Day Sixteen

Time for a bit of a stop and think.

And here are all the other bits.






































So what's the hold up? It comes down to three major construction problems in ascending order of difficulty: I have to get the remaining brass brackets and such on. The jack mounts are incredibly difficult. Brass to brass for a start, and butt-joins meaning no surface area for the glue. This joint will not be holding a ton like in the old Superglue ads. It will be as fragile as spun sugar. I am not competent to solder these parts. Put two dots of flux, then two tiny streaks of solder. Somehow hold the brackets in place and then just a touch - the touch of a master solderer, which I am not. The glue of choice is superglue or Araldite. Superglue is just going to be a disaster like the first time I tried. The part sticking not quite straight, me trying to adjust it with a fine point, over-correcting, too late - it's messed up. Debond, start again, with a probability of success around 7.5%. No thanks. Therefore I must use Araldite. If I do this right, the small amounts of glue on the feet will form a little pool around, that will strongly suggest welding. I'll be able to tailor that too, with my knife.
















Originally I thought to glue them to the track guard but leave them open to receive the jack once they had been painted with the whole. Then I could slip the already painted jack in, tack it in place, and close the brackets with tweezers. But that makes the two brackets so, so hard to place, individually, in the right place, aligned correctly. The better idea is surely to paint the jack its basic gunmetal, paint the brackets with the base colour. Now I assemble the jack in good relation with its brackets. Then placing that whole assembly will be easy, rather than hard. Okay, that's that sorted.

What else is upsetting me? 

I have actually solved the nightmare of that plate with the four pegs, that is for holding antennae in transport. I put ONE peg on it, because I have a cunning plan. Once I put those two bits of tube on the vertice of the hull there, and the etched brass latch thing, I can make those aerials - including their little collars and wingnuts, hell why not - and then I can just pop them in. Just a tiny dot of glue to hold the mount ends of them against that plate and hey presto! - those four pegs might as well never have existed. Why did I fail, with this part? It was because I cut corners at every point. The four pegs, they were not perfect little cylinders, all the same length (and that would in theory mean 35 times neater than in reality. I should have mounted the bits of rod in my pinvice and filed the ends square, to show that they are cylinders of steel rod and not, I don't know, cocktail weiners. Then, after cleaning up that brass plate thoroughly, what if I had mounted each peg separately, one at a time, caring that each one attain perpendicularity quite without regard to its neighbours. Now I am not placing each peg in reference to its predecessor, and that means I am not incurring quite gross datum error, by the three cumulative errors I make in trying to get all four happening at once. I put all four on at once knowing they were not precise, and that I'd have to massage them to get the effect I wanted. To get an EFFECT rather than the attainable reality of four steel pegs that are perpendicularly welded to a plate. So that's for next time. Looking at this effort I do regret not keeping it, as it was right enough first time. Just a tiny bit of filing to do. But, win some, lose some.

All that remains, and it should be so simple, is to put those two tubes on the hull, that hold the ends of the antennae. But as we have seen, these are proving difficult to render. Maybe if I sit here all day I will, with the solder, produce two whose holes are convincing and which are exactly the same length. And the right length. The solution here must be to find different rod or tube which is exactly the right diameter and which can be drilled. The two parts start out a little long. I drill them deep. Then I clean up their ends so they are the same length, then I drill them some more. I need those edges to be thin, and clean. Otherwise they are not tubes, and I want tubes.

But this is what's really bothering me:

From the beginning, before I even bought the model, I viewed these hooks as being likely the greatest challenge of the build. They are tiny, smallest hooks I've ever dealt with. And there are rather a lot of them along the hull, and they have to be in line and spaced properly. They have to be glued in place just right, each one. To make it worse, they aren't the type for which you can just drill two holes, and have to worry only about getting two bends right. These are *applique* and that's a bummer. There is more: photos in my book show two consecutive hooks that are different damn sizes! I cannot use that as any kind of excuse; they still have to be very similar in size and shape, even if in reality they were bent and pinched off by hand, at a quick pace. The brass-etched set actually includes them, but they are quite unrealistic (because flat, as though cut from sheet steel rather than fashioned crudely from steel rod) and a detail like this done right is the icing; these hooks executed well are the difference between B-grade and A-grade. Yes, I have noticed that the larger plastic kit hooks I used are badly cleaned up, malshapen. I can work on those no problem, get them regular. That's for the fussing stage.

