Aaronw

The first one looks pretty amazing, but I'll trust you that it has flaws. ? I think a lot of us have boxes of projects that just didn't make the cut. Love the little details like including the eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch under the drivers side head lamp that Pierce places on their cabs.

Coming along nicely. I really enjoy watching people make things out of nothing, scratch building parts, resin casting, printing decals etc.

If you want to know more about actually operating machine tools, these two youtubers have a lot of great videos. Mr Pete is a retired high school shop teacher who has been on youtube "forever" so he literally has hundreds of videos. Blondihacks is just a hobbyist and much more recent (so not as many videos), but she breaks things down in a way I find very easy to follow. She also has very good production quality so it is easy to see what she is talking about. There are a ton of good machining oriented youtubers, but I find these two to be the best for explaining basic operations. https://www.youtube.com/@mrpete222 https://www.youtube.com/@Blondihacks

I have an ALPS 5500 that I bought new around 2008. I did not know about the IO Groups ALPS group, but there is an ALPS group on Face Book as well. I have always used laser printer decal paper with mine, but not sure that the printer is that fussy since it uses a film, rather than ink or toner. You do want to use a good quality decal paper though, some of the cheaper paper may have grit which will damage (scratch) your ALPS print heads. I always used Tango Papa but I bought a large amount of paper the last time and have not done much printing in recent years, so still have a large stock on hand (somewhere). I have heard some complaints that Tango Papa has had issues with paper quality. I never did, but also haven't bought any new paper for probably 10 years, so don't know if I got lucky or their quality has declined. I used to use a vender out of New Zealand ALPS Supplies for my cartridges, but again haven't had to buy new supplies in some time. I see a lot of people now are using Elephant's Rocket a company in Japan that has taken over supplies and printer support for ALPS. They have created ALPS drivers compatible for Windows 10 which I really need to download and try out. Part of the reason I haven't done much printing lately was one I made a lot of decals for my popular subjects and haven't run out, but the other reason was the nuisance of having to use an ancient Windows 7 laptop with the printer.

These are not common in the US, and very expensive over here compared to other small lathes. Based on comments from a Unimat list I belong to the Proxxon PD250/E lathe is pretty good, but comments about the 150 were not nearly so complementary. In the USA the 250/E retails for around $1800 making it much more expensive than other options. Pricing in Europe may be better since it is a local product.

I also have a watchmakers lathe, made by the Waltham Watch Tool Co sometime between 1890 and 1914. It was kind of an impulse buy because it was only 10 minutes from home and a great deal. I got the working lathe with motor, a cool jewelers desk and a bunch of jewelers and watchmakers tools and tooling for the lathe for $500. Pros - They are small, light weight and assuming they have been properly cared for they are very accurate lathes. The classic "8mm W-W (Webster-Whitcomb) style watchmakers lathe" like the one pictured above are pretty universal, so parts and tooling exchanges between brands liberally for the most part. They cost more than first appearances, but there are bargains out there if you are patient and quick when one turns up. Because of the type of work they were made for owners tend to be very meticulous in their care and use. Cons - They are fairly delicate, so it is easy for a careless prior owner to ruin them. Prices can be deceptive, you will see watchmakers lathes sometimes for as little as $250 making them seem like a budget lathe. That will usually just get you a bare lathe maybe not even a motor. What you get may be useless without spending a lot more money. Not unusual to find well equipped watchmakers lathes in the $2000-3000 range, particularly for one from a well known maker, if Swiss or German made add another 10-20% to the price. Considering that there are only a handful of manufacturers that still make these lathes, and the starting new prices run $9000+, then $2000 for a used one is actually quite a bargain. They are made to be mounted to a solid base, so not really portable. The base lathe is intended for use with collets, so the maximum size of round stock is limited to 8mm / 5/16". Collets have a very narrow holding range of about 0.1mm / 1/64" so you need a pretty decent number of collets. Collets are not cheap, used you may find decent ones around $5-10 each, new $40+ so if you get the lathe without collets, you can easily spend as much as the lathe for a useful size set of collets. The basic lathe also just comes with a simple tool rest for hand working material like a wood working lathe, not a cross slide like most other metal lathes. You can get chucks, cross slides and other accessories, but they are very expensive and often cost more than the lathe itself. They have a very small working size, generally 50mm (2") swing and 4-8" between centers.

