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Adventures in Soldering: The Maserati BirdcageTipo 61 update Bodywork 12/17/22


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On ‎8‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 5:24 PM, Randy D said:

Hi Folks,

 I appreciate all the nice comments folks!!!!!

Tim, thank you my friend !  I had some life stuff get in the way but all is good now and my projects will get back on track soon.

Thank you !

Randy

I think that LIFE stuff is going around.....it hit me too!.....you are DEFINITELY the master of metal!!…...amazing!!

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  • 4 months later...

Hi Folks,

 To Bruce , Tim , Dann and Bill who have posted since I was on last time, a big thank you for taking the time to comment:)

 O'kay , so I did not get right on this one !  Well actually I did, but I basically started over and it has taken a while to show some progress !

I discovered that I make errors in my working drawings that caused the chassis to be to tall.   I also found better info on the sizes of tubing used.

After walking away for a time I decided to start over and build it more accurate.

I'll just show the chassis to date as the techniques used to construct it are the same as the first chassis.  Then  I will have a couple of ref. pics of the De Dion rear axle arrangement followed by my attempt to recreate it...

 

   

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I said it earlier but it's worth repeating - this is 1/24th scale folks.

One thing that makes modeling this era of sports cars so much fun is the wide open media coverage of every detail in these cars. This is in stark contrast to the opacity of the modern era, due in part to the secretiveness of manufacturers in order to assure any competitive advantage they can garner. Even at the time enthusiasts knew absolutely everything about these state-of-the-art cars. (What book or magazine article are those marvelous detail photos from?)

Back to the opacity thing, we can also point to the huge leaps in technology that have occurred over the past 50 years. It's no longer about the first tentative steps to tame the contact patch and optimize chassis rigidity,;today it's the abstract world of computerized fluid dynamics and micro-controlled circuitry, hardly the sort of things to stand up to the shear romance of welded tubes, leaf springs and and U-joints, all so spectacularly on display in the Birdcage Maserati. This car was really a kind of last hurrah and tour de force of lightweight space frame construction and old fashioned de Dion based suspension mechanics. And this project, above all, captures that romance as well as any I've seen grace these pages.

Build on, Randy!

Edited by Bernard Kron
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I just found this thread, and very glad I did. Stunning craftsmanship, very inspirational. Thanks for the detailed photos and descriptions, and freely explaining your methods. Very much appreciated. Super impressive, both the quality of work and the tenacious desire to get it right at all cost (including scraping an entire chassis!!). Very inspiring indeed. School is in. 

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Your talent and skill Randy is obvious and exceptional.  However I'm also impressed with the quality of your research.  You can't create the amazing level of detail you do without gathering excellent reference material. 

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Randy..... There are no superlative words in the English Dictionary to describe this level of scale model engineering....... this is off the scale as an incredible achievement. Following your intricate build I realised that you more or less had to start over again. This is such a joy to study in detail and I wish I could get even half way close to building a model car like this. Good luck Randy and enjoy every minute of what you are doing.

David

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  • Randy D changed the title to Adventures in Soldering: The Maserati BirdcageTipo 61 update Bodywork 12/17/22

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