How will I make these tiny hooks? I need a jig, something I can press wire to with quite a bit of force. I need a manufacturing process, a means of mass-producing a limited run. If I had a bit of square section brass rod I could solder that to a base. Now I would have the male part of that jig. All I need is something to press the wire into conformity with it. What about a matching part, actually another male? Two jigs just the same and I squish the wire between them to make one side of the hook, then come round the other side and finish it. I'm going to try it. The other way is to solder two bits of rod onto the reciprocating press, at the perfect distance to do the job in one go. I wonder. I guess I'll have to pick up that bit of brass rod (.75mm is my guess) and a bit of plate to join it to.

So we have a bit of a shopping list for our next trip to the hobby shop. A few sections of brass and a bit of plate for the hooks. Some cylindrical stuff from which I can make two little tubes. I think I have no other construction issues.

Really, it's just about time to buy paint.

I opened my paintbox after mmm thirteen years and paints some of which had been in there for as long again were - fine. Amazing. Humbrol tins that had been opened many times and whose seal was a thick crust of paint - fine. Incredible. A few had dried up but I don't need to buy too many to restock. Got to get masking fluid. Better get some of the proper Aztek cleaning fluid before I get serious with Mr New Airbrush, although I'm not going to bother with the paint trap; that will be the cardboard back of the box I convert in five minutes into a *spray booth*. Yeah, I'll stick that dust-buster thing in the back and that will do fine as an extractor :D

I have a plan with the painting. Let us take a trip back in history, thirty years or so to when Francois Verlinden was the king of modelling and his weathering technique was the most copied and the standard. It - and nearly all other techniques - basically began with the base coat, be it Tank Grey or SAS pink. Mandatory were: washes of black, or browns, other colours, the simulation of spattered mud. Put stains here and there, perhaps a few twigs in the suspension, and then rust was the big thing, streaking technique. The other major element was drybrushing. Then I went away again (for quite a long time) and when I came back I saw chips in paint. The salt method. Painting technique that has completely transcended and dated my own old methods. Special solutions for making unbelievably reaslistic rust. Oh and of course acrylics were invented but I'm not ready for them yet. I have used enamels all my life, and enamels is what I know, and enamels is what I should use, this first time in many years.

The bewildering universe of after-market brass, resin and so on, that is really something. All the conversion kits. Accessories like you wouldn't believe. The capacity to draw a label for a can and then laser print it onto a blank decal sheet, oh yes. Now really very impressive construction is within reach of the average modeller. I have tried to build as well as I can but I see that, once more, I have rushed, and made unnecessary mistakes. But so it is. Some parts of the model are looking very good indeed. I am happy with that muffler; it's going to look terrific. This thing has individual track links, that are going to look spectacular no matter what I do to them. I will be happy with the parts that worked out, and try to learn from the - inevitable - mistakes and imperfections. It was a while back I stopped putting up pictures of the things I was making showing only their best sides; we may as well see the warts and all. Or this blog would be dead boring, would it not.

But painting is where it's at. Painting is the art and I confess I feel myself up against it. I want to incorporate all these new ideas - like the chipping methods - but I have my own little plan too. I have always thought that what I should do, once finished construction, is paint the vehicle as though steel. As it was, in the factory, before it rolled along to the painting area. Then, after judicious masking of areas that would receive wear, primer, then the base coats with a second layer of masking that reveals just a tiny bit of the primer. With the idea that by this clever use of varnish and masking, rubbing and scratching away, I can have wear that reveals the bare metal via the primer. I want to work with paint at that scale. I believe any chips or scratches I make this way should look immeasurably more realistic than if in reality they are illusions layered thickly on top of each other, all upside down. And then all the other methods I know and love so well, as outlined in previous paragraph.

But I have a brand new airbrush, and it's a real one, not a toy one like I had before. No, I take that back Badger, and thank you for the airbrush that has worked well, just like the day I bought it for over thirty years. But now it's time to step on up! And I have just the very thing ...

... and here's one I prepared earlier. With just a few little bits of special care, but pretty much from the box. I guess I should try every method I can fit on it.