Anglia105E

Great choice of interior and exterior paint colours David . . . Some nice bits of good humour in there with the mittens comments ! Hope you enjoyed a good Christmas, and Happy New Year to you and yours . . . Outside temperatures are dropping to -2°C here tomorrow morning, and rising to no higher than 2°C during Thursday. Good luck with this Cord build, and I shall surprise you shortly with my current ongoing project . . . David W.

Congratulations David G., and what an excellent result . . . These older London Taxi Cabs are much more interesting than the modern ones. David W.

Good work on the door glass David G., and I like those tyres . . . Always tricky with clear plastic parts, as we have found previously ! I saw your photo that shows the old barn building, and I know what you mean about the similarity with the barn roof and the Model T bonnet . . . David W.

Those were my thoughts exactly, regarding the first photo . . . Being slightly out of focus was accidental and careless, but the resulting image does blend together with the backgound. My light source does match the direction of the sunlight and shadows in the background photo, and that was intentional, so not accidental ! The Henry Ford figure is from the set of three figures by ICM, and all three of those figures are really good . . . When you say ' barn roof ' do you mean the canvas top, or the hood / bonnet ? David W.

Nice progress on the Cord build David G., and that is a good choice of colour with the blue . . . Very interesting video about the Cord transmission from Bill, which was really advanced tech for 1936 . . . Good luck with the Aoshima London Taxi Cab ! David W.

Tidying up those recent photos, and fitted the second spark plug lead in the engine bay . . . The tyres need to be glued to the wheel rims, as they tend to come off while I am handling the model. The bonnet panels / hood panels are slightly raised in the centre, so they need to be adjusted to fit better . . . David

Thanks Csaba . . . The figure work was challenging for sure, but I got there in the end! . . . I do appreciate your comment about my photography, thanks. David

As you say, not a lot of chrome on the taxi cab, so minimal BMF work to do . . . Nice work on the door cards, and I agree, loads better than bare plastic. Those four exterior door handles look a bit tricky for BMF . . . David W.

Thank you kindly Noel . . . This is the oldest model car that I have built so far, the ' Brass ' era of motor cars . . . David

Thanks a lot Bob . . . This does seem to have turned out reasonably well ! David

Cheers David G., . . . The most important area of the small diorama is where the base meets the background, which at the moment is the background image standing vertically on the surface of the MDF workbench . . . It will be necessary to set up a short grey baseboard in the immediate foreground, whereby the colour and texture matches the colour and texture of the actual road surface in the picture. Possibly I could edit out the joining line in my photos, which many people would refer to as ' Photoshop ' the image, but I don't like cheating in that way, unless I have to of course . . . David

Thanks Brian . . . There is always something new in the way of challenges, and I am constantly surprised by the results. I have to move this topic to ' Under Glass ', but also move it to ' W.I.P. Dioramas ' as well I guess ? David

I really appreciate your comments Len, and I hope to get close with the level of realism . . . This has been a most enjoyable build, which has taken me two months, from 4th October to 4th December. David

Having fitted the two trunk lid handles in place, I then fitted the two brass windshield hinge bars, also the two brackets at the rear of the canvas top and finally the four hood panel handles . . . These handles for the hood are not shown in the ICM instruction sheet as being fitted, and there are no indentations or holes in the hood panels. Once I had created two indentations on each side, using a metal scriber, the four brass handles were super glued in place . . . This Model T Ford is now completed, apart from three spark plug leads that need fitting in the engine bay, and also the rubber tyres need to be glued to the wheel rims using PVA glue . . . Meanwhile, the A3 size print of the Highland Park Plant in Michigan was carefully mounted onto a sheet of Foamex board, with PVA glue used. Some of the following photos show the Model T standing in front of the Highland Park background image . . . Several of these show the car in colour, with the MDF workbench surface in colour, and the background is in black & white. Some of the photos are in black & white, and these show the surface colour of the workbench to be very close to the actual road colour in the photographic image . . . I played around with the light source, so as to simulate the shadows and highlights with those in the background photo. There will be figures added to this composition at a later stage . . . David

Thanks Greg . . . I did make sure that the driver was given some anesthetic during the process of sawing off his legs !!! David

Thank you David G. and I continue to learn new stuff, which led me to Lord of the Rings, and this quote . . . The name is in fact related to Aragorn's other name in Bree, 'Strider' (and was said to be one of many insulting names that Bill Ferny had heard for Strider). Shank in this sense means 'leg', so 'Longshanks' means simply 'long-legs', and relates to his considerable height and the long length of his stride. David W.

Thanks for the info Len regarding Edward I, and I just assumed that Longshanks must have been an American guy ! You could certainly use gold Sharpie between the chrome trim pieces on your '57 Ford wagon, as long as the Sharpie has a finer tip. My Sharpies I think are one mm . . . Very often, the Sharpie can do a better job than the paint brush. David W.