One thing the Unimats really have going for them is they are very small but still capable. The SL like yours is only about 1/2 the foot print of even the short Sherline lathe.

Funny you say that. I bought my Sherline to make model parts. I've made some parts, but really not a lot. What I've done a lot more of is make tools (some for modelling) and fix things around the house. Having a lathe is super handy. We had to replace a TV, and the new TV did not fit the old mount. 30 minutes at the lathe and I had cut down the spacers and bolts to fit the new TV. I had a co-worker who had a sentimental (but kind of cheap) key lanyard that failed. I took it home and was able to make a new fitting to repair it. These other uses are what led me to bigger machines. I've spent an inordinate amount of time fixing up vintage machines instead of building models... Like I said, it can be a rabbit hole, but it is fun and they are really nice tools to have available.

Yes, but be aware it can be a rabbit hole. It starts with a lathe, and then you want a vertical mill. Then you get tired of cutting your stock by hand so you find yourself looking at bandsaws and power hacksaws. Don't know where you are coming from, but some lathe basics. Lathes are "rated" by swing and distance between centers. Swing is the largest diameter (in the USA, some countries like the UK use the radius) that can be turned at the spindle. This is a theoretical maximum, about 1/2 this diameter is more realistic for most operations. Distance between centers is basically how long of a part the lathe can work. Again kind of theoretical as most people these days are going to use a chuck, not turn between centers. The chuck will eat up some of this available space, and any tooling used in the tail stock drill, taps etc will also take away length available. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of small lathes out there, but this is a list of the usual suspects: Emco Unimat DB200, SL1000 and Unimat 3, Austrian made from the 1950s to the late 80s. These are very small lathes 2.5-3" swing and 6-7" between centers that are popular with model railroaders and model makers. Need about 1x2 feet of working area and weigh 20-30lbs. These are often recommended as they are popular and used to be pretty inexpensive on the used market. Since they have been out of production for 30+ years they are starting to become collectable, driving the prices up and making them a lot less of a bargain. Used to be you could pick up a decent one for $200-300, but now much more common to see them asking $500-1000+ and they are all old, the last ones were sold about 1990, 34 years ago. A positive for these is they are combination machines so with the right parts you can use them as a lathe or a milling machine / drill press. Parts and accessories are getting expensive. Taig Micro Lathe II. Taig is made in USA (Arizona) and is one of the more affordable options. 4.5" swing and 9.5" between centers so a bit larger than the Unimats, but still weigh 30-40lbs. These have been around since the 1970s and are still in production. Taig also makes small milling machines and you have the option of manual or buying one set up for CNC (computer control). You can get a basic set up from Taig for around $500. Carter tools is a Taig dealer who has a much more user friendly website than the official Taig site. Taig Carter Tools Sherline offers several small lathes and milling machines. Also made in USA (Southern California) these are more expensive than Taig, but in my opinion also more refined. Sherline offers a ton of accessories for their machines. Looking at around $900 for a basic set up on the entry level 3.5" swing, 8" between centers Model 4000. Sherline offers some really good value package deals with additional accessories, but you can quickly find yourself spending $1200-1500. Like the others weight is 30-40lbs. Sherline uses a variable speed motor which allows speed changes by turning a dial. Taig and Unimat use belts and pullies so speed changes are a little more work. Like Taig you can buy manual or CNC versions up to full CNC set ups with the computer and software. Sherline is very popular with model makers, I'd guess a survey of members of this site who own lathes would find Sherline in front by a large margin. In my opinion the long bed Sherline Model 4400 with 17" between centers is one of the best options if you can make it fit your budget and space. You quickly run out of length on small lathes and that 17" between centers puts the Model 4400 way ahead of the others in this area. Sears sold these for a few years in the 1980s, so you will occasionally run across a used Sherline marked as Craftsman. These usually have a brass bed instead of steel, but parts from new ones will mostly fit the early ones. Sherline The other major contender is the Chinese mini-lathe which comes in sizes from 7x10 (really 7x8"), 7x12, 7x14 and 7x16. These can be good lathes, but quality control is spotty requiring many buyers to do a fair bit of work to get them running well. Prices are all over the place, there are sellers on Ebay selling as low as $450, and reputable vendors selling them for $800-1200+. Prices are not real clear cut, some are selling stripped down machines with almost no tooling, and some of the more expensive include popular upgrades and more tooling like a steady rest and follow rest. Like Sherline these are variable speed lathes. There are good features to these lathes, and many people do good work with them, but be prepared to tinker. These are also much heavier than the others weighing around 100lbs. Harbor Freight sells 7x10" and 7x12" versions Grizzly sells 7x12 and 7x14" Little Machine Shop sells a 7x14" and an upgraded 7x16" Lots of other sellers, Vevor, Eastwood, Northern Tool, King, Princess Auto. Almost all come from the same factory, but they are not identical with the different sellers choosing from a variety of options. Another older lathe that I see mentioned less frequently on model sites are the Atlas 6x18" lathes. These are a bit larger and heavier than the others (150lbs), but you can often find them for a good price and they are solid little lathes with more features and better low speed power than most of the others I've mentioned. Speed is controlled with belts and pullies. There are two primary versions, the older (1940s-1970s) Atlas 618 with Art Deco styling, and the later (1970s-early 80s) 3950 often called the Mk 2 with a more modern looking blocky shape. Thousands of these lathes were sold, many through Sears under the Craftsman brand. Not unusual to find one for $500-700, but the used market is highly variable by geographic location. If you do look for one of these though do be aware Sears sold another much lower quality lathe under the Craftsman and Dunlop brands in the 1940s, these have a model number starting with 109. The better Atlas made lathes sold as Craftsman had model numbers starting with 101. Like Unimat, the used market is your only option for these since production ended in the early 1980s. This is a huge can of worms, but this should give you a starting point.

