Hi Everyone,
My name is Dwight. I was invited to this group by my friends Dave Morton (Karmodeler2) and Dirk Joseph (ScrappyJ). I meet them during Modelpalooza 09 and we hit it off and had a blast and they have totally inspired me to bring my game up a few notches and dive into scratchbuilding. I have never scratch build anything prior to this, but with the constant words of encourgement and endless amounts of their advise I decided to take the plunge. Attached are some recent progress photos of a 1/24 Rock Crawler. I decided to go in this direction for alot of obvious reasons. I hope to meet alot of fellow hobbiest and look forward to sharing anything I can to help push the hobby in an upward general direction.
Above is my friend and yours, brass tubing...
Here are some "Bypass" Style Off-Road Shock absorber bodies. In scale they are 15", but I will have to make longer version for this particulair project.
Here is the hardest part of the build in my opinion. I planned on using all sorts of tricks etc... but what it boiled down to were magnets and right angles to set her up.
Here is a shot of what felt like a good idea, but was more hassel than what it was worth. The blue paste is a heat blocking past that also seemed like a good idea, but was messy and not necessary after the fact. I controll heat transfer with a drop of water on the joint I am trying to protect. When it starts to sizzle, I know I have a few moments before disaster. This tecnique works awesome... (for me).
Here is a completed pic of the Center Chassis.
Above I am starting the lower section of the chassis.
Here is a progress pic of the lower chassis from the mighty armchair, my wife happens to be real cool...
Starting the upper chassis, this was a bugger to get square, also, I added an "agression" bend to it after I was done, look for it in the next few pics...
I am getting happy at the progress and it is suare all the way around too! (Always a plus)
Thanks for looking and I will post an update after this upload.