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!
That is Paul Foster's car, the better known one, immortalized by Dinky, was the one driven by Ed Straker. I believe the automatic gull wing doors needed an off camera stage hand to open them. That car was also painted in a very odd lilac like colour that seems to look different in every photo.
ReplyDeleteChanging topic though; Does Ureol have other modelling uses than just mould making?
James, to quote CSN's song...You got your freak flag flyin'.
ReplyDeleteWho's a sci-fi nut then?
Yes you're right, it is, apparently, the No 2's car in lilac. Built on a Mk 4 Zephyr floorpan. I only remember Gabrielle Drake in a string vest!
Ureol is a general modelling board. You can use it for anything really. It comes in several densities. These days I only seem to be able to get it in a glorified Crunchy bar density. When I first used it, it was as dark as milk chocolate and so dense it was like solid plastic, whereas in fact it is a very close cell foam. You can see that to some extent by looking at the above shots, where the material hasn't been worked to any extent. In industry it is mainly used for CNC machining of tooling and prototypes. The mouldmaking (to be a bit pedantic) is done with silicon rubbers of different hardnesses and temperature ranges.
I'm a little confused about that Audi. Is that the body style they used for the brief test, or was it the Quattro style body? It looks rather like a Japanese pastiche of an LMP1 WEC car.
ReplyDeleteJames, this particular car, apparently, was a Group S prototype, whatever that is or was. It may have used the Quattro system for its 4WD, but not the well known "flying brick" body in any way. I also thought it looked like a dodgy LM car! But then, I hate Audis with a passion! Having worked for them as a clay modeller, that dislike was not in any way improved! Their workshop was a death trap as are most German factories by comparison to ours. And I've worked in a good few of them.
ReplyDeleteBut, as a modelmaker, a shape's a shape, like it or loathe it and I have to capture it as well as references allow.