I think the question is too vague for a definitive answer. AMT as an independent company ended in the late 1970s. I'm not familiar enough with the organization of Round 2 to know if in its current form AMT is any less an entity than it was under Lesney (late 70s), Ertl (1980s) or RC2 (2000s). Maybe somebody familiar with the operation at Round 2 could chip in to explain if the AMT line has its own design organization, or if there is a general design team for Round 2 and the different brands are just used for marketing.

I didn't understand your question. As others have said, Round 2 is the parent company, AMT is just one of several brands under Round 2. Like many other businesses the model industry has gone through a lot of mergers and it can get confusing as to who owns what.

There are 2021 Dodge Charger and Ford Bronco kits. There was also the Garwood Garbage truck, based on the Ford C600 kit. Those are pretty recent. It has been the trend for AMT to do several re-issues, modified re-issues with each brand new kit pretty much since R2 took over.

I made this years ago after about the third time I knocked the bottle over. Just a PVC pipe cap and a plastic electrical cover plate, total cost maybe $2.

Or the breakdown between autos, armor, ships and aircraft. A large portion of their catalog is non automotive so a general 50% international sales could be and likely is dominated by the other categories. Unlike their automotive selection these other categories are much more international in subject coverage.

Nice start. I am always happy to see fire apparatus being made. I have an E-One cab that has been on my stalled project list for so long that it has ended up being used as a bench top storage bin... Anyway a tip that I was given back then (mid 2000s) that I used on it, was to back up the corners to be curved with square stock so I had enough meat to sand out the shape of the corners. The interior corners are mostly under the dash and above flooring so will not be visible once complete. I have used Charlie's PVC pipe idea on another build to provide rounded top corners on a body. The ends were going to be left open for draft hose storage so I needed them to be of a set thickness. That also worked out quite well. I used smaller diameter styrene tube, rather than PVC pipe simply because that matched the curve and thickness I needed.

