Continuing Saga …

Thanks to all! Pat… you're putting those high expectations on me again. I'm not a young man you know. Have some sympathy for the aged...

Stephen Milley has already cut the new walls and they're in the mail. I like his level of service!

My wife just told me, "There's probably other mistakes you've made…" She's nothing if not encouraging. She keeps me grounded. And believe me, I do need grounding… regularly.

Well… Stephen is quick! The new walls with the correct tabs came today. I tried them on and everything lines up as it should. I did get the alignment right just as long as I drew them on the correct side of the building.

Just as a status, I'm almost finished with the Thundercheif's cockpit. The Eduard Photo-etch and the resin pilots and flight seats really make a neat installation. There's some touchup painting needed on the pilots.

Till next time...

I'm glad the tabs and slots of the recut walls of the enginehouse line up right.  What kind of siding will you use on it?

The detail on the Thunderchief is impressive!

Mark, its concrete… so I will maybe use the Rust-o-leum texture paint. I used that on the retaining wall and the tunnel portals. It does a good job of impersonating concrete. That will mean the building will have to be glued together, painted, and then all those windows installed. The nice thing is that the window design will have a self-adhesive flange on the back that will be easy to insert. Famous last words. One thing I do know is "no texture paint on the inside or the windows will not stick!"

That sounds like a good plan.  At least you have already used these products and methods so you can take the proper precautions!  Famous last words!  

Hey gang!

Between building the Thud, seeing our #2 granddaughter in a Penn State Theatrical play "To Kill a Mockingbird", visiting Philly, catching cold on the way home, I've done nothing on the Engine House, yet… except for two things. I bought the other major materials needed (except for the gantry track and scratch-build gantry materials) and the roof details. I did buy the 3/4" sq piece of milled pine that will form the bulk of the roof support pilasters, and I bought this today.

It's been going on and off sale at Harbor Freight for a long time. I could have used it on the Woodbourne Gallery to do that end bevel, and will really needed for sanding all the diagonal cuts on the gantry/roof supports. I'll probably have buildings going forward that will benefit from a sander with a bit more capacity. It was on sale for $64. I bought some extra belts and discs for it. It's my father's day present.

Meanwhile, the Thud also hasn't seen work for almost 3 weeks, but I did get some interesting things done.

I separated the tail pipe from the jet engine proper so I'm able to display the engine outside the plane while still having an exhaust for the overall model. I finished piping the engine right before the trip. The piping is .5mm solder. Pipe straps are wine-bottle foil. I scratch-built the brass engine work stand as a model of an Air Logic 3000A jet work stand with a freelanced retainer system.

Most of the piping runs are fictitious since I had only one picture of a J-75 showing any piping at all. Some of the valve boxes are scratch-built also. All the molded on pipe work was scraped off the model.

So that's the report. I update periodically just to let y'all know I'm still around.

Myles, thank you for checking in!  The sander looks like an excellent buy!!  That is a neat idea to build so you can display the jet engine when you want.  I know I have only seen the intake with the outer sheathing while on an airplane!  Looks great!

Wow, that's some detailing.

Thank You!

With a nasty cold left over from the trip, I haven't been in the basement to do any work for almost 3 weeks, so I was working on the computer starting to design the scratch-built gantry crane. The railings on the design are too complex for an o'scale build being a wire rod lattice in a square frame, so I'm designing a perforated piece that I'll get Real Scale Trains to laser cut out of laser board.

The bulk of the structure will be ABS/Styrene sheet. It scales about 15" long which means I need oversized sheets if I want to go the full width without a seam. Each main frame is a big box structure that will be very rigid when built. It will not be an operable model although it will be movable. I can't afford the micro-motors I would need to make a working crane. I imported the views from SketchUp into Coreldraw and scaled it to match the actual width.

I'll make my working drawing directly over these images. You can see the width of the box frames in the end views. The other views are upside down so they keep the proper right/left orientation.

And here's the railing drawing. It will be a three-layer sandwich. They're very delicate, but I think Stephen's laser will do the job.

So even though I'm not actually building I am designing.

I'm looking forward to this build, Myles. The crane looks like it will be something special. Get well soon. 

Thanks Pat! I am well now, but last week got interrupted with a funeral trip to Portland, OR for a dear friend who passed suddenly. We had one day notice and then had to get a plane ride. 

I decided to take a different approach to the gantry. I drew up the details and then decided that the hoist mechanism didn't seem to be robust enough for a 100t lift so I enlarged just the hoist system 1.5X and then separated out the hoist machinery from the hoist frame. I then cleaned up these drawings to ensure they were "Solids" by SketchUp definition. I exported them to an STL file and then shipped it off to Shapeways. For $38.00 I got beautiful 3D hi-res objects.

