manta69

Thanks, the clamp actually belonged to my grandfather so is as much an antique as me, I just turned up a spigot in my lathe and is probably the best jig related thing I've made - it does meen keeping the workbench clear so the horizontal swing can be used. Second pic is a jig I made for the Lotus steering rack to keep all the tubes both concentric and in the right position whilst soldering - I'm making 5 models of the Lotus by the way. Third pic is also a simple solution - I unscrewed the pin vice from its handle and put a nut & bolt into the groove, now I can have both hands free and rotate the vice to any angle. That pin vice has also been used to make suspension arms with some new pins turned in the lathe to suit the size of the tubes on each end they can then be spaced to suit and clamp the tube between them whilst soldering. keep up the awesome work! bigAL

a few pics of some of my jigs. bigAL

just goes to show that great minds think alike - I use some similar extrusion from a european manufacturer, only 'just' 500mm long (and I thought that was big . I also have smaller offcuts, nuts bolts washers etc for putting together solder jigs for other parts, I try to make them universal. I'll try to remember my camera and post pics to give more ideas.

Thats a nice clean build, I nearl bought that kit at last years Scottish nationals but it's a bit small for me too - I have a photo of the original full size car. Does anybody know if I can move my photos from this thread to the gallery?

Sorry Jim, misunderstood myself - I'll take a closer look there was some usefull bits on the site. The Aston is still at the design stage while I concentrate on the Lotus (now got the engine mounts in, I work in full 3D CAD as I can create sheet metal templates to scale, stick them on brass, cut them out and fold / form very acurately I'll post some images of the design work this week. It took me 10 years to track a real life example down - turns out the guy only lived 60 miles away here in Scotland and was only too pleased to let me photo & clamber over the car - LM19. They only built 21 examples and when finished in 1/8 will be about 440mm long.

Jim, many thanks, I'm not sure these tyres suite the 60's formula 1 but they'll be usefull for my 1/8 1934 Aston Martin Ulster I started designing a while back

Sorry guys, been busy trying out the recipe above , in reality I've been busy sorting out the rear suspension details and upright casting master for the lotus which is nearly done. I've also been pondering over the manufacture of the rod ends - I've got some ideas but was wondering if anyone had approached this. I took the balls out of some old bearings to grind flats on, I'm going to glue them into a brass profile and solder some threaded rod onto the end. bigAL

Dave, your models are top drawer man. I was wondering how you go about making your tyres - I'm starting to look at making the rubber for my Lotus 25 this weekend (a free Saturday my wife hasn't booked up - yehaaa) bigAL

Had to join - at last somewhere that folks like big bold brassy models (the scale variety)- I've been designing and building a Lotus 25 in brass / resin since the start of this year and am mightily impressed by the models here.