This is great. I love the crossed out eyes on the fish, like the owner is actively daring people to eat the food sold from the truck.

Always nice to see more fire apparatus! Great job converting this into a bigger Ford truck and building the whole fire package.

Agree those headlights strongly give the suggestion of Crown, but the overall cab also kind of reminds me of Freightliner's short lived Fireliner cab. Looks good, will be interesting to see where you go with it.

WW2 aircraft interior colors is a whole kettle of fish. Assuming US aircraft with the mention of zinc chromate. There are many variables, but the primary cockpit colors you find mentioned are zinc chromate (green), kind of a light yellow green to lime green color, zinc chromate (yellow), more of a light yellow to slightly yellowish green, and bronze green, a darker green that varies from a lighter greyish green to a fairly dark almost olive green. Zinc chromate was primarily an anti-corrosion paint. Zinc chromate (yellow), was mostly used in parts of the aircraft that wasn't occupied, as it was less durable, and would quickly be rubbed off with heavy crew traffic. Zinc chromate (green) was simply zinc chromate paint with black added for extra durability and to tone down the color. This was mixed in batches as used so exact tone could vary fairly widely by batch, a bit less black gives you more of a yellow tone, extra black a darker green. Bronze green was often used specifically in cockpits. Add to the confusion, the different manufacturers often had their own formulations of paint, and ideas of where each was to be applied. With widespread subcontracting of aircraft manufacturing, you can even see differences of the "official" colors within the same type of aircraft, for example the B-24 bomber was a Consolidated design, but in addition to Consolidated, Douglas, North American and Ford also had production lines to build them.

Personally I just describe parts by the process, I built this kit by Revellomiya, I made the seat belts from some ribbon, the buckles were made from some old PE parts sprues. I turned the shifter knob on my lathe. I bought the wheels and tires from 3D printer guy and I made the decals with my printer.

How is it a red herring? Just because 3d printing can do some things better than machining or resin casting should not matter. 3D printing is not magic just as with machining or resin casting proper design is important. Like resin casting some parts will need to be printed in pieces, and orientation during printing is very important. 3D printers actually do not like undercuts, you often have to add supports, or carefully consider the orientation of the part while in the printer, large undercuts may best be created upside down. Machining and resin casting can also do some things better than 3D printing. Granted resin casting a hand made part, or turning a part on a manual lathe / mill has more direct human interaction, so I can see the argument for including them, but I have trouble understanding why you would accept a CNC made part as scratch-built, but not a 3D printed part. Other than time and skill set hand carving has many advantages over many of these mechanical methods. A skilled carver can do things very difficult or impossible to do with a machine. If it is just about difficultly we may as well go back to arguing balsa and tissue vs styrene and what is "real" model making. I can see the point some of you are making about the "human element". I think that is a legitimate point, the real question being where is the line drawn. I think some believe 3D printing is just push a button and a part pops out. Even printing a file made by another requires skill to set it up properly, lots of ways to mess up a print. If 3D printing was easy everybody would be doing it. Ultimately "scratch-building" is a vague term. It often gets confused with kit bashing, so not surprised to see so little agreement on this topic.

3D printing is in the same category as resin casting and CNC machining. Is making the master, and then resin casting duplicates scratch-building? Is making parts on your CNC milling machine scratch building? Does it make a difference if you designed the part in CAD or bought the file to upload into your milling machine? If yes to either of these, then I don't see why 3D printing isn't. If no to either, what is the difference? Is their a difference between carving a block of aluminum by hand with a file, doing it with a manual milling machine or doing it with a CNC milling machine? It gets kind of murky once you are not working strictly with your hands, and without power tools. Once you add power, where do you draw the line, hand drill, drill press, lathe?

