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Roger's handcrafted 1:12 scale models


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...Doing door moldings? Well, these are easy parts; I need that after the nightmare with the locks. This is what the RH molding is looking like before removing a lot of brass with files:

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And the LH molding , installed on the door:

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By the way, before I began the moldings, I did the rear guides for the side windows. The picture is somewhat dark, but you still can see that guide, running right in front of the lock.

Edited by Roger Zimmermann
completing a sentence (see edit history)
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Indeed, the front fenders are not so difficult to do, with one exception: the part around the headlamp/grille. The whole fender will be done with several separate elements; the one directly under the headlamp is one of them. To silver solder on the main fender was like putting eggs on a stick (this is an approximate translation of what we say in French), fortunately, it did not fall down or was misplaced during soldering...

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The traces you see on the wood are polyester runs; they came when I did the negative front fender with fiberglass/polyester. It was warm enough outside to do that work there because, due to the smell, I would have a lot of trouble with my better half doing it inside!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Recently, I added a bit of metal between the fender's peak line and the hood's aperture. The excess silver solder is not yet removed because if I'm silver soldering another piece, the solder at the joint may flow away, leaving a slight gap. Note the practical "third hand", a recent addition.

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There is still too much metal at the hood aperture; it will be trimmed when both fenders can be attached to the body.

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This should be the LH front fender, wish me good luck!

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Yesterday was devoted to try building the rear fender reinforcement to attach the fender to the cowl. The Mark II has 3 points at which the front fenders are attached: up, down and, very unusual, in the middle, from inside the car.

As the lower attachment point will be useless because I will not have the space to torque the nuts, I'm also using the third attachment point, but lower than the original one.

Even if the fender is attached with glue to the reinforcement, I could not resist doing a picture.

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I still have some work to shorten the fender: it's 1 mm too long. I will not remove that mm entirely, otherwise the wheel aperture will be too much rearwards.

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The second front fender is coming well. This is the last time the fender is on the wood form because the next job will be to attach the flange at the wheel opening. Unless I'm enlarging the opening from the wood form, the brass part cannot go on it anymore.

You can see my interpretation of the rear fender reinforcement at the RH fender. On the real car, that part is going till the end of the fender, but because of the metal thickness I'm using, there is not enough space. The front end is also more or less ready; all subsequent elements will be soft soldered on that fender.

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  • 2 weeks later...

No, I'm not getting insane. What is looking like guns are just tubes to guide the front fenders. I soldered a bucket into the fenders and a removable "tool" is inserted into each bucket. This will help for the correct position of the front fenders till the cross over bar at the radiator can be attached. When the guides can be discarded, the headlamps will be installed into the buckets, in a not very conventional manner if my design can be done.

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As usual with me, the second fender is not done so well as the first one. Imagine if I was doing 2 or 3 models how bad the last part would be!

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  • 2 weeks later...

It seems that I was a bit lazy last week as only minimal progress was done. Anyway, the hood aperture was finished with the flange. I "massaged" also the upper bar at the radiator; the end gussets will keep the proper distance between the fenders. This is a picture from a real car which was not very clean:

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To check the proper bar/radiator position, I had to put the body on the frame:

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Roger, my jaw drops every time I see updates with this museum quality model which has to be "priceless"! I know you still have probably a year left on this but wondered if you had considered another project afterwards?

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A year left? I'm probably just in the middle! The remaining parts and detail will take a lot of time, but of course it's very difficult to evaluate how many years I still need to complete the model.

Most probably I will not begin another project; it depends how well I will be at that time!

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 5 weeks later...

After summer vacation it always takes a long time until the machine (me) is working again...I had an hard time with the planed fenders attachment at the front. I looked at pictures, then at the model, back to pictures and nothing happened. It took one or two days to figure that it would be wiser to begin with the hood lock support and, once this part is ready, continue with the extensions of the support.

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The support is not yet ready; I still have to do the front flange on which the grille is attached and trim both holes. Prior to that, I have to make a dummy grille (I'm not ready now to do the "right" grille) to help align the hood lock support with the upper grille line.

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Guest cstanley-gs
Roger, this just keeps getting better all the time!

Art Anderson

You can say that again. I love updates on this thread.

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After checking, rechecking and again...it seems that my front end is dimension wise correct, which means +/- 0.5 mm. I could finish the hood lock support; this part changed a lot since my previous post. The only work which must be done is to make the aperture for the lock bolt. This will be done when I am that far with the hood.

