4mm, Ahoy!...

I've just received the flyer from Neville Kent for the little boats I mastered for him.
Displayed in a small harbour scene, which is just what they were intended for.  I wish I had the computer skills to produce such a thing.

I've put this on my blog as Nev has enough to do just supplying his well known 9mm gauge chassis for OO9, O9 and 2mm scale locos.

Funny thing, scale...

Having just started doing a bit of the church project today, it occurred to me that the massive thing is the same 7mm scale as the Bentley Continental R I did the master for, many years ago.  And this is just the chancel!  I had to add some to the bottom of it too since taking some measurements with my Grandson yesterday.

This is going to be a big model!

Bloopers anonymous...

With all the talk of less than "perfick", goolies well dropped and hammers used to finesse Caley Singles, it occurred
to me to fess up to a couple of my own, just for fun.

I was asked to do an S-Type Jaguar for a very popular company doing solid , underdetailed, but shiny and reasonably priced white metal 43rd scale car models.  I really couldn't see any major pitfalls, so I banged away at the brass confidently and then I realised that as Jags go, this was looking very like a SAAB 96!  There are similarities in a very general way, but something had to be done.
I looked at it carefully and hurled it at the end wall of the workshop.  "That's better", I said to myself and cut new 2mm brass sheet, hammered as before and produced a perfectly good S-Type from the get-go.  I think my wife picked the first attempt up and put it on the side bench, which she did regularly when she brought me teas down to the workshop.  One day I defeated her when I'd thrown a clamp-on vice at the same, long suffering wall because it hit me on the head when I rose from the carpet search for a dropped item.  I'd calmly unscrewed it from the bench then hurled it wall-wards. It had buried itself evenly not in, but through the wall.  Meanwhile I just clamped the other one in place.  I was bleeding from the scalp, but felt so much better.

These things continue, of course, but suffice to show what I was able to save from a job I just HAD to admit defeat on.  I had made a full styrene model of a lovely old narrowboat called Roger.  Thinking myself such a boatie I soldiered on , making rivetted skins in litho plate and gluing them on and only when the interior was all done and the lettering hand painted did someone bravely remind me what I knew already, but had completely forgotten.  Roger was a wooden boat!
Now styrene hulls can be pulled apart, but hand lettered cabins with scumble staining and barber's pole painting on the swan neck have to be saved, so this is what is left, but will go on another boat, this time with wood grain and tar where I'd stupidly put rivets before.

The stove and drop table cabinet with lace plates, but I didn't finish the graining before the big "mistake" was noticed.

The notional Russell Newbury came out easily.  It wasn't right for Roger, but was all I could find info on at the time.  I now believe that most Nurser boats had a 15HP Petter semi-diesel single, so that will now be made for the Roger model and the RN will go in something more snobby and modern.

The swan neck, tiller stove chimney and exhaust chimney of Roger.  All correct and re-usable.  Made from brass, the handle and chain of the stove chimney are made from pewter repousse foil, now all but unobtainable, so a Chinese takeaway foil one can be made, then stroked with a fine tip Pantone pen to look like brass.  You can do the same to represent copper or nickel with a dull red or straw Pantone respectively, but they must be spirit based or it all just comes off.

So, the choice is, dependant on your particular temper setting, destroy it totally or make use of what's salvageable.  But never be afraid to admit it.  It does, after all, show great self criticism, which is the one thing a modelmaker needs before he ever cuts brass, card or styrene.

Finescale....my arse!

Well, the much vaunted Finescale Model Railway Review has just dropped on my doorstep.  And, on first flick, that's where it may as well stay.
Brash colour throughout, no scratchbuilding at all, all kit bashing, even the 2mm scale pannier.

Oh dear.  It seems Mr. Shackleton has had more of an effect on this potentially exciting new periodical than Mr. Barlow, by a country mile.  He it was who once told me that "nobody makes anything any more", when he was editor of MRJ, having asked me for articles on roads , rivers and boats and having read and enjoyed those articles.  Clearly a confused soul.

Nope!  If you haven't shelled out your six and a half quid yet for No.1, I'd say keep your sheckles in your pocket.  This new mag. is not worth half that money.  There's not much of it.  It's not noticeably finescale and there's no real modelmaking evident anywhere, unlike the early MRJs.

