tbill Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Very nice! Might as well plan ahead for another section , these things tend to get out of hand faster than we think... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slusher Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Looks great! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PHPaul Posted March 16, 2020 Author Share Posted March 16, 2020 16 hours ago, tbill said: Very nice! Might as well plan ahead for another section , these things tend to get out of hand faster than we think... I know, right? I started this project as a substitute for rebuilding/restoring a John Deere 420C crawler. I got the dozer torn pretty much completely down and made a list of everything it needed. I totaled up the parts list and fainted dead away. Discretion (and my bank account) dictated that I part it out and run away. I did manage to break even on the deal so it could have been worse. When this idea occurred to me, I said to myself, "Self," I said, "How much can a diorama possibly cost?" And that right there, Boys and Girls, is what ya call yer "Stoopid Question". Cheaper than fixing the dozer? Yeah. So far anyway... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tbill Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Now that is funny, I don’t care who ya are, hahaha..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PHPaul Posted March 16, 2020 Author Share Posted March 16, 2020 Roughly half of the 2x4 addition is spoken for already... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shambles Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 Impressive work, Paul. At my age (68), I'm finding it more difficult to work in 1:24 and 1:25 scale than it was just a few years ago. I'm impressed with what you're doing in 1:64! Your shots are nice too. Good perspective and lighting. After trying a couple of kinds of cameras, I settled on my iPhone X. It has some amazing capabilities. My sister is a retired photography professor and she says her iPhone produces better results than some of her high-dollar professional cameras. I'm a retired graphic designer, so I enjoy using Photoshop and some other apps to add backgrounds to my diorama shots. It can be a little tedious, but I enjoy it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PHPaul Posted March 17, 2020 Author Share Posted March 17, 2020 Thanks, Shambles. Very gratifying, especially given the quality of the competition here! I have a nice magnifying lamp the gets a lot of use, along with tweezers and hemostats. I find my shaky hands at least as bothersome as my tired old eyes. Patience has never been one of my virtues, but this project is giving me lots of practice in faking it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PHPaul Posted May 9, 2020 Author Share Posted May 9, 2020 Thanks to the lovely weather (near white-out snow squalls earlier today) I'm spending a little more time on the diorama. I built a shed to store my scratch-built 1/64th combine in and have slowly been detailing around it. The idea well was running pretty dry so I posted on a farming/tractor site about needing ideas for "stuff" to put around the shed. Got a lot of goods ones, many of which I'll act on but the best was to add some weathered signs to the building. Original shed Shed with signs. I snagged the images off the internet, tweaked them to suit and printed them on decal paper. Wasn't sure decals would adhere to wood, but they seem to be fine. Makes a huge difference IMHO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anglia105E Posted May 10, 2020 Share Posted May 10, 2020 The weathered signs on your shed building look really good, Paul........ it's these nice finishing touches that add realism to the whole diorama. David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kilrathy10 Posted May 13, 2020 Share Posted May 13, 2020 That looks quite awesome.... I need more space to join this party... I need to do one of something... Awesome work... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PHPaul Posted May 13, 2020 Author Share Posted May 13, 2020 20 hours ago, kilrathy10 said: That looks quite awesome.... I need more space to join this party... I need to do one of something... Awesome work... Thanks. Be careful what you wish for... The original plan was a 2x2 foot diorama. That quickly got upgraded to a 2x4 and now it's 4x4. With late Spring here and Summer on the way, I likely won't be doing much until cold weather comes back. I'm hoping to stay at 4x4 and just add more detail and maybe some animation (I saw an arc welding animation that was REALLY cool!) but I ain't making any promises. The thing that attracts me to dioramas is the variety and the "blank canvas" aspect - I can create whatever I can imagine, and there are no plans. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kilrathy10 Posted May 14, 2020 Share Posted May 14, 2020 I feel ya, Man.... And I, too, go at just about everything without any written plans... Just whatever comes to my hamster and wheel...?? You definitely got me thinking about doing one of these... I love to see what you guys come up with... Very enjoyable... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David G. Posted May 14, 2020 Share Posted May 14, 2020 Impressive diorama! You have a lot of excellent details going on there. Your photography is good too, I especially like the feel of the night shots. David G. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PHPaul Posted May 14, 2020 Author Share Posted May 14, 2020 2 hours ago, David G. said: Impressive diorama! You have a lot of excellent details going on there. Your photography is good too, I especially like the feel of the night shots. David G. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PHPaul Posted November 26, 2020 Author Share Posted November 26, 2020 I'm still adding little details here and there to the farm diorama. I decided some time back that a derelict thresher would look good behind the combine shed along with the dead tractor and the old hay loader. I asked around on a couple of ag boards for someone to give me some basic dimensions of a thresher as I've never seen one in person. A guy from Kansas runs one every year at the local tractor show and was kind enough to hook me up with some numbers and pictures of an Allis Chalmers thresher. As an extra bonus, that fits with the AC theme of the combine and tractor. I used this picture and the 1:1 measurements he provided and used my scale rule to interpolate things down to "S" scale (1:64) I used those measurements to produce this scale drawing with several reference lines. That was transferred to some plastic sheet and cut out with an Xacto knife. Those parts were glued together with liquid Testors, using my 1-2-3 blocks and various magnets to hold things square and in position. I have to use VERY thin sheet to get the curve in the rear housing so I glued some forms on the inside. At this point the whole thing is a hair over 3" long and about an inch wide. I bent up the straw blower pipe by inserting some #12 copper inside a suitably sized plastic tube, heating it up with a blow dryer and bending it to shape. I have tubing in various sizes to do the blower housings, and square tubing for the elevators. The spoked wheels are going to be interesting. Not sure how I'm going to do that yet. The various pulleys I can turn on my mini lathe. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PHPaul Posted November 26, 2020 Author Share Posted November 26, 2020 Pretty much the last of the available real estate was taken up by this sawmill. Good opportunity for some detail work around that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anglia105E Posted November 26, 2020 Share Posted November 26, 2020 Some excellent work going on here, Paul......... I always like to see a model builder using old scale drawings, old reference photos and then scratch building a particular model that simply isn't available in kit form, or even a diecast version. Once you have completed this derelict AC thresher you will have a truly unique scale model for your diorama, and something to be very proud of, I'm sure. David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sixties Sam Posted November 27, 2020 Share Posted November 27, 2020 Great work Paul! Looks like many farms here in central PA. Amazing details, especially for the small scale! Sam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PHPaul Posted December 1, 2020 Author Share Posted December 1, 2020 I've been noodling how to make the spoked wheels for the thresher for a while. To be in scale, or nearly so, they need to be made out of half inch tubing and have 8 spokes equally spaced around the circumference - i.e. every 45°. The spokes themselves would be .063 diameter. I have a 3" rotary table for my Grizzly benchtop mill, but no way to hold the tubing. I took that as an excuse to buy a 3" 3 jaw chuck that fits my rotary table. Got it on Amazon, and with various discounts it was just a hair over $45. High precision it's not, but plenty accurate enough for model work. Next problem? How to hold the tubing in the chuck without crushing it and still be tight enough to work with. Solution? Turn down a piece of wooden dowel to a snug fit and chuck that up and slip the tubing over it: Then just crank the rotary table around in 45° increments and drill through the tubing and the dowel. Drilling all the way through both sides makes alignment pretty accurate and means I only need to drill 4 holes. Worked pretty darn well after a couple of adjustments to get things lined up. Next problem? How to cut 1/8" wide rings off the tubing after the spoke holes are drilled and have them come out reasonably square and centered. Solution: Another piece of dowel chucked up in my mini-lathe and an Xacto knife in a boring bar holder to part them off. Wicked cool. And the finished products. Now all I gotta do is figure out how to glue them up. I have an idea, if it works, I'll post back with the results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteski Posted December 2, 2020 Share Posted December 2, 2020 I like the way you solve your modeling problems Paul. I do have a question: the "spoke" in the last photo seems awfully thick. The spokes on the 1:1 thresher look much thinner. Couldn't you use thinner wire for the spokes? I also counted 12 spokes,not 8, on those wheels. Going through all the trouble machining the parts, why not make it closer to the prototype? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PHPaul Posted December 2, 2020 Author Share Posted December 2, 2020 Valid questions, peteski. 1. The model is being built out of plastic so strength is something of an issue. Not critical as there's not much weight involved, but a consideration. 2. That's the smallest plastic rod I have on hand. 3. The wheel rims are only 1/2" in diameter, not sure spoke holes every 30° would leave much structural integrity. 4. I'm lazy and "close enough" is okay most of the time. However, you bring up good points and I may try a 12 spoke version just as an excuse to play with my toys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PHPaul Posted December 2, 2020 Author Share Posted December 2, 2020 I tried the 12 spoke approach. Drilling the holes in the perimeter of the wheel went well, but there's just not enough room at the hub for 12 spokes of that size. Actually, it looks pretty crowded with 8. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteski Posted December 3, 2020 Share Posted December 3, 2020 Thanks for the explanation Paul. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anglia105E Posted December 3, 2020 Share Posted December 3, 2020 Hello Paul...... I am not wanting to hijack your thread or anything, but I can see that you are clearly knowledgeable when it comes to engineering equipment, so I was wondering what you think about this 3D printed lathe. The link takes you to a seller on Pinshape, and the price is in US $., which is a 1:10 scale lathe. I am wanting to 3D print some factory machinery for my 1:43 Hooper & Co factory, so that I can photograph some Rolls-Royce car bodies in production, with some machine tools displayed inside the factory building. I would have thought the 1:10 scale model could be scaled down to 1:43, before I print it. Does it look like the sort of machine that you would have seen inside a Rolls-Royce factory during the 1950's, in your opinion? Photos below this link...... https://pinshape.com/items/40054-3d-printed-scale-110-lathe David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mchook Posted December 3, 2020 Share Posted December 3, 2020 Hi Paul, I love your diorama and the saw mill is a great addition. It reminds me of the one we had when I was a kid, it ran on an old flathead Chrysler 6 cylinder engine. Nice work on your scratch building for the thresher. I was on ebay and found this auction that might work for you for your wheels. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Custom-3D-printed-wheels-for-1-64-antique-Tractors-Wide-Rim/202998234740?hash=item2f43a33e74:g:Sg0AAOSwLY1exzB0 Here's some pics of my Model A Buzz Saw, you need one of these for your farm too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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