Sharpies are an excellent product for model builders, and I am using a gold Sharpie for some of the smaller ' brass ' parts in this build. The gold colour is identical to the Humbrol brass enamel finish as it happens . . . No, the driver does not yet have a name, but at some point he shall be named ! ( I am not familiar with Ol' Longshanks . . . who was he ? ) . . . I agree that the driver figure was most probably intended for the Touring version of the Model T specifically, and with the Touring version being longer than the Roadster version, maybe the inside of the driver's compartment is different in some way? Certainly it was odd that the right leg was almost fitting well, and yet the left leg was substantially too long . . . This build could well be completed within the next few days, and there are only three pairs of tiny parts remaining on the sprues. The upper body was glued into place onto the lower body this morning, as I confirmed that the figure and seat fit correctly over the gas tank and under the tartan travel rug. David W.

I carefully removed the clear lens from the rear lantern (carriage lamp), and managed to avoid breaking the lamp bracket. Decided to use red and blue Sharpies rather than paint to colour the lens from the inside . . . This was red facing to the rear of the car, and blue to the side, according to the ICM instruction sheet. The lens was clipped back into position, and the lamp looks good. As regards the driver figure, the right leg was mounted on the floor, using super glue on the heel and toe of the shoe, and this was just to the right of the foot pedal . . . Then the left leg of the figure was sawn off immediately below the knee, and a further 5 mm of material was removed from the lower leg area. The two sections of the leg were super glued together, which was followed by mounting the foot to the left of the foot pedals . . . Both legs were mounted in this way, and the knees were both at the same height. It was necessary to insert a small block of balsa wood underneath the heel of the driver's shoe in order to obtain the correct height of the knee . . . Leaving the legs to set overnight, the travel rug would be added the next day . . . David

Yes I think the travel rug / lap blanket idea is working thanks David, and the right leg of the figure is not giving me too much trouble . . . The left leg however, is proving to be rather tricky, but getting there slowly ! David W.

The two headlamps were carefully super glued in place, and these were difficult to keep in position while the glue took hold. Next up were two sidelamp lanterns, which also required super glue as the styrene glue wasn't holding . . . Then a third lantern was mounted on the rear of the upper body. Fortunately, the three clear lenses were clipped into the lamp casings and not glued in place. This was fortunate because I realised that I had forgotten to paint the inside of the rear lens in red ! Moving on to the driver figure . . . The legs have been sawn off at the lower edge of the jacket. and I have fabricated a travel rug by using a small piece of white masking tape, which was coated with PVA glue overnight. Following this, the tartan pattern was created using Sharpies rather than paint. Once wrapped around the lower torso of the figure, I was able to see how the two sawn off lower legs and feet needed to be mounted on the floor, either side of the foot pedals . . . The absence of plastic material between the legs and the body of the figure will not be visible when covered by the travel rug. At this stage I put together a mock up of progress so far . . . The main components of the model seem to fit together quite nicely, including the canvas top. I am probably around one week away from completing this Model T Ford . . . David

Charles . . . I am always impressed and inspired by how much you can get into such a small space for your dioramas, in terms of content and composition. The vehicle, the figures and the building all fit nicely onto a relatively small baseboard . . . I continue to learn from your ideas . . . I am not usually a fan of military scenes, but this one caught my eye, so well done ! David

Ah, so wives do have their uses Carl . . . ( only joking of course . . . mine is away on holiday at the moment ! ) David

There are the two headlamp casings in brass on this Model T, and each of the casings has two halves. The two halves are glued together, with the clear lens added afterwards. A mounting bracket is also painted in brass, and I found that the arms of the bracket grip the casing so precisely that no glue was needed. The brass paint is drying overnight, and the assembled glued parts are being allowed to set. Tomorrow I should be able to glue the headlamp mounting brackets to the front of the chassis . . . As well as the two headlamps, there are three lanterns, and two of these are front side lamps, while the third lantern is a rear lamp. The crank handle has been attached to the front of the car, immediately below the radiator shell . . . David

The past couple of days have been all about very small parts that are fiddly and tricky to assemble . . . These include the horn, which has three parts, also the brass piping for the horn and the rubber bulb that goes on top of the pipe. Also, there is the steering column, comprising the column itself, plus the top bracket for the two tiny levers, one being the throttle lever and the other is the spark advance retard lever. Then there is the steering wheel, with the centre spokes . . . Finally I got these parts all painted, assembled and fitted to the car. The upper body won't be glued to the lower body and rolling chassis until the driver figure has been sorted out, as I need to have access to the seat base and the floor . . . I am no nearer to solving the figure issue, and at one point I was leaning towards David G.'s brilliant suggestion to cut the driver's legs off and cover his lower body with a lap blanket, which I would call a travel rug . . . If possible, I would like to have the driver's feet near to the foot pedals. Here are a few more photos of the current work in progress . . . David