A wasted opportunity and a huge disappointment.

Why DO I do this?...

This is what I sometimes make passing mention of:-

I make masters for model aircraft companies as well as slot cars and railways.  This particular client got some part started masters in a deal when he bought a small company.  This box of wrong, mis-shapen mouldings, vac-formings and "dabbles" is what I was given to base the correct pattern on. This is a Pilatus PC12 turbo -jet "executive" jobby in 1/72nd scale.

This involved taking the best of the bad jobs and cutting them so viciously that they became unrecognisable and then rebuilding them with Milliput, including the entire cockpit area on both sides.
Then they had to be re-fixed with superglue and Milli until they matched the plans.  Then they had to be ground out and scraped internally till they looked reasonably smooth and even (an on-going process).  In order that I could give the fuselage a decent section I had to cut recesses in one half and add tongues in the other which register perfectly.  Who remembers "locate and cement" on early Airfix instructions?  Well it was the crap fit of those early kits that made me give up kits for life. I was 8 years old and vowed never to waste another penny of my hard earned pocket money on a kit.  I have kept to that in the intervening 54 years, too.  But irony, or is it paradox, of ironoxes, I end up making the patterns for other peoples' kits.  At least I can make sure they fit!

Here's work so far:-

Any line you can see on these is where I have either filled, removed, shortened, reduced, extended or totally restructured what I was sent.

The fin section is all new as there wasn't anything in that junk box of previous bits to use or modify.

There were no wing roots or fairings at all.  These are entirely Milliput.  The portholes were either not there, filled or in the wrong place and there were no cockpit sections whatever. These are entirely Milliput in sections, cooked on top of my tower unit where it gets a bit on the warm side.  The black is Milliput black, which I have had to take to because the dealer had no yellow/green, that most of the model is so far.  But fear not...black Milli is very good, sets hard and sticks better than yellow/green. Just takes some getting used to when the lighter stuff has always been there.  The black is a little more expensive, but just better.  BTW, the white stuff is crumbly, chalking crap. It's no finer than green or black, so don't waste your money on it.

Now here's a right old mixture.

Here we have previous resin wings and weird kicked up separate tips, extended with Ureol on the roots, including black Milli, styrene on the tips (there were too skinny) and epoxy one-shot filler, borrowed from German contracts in the 90s to fill digs and scratches.  The wings were at least half an inch too short AND different from each other.  The tailplane was a good half inch too narrow, so it needed adding to, but is so thin it's very difficult to keep a line of superglue holding.

Here we have the insides showing. The best way to smooth all that is to grind up a suitable bit of thin steel and scrape it to shape.  Files just don't remove enough, or have the shapes needed. Although a small good quality gouge can help start it.

So there we are. Not all masters begin with a block of Ureol or wood.  Some time IS saved, but less and less it seems as the work goes on.

Wait till you see the Leopard Bizjet he's given me!

OH, BTW....ignore the previous post.  The mystery message box didn't come up this time.  Clearly my picture files were there all the time!  I went to an older file and downloaded an R1 hydro pic. perfectly (another interest!).  When I went back to "pictures" it worked fine.  Damned pootahs.

End of Blogger?

I just tried to add a new post and when I clicked the image icon I got a message saying my photo files were unavailable.  It put up a new page saying "from a blog"," from Picasa", "from your phone", etc.

What the hell is picasa?,  I have a camera, so why would I want to use a phone (I have no mobile phone),  when did this happen?
Why the bloody Hell can't they leave alone what ain't broke!?

If I can't post photos as I always have done, I will have to end the blog.  I will not be pushed around by the tossers who own this outfit.

Has anyone else found this nonsense today if they happen to be with this outfit?

My first commission

A comment of Iain's on the previous post about "old modelmakers" got me thinking....This is my first ever commission.  A sand barge from the Essex coast called Peterna.
I was 18 when I made it, 44 years ago.  It has a basswood hull covered in litho plate and everything else is nickel silver.

I'm really not sure that I've improved on that!  Just got a lot quicker.  Which is what makes a professional, as opposed to an amateur, which is most definitely what I was then.  I remember getting a massive £85 for the model and £25 for the mahogany base and case!