Hi guys
It’s been some time again since the last update and to be honest I wasn’t planning on a new one yet….but you asked :-)
It looks like getting to the stage I wanted to show next will take some more time so I decided to give you a preview of what I’m working on right now.
That is of course the suspension parts…still. I’m slowly but surely carrying on with them and for now here’s a shot of the front left A-arms and upright dry fitted to the chassis.
Getting everything aligned nicely again is tricky after cutting the Tamiya parts up and while I was doing that it struck me…….of course I need dummy wheels to set the suspension up! :-)
Dummy wheels…..?? Yep!
Those so called wheels are used for setting the real cars up and also to move them around during travelling ( they are of course less wide than the rubbers ). I had these following pictures from the Net already but finally found their origin in the “Technical Appraisal“ book I mentioned.
Since I don’t have any other pictures I’m showing these here…. ( may the god of copyrights forgive me :-)
There are a few more in the book and that’s all I had for reference but I had to do them.
I have an OOP set of white metal dummy wheels by Modeler’s but they were not right. They are more like the ones used by Ferrari at the time ( made from Aluminium ).
It took me some time to figure out the right sizes. Front and rear dummy wheels are different because the track width of the suspension is different due to the different wheels/tyres. The thin rings the car is ultimately sitting on are then sitting at the same width front and rear ( I hope that description is understandable…. ).
First I turned the main discs from green Renshape again and milled out the six holes using the dividing head.
Since my mill is not very big and stable I got problems with the milling head making too big holes at the corners due to the head vibrating too much ( A different milling head might have helped as well but that’s what I had :-)
So I had to fill the corners with polyester putty and carefully sand the corners to the correct shape. That worked fine.
On the front wheel I managed to almost get rid of the effect as you can see here. This one was a bit more complicated to turn though due to its shape.
On both wheels I then added the strengthening gills with superglue, filled some corners with putty and sanded them clean. Here you can see them finished but unpainted.
If you have been wondering by now….yes I only made one of each because I was going to cast them from the beginning :-)
In the next picture you already see the “masters” ( primered and sanded once more ) in the foreground and two of the cast wheels behind them.
I think I complained in one of the previous updates about how the resin surfaces are really difficult to “read” in their yellowish look. The solution turned out to be some black resin colour. The amount you use influences the final colour and the result can be fully black.
Like that it’s easier to see pin holes and other imperfections……of which I got more than I liked ( I need to get some vacuum device for casting….:-).
I’m now finishing up the best four I made and then I’ll paint them black. In the end they can of course be mounted and swapped with the real wheels on the model.
For now this is it again!
P.S…….klutz 100 asked about some further description of the dry transfer process.
Well there’s not really more to say than what I wrote in the last update. Just one thing….it’s not a “home made” process. I just did the data ( vector based “Freehand” ) and a supplier did the rest. It’s not cheap but I was lucky to get those little parts for free….
You can check it here:
http://www.color-transfer-service.de/index.htm
Hope that helps!
Cheers
Jaykay