Now we're cookin' with gas...

After the almost interminable Audi, I seem to have gone into overdrive.

Firstly, a Triumph TR2 for the same gent as the Audi, another for his SlotRally GB range.
That has now gone off to my chum, Steve Francis, in London to be slush moulded, the easiest way to get a hollow body from a solid master.

Somehow, I missed taking a picture of this with the turned brass headlight pods fitted, but this is the body pattern ready for slush moulding.

What happens next is I get from Steve a number of slushes, from which I can make a finished TR2, then later, a TR3 and TR3A, all, essentially from one master.  Once I get the first slush, I'll detail that and make bumpers, dashboard, hard and soft tops and hood folded , so SRGB has the option of which versions to do, all rally cars.

At the same time I was asked to do a Spitfire Mk 3.  Now I had one of these started purely as a personal project for my son, who has a passion for the American racing team, Group 44, the distinctive white and 2 tone green cars, all Triumphs, run by Bob Tullius in the SCCA series for production sports cars.  They were successful with all the cars over the years.  I mentioned I had a Spit. "half done" and was commissioned to finish it for the Manx outfit SMK, for whom I have made a number of sports, vintage and F1 cars already.

Now I think I must have done the first work on the model by eye, but I then got some good looking drawings and sized them down to 1/32nd scale on the Post Office photo-copier.  But somewhere along the line, wires must have got crossed, because not only was the original resin body I started with horribly wrong as I expected, but for some reason I got the wheelbase wrong too!  Should be 66mm, but when I checked, because I just thought something was not looking right, I'd got a drawing which showed a 72mm wheelbase.  I have no idea how this happened, because the length was almost right and the width was bang on.  The draughtsman as so often had just drawn it wrong.  Having already cut the body in half twice I had to do it again!

You can see where I'd cut and lengthened it earlier, yet here we are cutting that much out again!  AND the front wheelarch needed moving back to get the wheelbase right.  Now it's nearly done, I can see a big improvement in proportions.  The drawings also showed completely wrong lines for the boot lid.  Sometimes I wonder how draughtsmen get jobs at all!

Here's the front arch ground back and filled at the front edge.

And in the picture, the errant drawings, which will be dumped as soon as the model's done.

So after seeming to never finish that ugly Audi, I've knocked out  2 more models to near completion and there's a Ferrari 312B started too, AND that hideous UFO car is a lot more advanced.

If I can get all three done by the end of May, I'll be ready for my week's break up North with family!

Is your skin like....?

Since writing the post on that ugly Audi, I have been pestered by apparently well meant, but barely English bogus comments, each of which invites me to look at a website which, for some reason is about skin!
Now, I know the Inimitable Flanders and Swann sung about the single Laceless Left hand Leather boot that could be found at every English village pond, but can these spammers see my skin from there?

Why now and why skin care for heaven's sake.

Is there any kind of spam filter that we can use on blogger?
There's sure as hell no way to contact blogger.  They keep themselves nicely tucked away like all the big internet companies.

Meanwhile see my website at skinlikescrotums. com

I hate Audis, but...

A job's a job, so I had to agree to this one.

Now, people seem to think that Audi can't put a foot wrong, but this one ran for just 12 kilometres, before being put in a museum.  The other three were destroyed!

It's a Group S prototype, whatever that means in rally-speak.  Rear engined, presumably highly turbocharged.

I was commissioned to make a master for SRGB's rapidly increasing portfolio, for which I have made all the masters so far.
The only info was a pretty good die-cast by Spark in 1/43rd scale, so I scaled that up to 1/32nd scale and off we went. Usual story of carve from solid Ureol block and get a slush moulding to give me a hollow master which could be regularised in thickness by grinding out and filling with Milliput.

Ugly little devil, isn't it, but a shape's a shape, so out with the chisels.

I bandsaw the basic shape from the block of Ureol, then start on one side.  When I'm happy with that, I repeat the shape on the right hand side.

The very difficult slightly concave shape in front of the big vents was done by using a chisel I made from a worn out Swiss file. I have lots of different shapes and sizes and they give wonderful control of shapes.  Keep them sharp and they will take off very slight amounts of material.

And so on until we get to this:-

Mounted on a fairly chopped down Scalextric sidewinder chassis, we have the facility for a full interior, including driver and navigator with actual feet!  normally slot car drivers have little below the knees.

Don't worry, the head is now on the driver!

With the rear wing done in brass (you can't easily bend plastic) and the supports and end plates done in styrene, the model is done and we can get on with the next project which is, wait for it.....A 1/24th scale model of the car from the Gerry Anderson series, UFO!  I must be mad.

Or my customers must be!