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Now I can continue with the lock support extensions.

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"Yes we can" said somebody who is not registered in this forum! I can also say, yes I could do this damn hood lock support which is more or less finished. I had to be imaginative to build elements from this important element. To solder silver the flange to the end cap was mission impossible; fortunately a super tool came to the rescue:

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With a controlled flame and doing it as quickly as possible, the tool don't get too hot; of course, it's not suitable for large elements where the heat is more important.

Then, to drill the holes into the front fenders, allowing attaching the fenders to the hood lock support, I was in search for something which could maintain the part during drilling. The plastilin is an excellent product for such a task if the holes are small and the pressure on the bit, therefore on the fender not too important:

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The primer on the front fenders was just there to mark where I had to drill the holes, using the support as a guide.

Then, the moment of truth:

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A quick verification from the main dimensions is quite satisfactory; just the hood lock support should be 1 mm lower at the front; it can be corrected by elongating the front holes at the fenders.

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Roger, Really nice work as always. Looking at the last picture with it mounted though brought another question to mind though. Will there eventually be inner fenders made down the line? I am assuming that there will be but thought I'd ask anyway. Scott...

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Scott, the inner fenders are welded to the fenders on the real car. I will do that too; the hood lock support is helping to make the front fenders more or less stable. There is also an air deflector at the bottom on which the grille is attached. The upper part from the grille is screwed at the hood lock support. This will look like that:

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As you see, the shape is complex. After the saga of the hood lock support, I now want to do something simple, like the door handles...

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I decided to do the door handles. They are not too complicated to fabricate and, once installed, it will be more convenient to open the doors as for now I have to pull the inside lever to open them.

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The picture is showing what I could do with the milling machine. Now hand work is required!

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As you can see, one door handle is attached to the LH door.

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What are the encountered difficulties with these parts? First, they are not rounded like many door handles from this time. Very nice to take dimensions, but the details are more difficult to get right. I will have to make a tool the day I want to prepare them for plating, otherwise, the crisp lines may be get rounded.

The upper part is horizontal; to adapt the surface lying on the door was not easy. Before I began with the hand tools, I did the threaded holes at the back. As I did not drill them perpendicular to the attaching surface (to have long enough threaded holes) I had to make a counterpart; with that the screw head is lying flat.

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The next task is to do the push button and the lever(s) to unlock the door. There will be some head scratching until the right solution can be implemented!

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As you can see, the LH door handle is finished and functional. For those who know well Mark II cars, you can also see that there is a shield between the handle and the door. This was probably done to prevent the paint being scratched by the nails.

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The idea how to connect the button with the lock mechanisms came early this morning when I could not sleep for a moment. I had to do a small modification to a lock lever. Contrary to my expectation, the effort to push the button is moderate as well as its travel to unlock the door.

Now, it's the turn to the other side.

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Thank you for posting this Roger, it is a pleasure to watch your progress.

Too bad the car has to be painted and these parts plated. A lesser modeler would carve these handles from a glob of resin or epoxy with a Demel tool before plating and use a simple spring closure. Metal work and machining is another matter altogether. There is a Sopwith Camel biplane model kit that is structurally true to the full sized airplane - wood, wire and fittings. The structure is not meant to be covered, which would conceal the detail. This reminds me of your workmanship - but you and we know what will be under the paint and plating, and that will be satisfying.

Geoff

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Guest lordairgtar

You continue to amaze me. I'm barely contemplating replacing a front tube axle made of brass to replace a weakened vintage plastic part in an old model kit I'm building.The steering will be functional.

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Thanks for the comments! To Model56s: pictures are lying. As the body is hand shaped, it's far from perfect. I can take some irregularities away with a file, bt, as the brass is .4 mm (0.016") thick, I can take 0.1 to 0.15 mm (0.004 to 0.006") away on the high spots. This will leave some low spots which have to be filled out with bondo, unfortunately.

To lordairgtar: if you don't try, you never know how brass is a nice material to work with. Of course, a minimum of equipment is needed which may be foolish just to do one axle.

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Guest lordairgtar

I know. Thanks for the encouragement. I have at my work place some of the equipment already. I can make a jig using the plastic axle as a pattern. It's a simple rod with bends at both ends. I think I can also create working steering too. Like you said, won't know until I try and we have a lot of the proper sized brass rod at work. I think I can create the steering part with it's associated king pins and tie rods and steering arms. I've done this in plastic and I know how to solder as that is what I do at work.