The original drawing that I obtained from SketchUp's 3D Warehouse had fins on the motors. I didn't think the 3D printing would resolve this, so I re-drew them to be plain. As it is, the 3D printing would have handled those fins perfectly. Live and learn.

Here's how I re-drew them.

The original drawing scaled out to have the motors not even a foot in diameter. When I enlarged them, it seemed more in sync with a gantry hoist of the size I'm building. The original drawing had the end bell hollow with actual fans in them. This was overkill and wouldn't 3D print anyway so I re-drew them to be solid shapes.

Here's how they turned out. The flats on the circular components are due to my setting of how many faces I wanted SketchUp to draw when making circles. If I do this again, I'll use a higher setting. For this use, it will be fine since you won't even see this assembly unless you remove the engine house roof. I do plan on making it removable.

The fins on the winch really did print well. 

I guess I could have had Shapeways 3D print the entire gantry hoist, but that felt like cheating. The frame will be soldered brass, and I think I'm going to make the roller assemblies out of brass also. 

Increasing the hoist size meant expanding the width of the main gantry frame, but I'm going to keep the beams the same width. Also the laser cut railing will be the same height as it was before. I'm only enlarging the hoist machinery not the proportions of the rest of the machine.

The 3D printing saved me a lot of hassle in modeling all those interconnected parts. The level of detail is amazing. This isn't your garden-variety filament additive machine. This clearly was a laser-resin machine which has much higher resolution. I originally wanted Walt Gillespie at Rusty Stumps to do it, but he said that he needs to add a lot of bracing and it would make it harder to do. He suggested Shapeways and they use a wax support system which dissolves away. Proof in the pudding.

Still working on the F-105G, but continuing to get my ducks lined up for the engine house build.

The Thunderchief was really a huge airplane being almost as long (60 ft) and heavy (37,000#) as a B-17 with 3X the firepower. All the flight surfaces are on and all the filler is added. I'm adding all the little bits that go onto the fuselage. I still have to add details to the main landing gear and finally epoxy them into place since they're brass. 

Until next time...

After painting and mounting, that hoist is going to look awesome. I'm looking forward to this build. 

Watch out! He's up and running again folks! 

That is some nice detail (model too). I was beginning to wonder how folks managed working with the small scale 3-d prints.

Great detail parts Myles!

Work continues on the Wild Weasel, but I'm continuing to line up my resources for the engine house. Today I received the laser cut Gantry Railing from Real Scale Models. Stephen was very prompt and I got them three days after I ordered them. They're quite delicate, but the rail will be three layers. The lattice work forms the middle layer. They're self-stick so gluing won't be an issue.

Meanwhile the Thud is all masked and ready for the paint shop. It will be three tone Southeast Asia camo scheme.

And underneath… Wheel wells are other big spaces are plugged with wet paper towels. Bottom gets painted first with a very light gray (almost white), then I will mask the bottom and do the next lightest color and so on. SEA color schemes apparently had "soft edges" meaning the masks need to be held off the surface just a bit so the air brush results in a fuzzy edge.

With the progress I'm making on the jet, it should be done in a week or two and then onto the engine house.

The gantry railing certainly is delicate!  What fine work that is!

The Thud is looking great!

Thanks Mark!

Speaking of the Thud… I realized today that when using the dual Shrike load out on the outer pylons you need to fasten them to said pylon with some adapters that are not used when using the Shrike singly. I had glued two of the four I needed together, but then thinking they weren't needed, threw them in the trash yesterday. I spent 45 minutes today sifting through that pile of refuse looking for these two small assemblies. I ended up finding one! Where the heck could the other one had gone? I searched the floor thinking that maybe I missed the trash bag with one of them, but no, nada, nothing! So I ended up spending the entire afternoon scratch-building a new one.

I needed to glue them all one since they're all bottom color and needed to dry solid before I handled the model during painting. When painted, most people won't know it's homemade.

And I entered my Essex and Missouri in the Military Modelers Club of Louisville (of which I am now a member) in their annual Invitational Model Competition and won Gold for the Mo, Silver for the Essex and Best Ship award. I got them there and home without any injury. I am eclectic model builder.

Have you seen the videos of the UP 4014 under steam? If not, you must go on YouTube and check it out. There are at least four that I found. The fact that UP was able to take a park derelict of the largest steam engine ever built and make a fully functioning, like-new beauty in a little over five years is remarkable. It was brought to their shops in November 2013 and was running in May 2019. Remarkable!

https://www.youtube.com/result...=up+4014+update+2019

Enjoy! Makes me want to get one for my pike. I never was a Big Boy fan, but seeing a living breathing one makes me want one…especially if they can now sample the actual sounds of the running engine.

Congratulations on your Awards, Myles. It does not surprise me that you have won these awards seeing caliber of modeling you do.

You are absolutely right, Pat!!  Congratulations, Myles!!

You are both very kind!