faffing up" occurred (not quite focussed);

 

 

I also used some Mr Wotsit Softening solution on the front which left some residue which I just could not remove;

 

 

This goes away when wet, so I hope it might disappear with a gloss coat on top. So on to flooding it with some varnish;

 

 

Let's see how that comes up after a bit of a rub-down and polish.

 

 

[RossFMJ]

Continuing on with this non-WIP WIP, I wasn't getting anywhere trying to dry-brush spokes onto the supplied clear wheel wotsits and then I realised I had a 16" set of etch and white metal wheels which may be surplus to requirements (I'm danged if I can remember them being allocated to a particular kit in "storage").  So I battered them to near death and found they fitted in the Alfa's wheels;

 

 

yep, the spokes look definitely flat under magnification, but they're not so bad through my eyes at a sensible distance. Definitely good enough for government work;

 

 

You'll also notice I've started rubbing down around the decals, hmm, I'm not sure here, they didn't settle all that well and I'm not sure if they'll blend in.  Possibly a different approach requiring more varnish is called for? .

Ooops no , a little bit of fiddling and I decided the colours around the grill had to go and I'll think about what to do there later, I'm thinking some amount of weathering will now occur;

 

 

Some of the other decals are also a bit troublesome, but with some effective weathering I may get away with it ;

 

 

A bit of polishing later and a fair bit of it is looking okay (just don't look too closely, or for too long);

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RossFMJ]

and todays "progress"?  I cut a couple of masks or three to redo the front colour strip;

 

 

slathered on as much paint as I could;

 

 

I'd made some decals of the AR badge and glued one to a bit of gold painted plasticard and slathered that with gold paint to make it look like the cast brass bonnet badge;

 

 

This ended up being far too big so ended up in the bin. So I stuck the model on its wheels temporarily to see where we were;

 

 

We're about here;

 

 

......which'll pass muster on a passing gaze but not close inspection.  I'm waiting on some more gold paper to dry for a new badge, for me to fabricate a window surround and some weathering and I might almost be finished........or not.........that is the question 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

8 minutes ago, RossFMJ said:

might almost be finished........or not.........that is the question 

You just carry on at your own speed. It's looking rather nice and we're in no rush.

[SnøMotion]

Looking superb, @RossFMJ! Shame your Alfa badge was too big, it looks great! 
 

Martin

[Kitkent]

A short update on my BRM.  I’ve done a fair bit of work with chassis tubing and transmission tunnel,can’t really see in these pictures though. Dashboard and seat are not fixed in yet,there is a gear-lever in there somewhere, these kits are otherwise bare inside. I’ve glued the top and bottom of the body together and I need to buy some filler now,there’s no gap but there is a seam. One wheel is stubbornly attached,but the front assembly can be done after spraying the body,the round bit behind the seat is the rounded fuel tank,made from a piece of vacform.I suppose not that far off, he says! 
Chris

[RossFMJ]

That's coming along lovely there Kitkent, I like the additions 

[Kitkent]

I thought I was falling behind Ross! Luckily the body hadn’t been painted,but it is quite scratched and I’ve been rubbing it down. Chris.

[RossFMJ]

Here we go again, printing some Alfa badges onto some decal film;

 

 

and this time round I'm sticking them on some gold painted paper for the "brass effect", for some reason the early 50s badges weren't as colourful as earlier or later;

 

 

hopefully I can get one of these to come out nicely

[RossFMJ]

having got some nice badges done I used a circle cutter to cut them into little circles.  One slight problem, I missed every time;

 

 

So I thought about it and thunked that the original badge is brass so why not try it on brass? So I printed some more and got the brass out;

 

 

I cut a small octagon of brass, superglued it to a bit of plastic tube the right diameter, put it in a drill (what on earth is a "rotary tool", that sounds like something I'd hang the washing on) and whizzed it against a small file;

 

 

and a few seconds later Robert's your father's brother;

 

 

and it was duly attached to an admittedly poorly painted front end;

 

 

I think the badge is looking pretty splendid IIDSSM. The car was then masked off for a spray with road grime;

 

 

Road grime was then duly applied;

 

 

The badge is somewhat "clarted" and obscured, but then so is the dreadful state of the front end, as planned,