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To the dismay from some people who like the brass color, I sprayed some primer to the body and doors. Of course, all elements had to be removed and, when the paint was cured, reassembled.

I sprayed the primer with an airbrush; I assume it was not cleaned properly the last time I used it as the spray was not consistent. Plus, the air pressure regulator plastic body has a small crack, resulting in a fluctuating air pressure...This is the reason why there is some orange peel which is not important as it will be sanded anyway.

As I still have more soft welding to do on the front fenders, they are still unpainted.

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After the primer and reassembly, I wanted to do something large and easy: the package tray. As this assembly will never be seen once the model is ready, I could simplify the shape. The only point which is critical is the distance from the back window and from the floor.

For the moment, the assembly is attached by screws to the body; the outer edges will be reworked to assemble the inner garnish moldings. As I'm far away with those parts, the tray will remain that way for the next months (years?). The holes are not very accurate; they look more or less like the original ones. Their purpose is just for the eyes.

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And now? Back to the front fenders. It won't be that easy...

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This is the part I'm trying to reproduce:

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With a die or a 3-D printer, no problem. I have no die nor such a printer...It is obvious that I could not do that part in one piece. I got that with 3 pieces silver soldered:

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This was the easy part. To get the remaining elements, I went twice to a real Mark II (I have now an easier access to that car). I have the impression that I should have paid 4 visits to get all the correct details. I have plenty of pictures; nothing replaces the confrontation to the real thing. Nevertheless, I got it more or less right; I sprayed a light coat of primer to soften the aspect.

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As you can see from the first picture, the inner fender is not yet complete: the rear part allowing the exhaust tube to go through is still to be made. It will be done when the LH inner fender is ready.

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I hope you don't mind if I ask a personal question, Roger. Ignore me if you prefer. :)

I think you mentioned early in the thread that you're married. What does your wife think about your model? Is she impressed by your skills, or does she dismiss this as just an unimportant male hobby?

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Roger....you are one fabulous fabricator!! I keep going from the real car to the model and can hardly believe the precision and demanding work that you are doing. I would normally say I am speechless, but of course, I am not. I just want to tell you how enjoyable this thread/build is to me. That certainly will be a fantastic creation when finished. John

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To SiliconS: In fact, I'm not married but living since more than 30 years with the same woman... What does she think? Honestly, I don't know very well. She knows that I'm doing something not every people can; when we were recently at an Avanti meeting with my own Avanti 1:12, she appreciated how people looked at this small car...So, I cannot say that she is impressed but in no way she dismiss it. Further, she knows where I am and she prefers that I'm home and not in pubs or worse!

To keiser31: you should be rewarded for your fidelity! I believe you were one of the firsts who did a comment...long ago. Regarding the inner fender: both images are looking similar, but, honestly, the part is not as accurate as I expected. I will survive, especially due to the fact that when the engine and all accessories are installed, it will be difficult to see the inner fenders entirely. It will be another matter with the grille or bumpers...there will be less margin for approximation.

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With the RH inner fender ready, I went to the LH side. As it is like the RH one, just mirror-reversed, I had less questions and I used less time to do it.

To have some rigidity with the front fenders, I had to do the more or less flat parts each side from the radiator. I had a problem: space. Therefore, I used thin brass, 0.2 mm thick (0.0079") which has almost no rigidity by itself. The difficulty here was to assemble and disassemble x times the various elements until I could say the assembly is ready and soldered together. I had also to change the way the flat parts are assembled to the radiator cradle: on the real car, they are sandwiched between the cradle and the radiator. If I would use this method, I would never be able to install the lower bolts for space reason. Therefore, my assembly will be: cradle, radiator and flat parts. The lower bolts attaching the radiator to the cradle will be installed before this assembly is installed on the frame.

The LH panel was a little more difficult to do because of the tube for the carb intake and the support of the regulator. As I did a major mistake on the first LH part, I had to do a second one...

The picture below is showing the LH inner fender just prior soldering it with the outer fender.

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Once the excess solder was cleaned, I assembled the whole to the body:

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The triangular holes on each flat part is for the fresh air to the cabin. There is an air guide each side; they will be done after the lower air deflector.

Just for the fun, the regulator, which I did years ago, is attached to the assembly, just below the carb air intake:

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The next task will be the lower air deflector which is attached to the fender aprons.

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