The tech is finally maturing. It is cheaper to get started in 3D printing than buying the set up for resin casting. You can now get on older generation 2K resin printer for less than $200. There are several 4K resin printers in the $300-500 range and 8K resin printers at the $500-800 range that are big enough to do a smaller car body. The 4K and 8K printers can do extremely fine detail. The layering so many dislike with 3D printing is mostly an artifact of the filament printers. The learning curve for creating stuff to 3D print is a significant, but getting started with resin casting has a pretty steep curve as well.

Just because I need a little levity after writing all that ... I can't tell you how many times I thought of this bit from The Wedding Singer after receiving less than timely help

I went through this with my mother a few years ago. One thing that would have been nice to know that we didn't find out until it was too late is how rapidly it can progress. She had been declining to the point we were starting to look into some sort of assisted care for her, but she was still able to live on her own with my brother or I checking in on her once or twice a month (basically one of us would check on her each week). She went into the hospital for a urinary tract infection, a fairly minor illness, but she rapidly declined from there. Went from being able to live alone with some concerns for us, to couldn't be left alone for a minute. My brother took her for a few days, but he lives alone and couldn't work since she had to be watched. We took her from him, and tried to keep her with us, since it is my wife and I plus our teenaged son so there were more eyes to watch her. That lasted about a week when we caught her trying to feed our 7 year old her meds like candy. We got her into a nearby assisted living facility that seemed nice and it was close so easy to pop in a few times a week to visit. Thankfully she had a good pension so we could afford the $5000 / month rent (1 bedroom apartment with caregivers and cafeteria), because we wouldn't have been able to. At that point she would get confused, but she still knew my brother and I. This went on for about 6 months, and then one week she didn't know us anymore. She would sit right there face to face and tell us about her horrible sons who never visit her. My brother made the 2 hour drive a couple times a month and I was there several times a week, so that was a bit hard to take. I can't blame people who don't visit, what is the point they don't know you and you get to hear what a terrible person you are in the third person. Then she started to get violent, so we had to move her to another facility that could manage violent residents. All this time she was still considered legally competent because doctors are very reluctant to take away a persons rights. Thankfully she had put me on most of her finances before she completely lost it, so I could access her bank account to pay her bills but she had resisted getting a power of attorney so we could legally make decisions for her once she couldn't. It was extra fun when she was finally declared incompetent, but we still had to wait months for the courts to award me conservatorship, so several months of limbo. People yelling at me to do things I had no legal right to do. Nine months after we got her moved into the new, new place, she was dead. I probably burned 3 months sick leave over 18 months, taking her to doctors appointments, moving her (twice), having to deal with crisis after crisis. So glad I had saved up sick leave for years so I had it to use. I learned a lot about dealing with dementia, almost all of it after the fact. One of the big ones being, it moves fast, they can literally be somewhat coherent one day, and then checked out the next. Another that would have been nice to know is the average life expectancy from diagnoses to death is 3 years. Sounds horrible to say, but after dealing with the dementia for 2+ years, getting the phone call that she had died was more relief than grief. She was 79, and she had many on her side of the family live into their 90s so I thought that was going to be my life for quite some time. The 2 years nearly killed us, I don't think I could have done 10. Only advice I can share is be aware that it moves fast. Be aware that people you would think would be understanding and help you (courts, hospital, social workers) won't, most will dump the problems back on you. If you are lucky they may provide you with some literature that is about 6 months behind your current timeline. This is important, get a power of attorney giving a family member the ability to take control, once they are deemed incompetent. If they will sign the documents while they still legally can, it will help so much once they decline beyond that point. If you can, get a will done at the same time, which will save you down the road. We dodged a bullet there as it was just my brother and I and she had listed us as beneficiaries on her savings account which was her the only thing of any significant value. If she had still owned a home or had other valuable assets we would have had months of additional legal wranglings. Take care of yourself. Get a family member to stay with him to give you a break when you need it. The stress is brutal, I contemplated giving up a few times, and if I didn't have a 7 year old that I want to see get bigger, I might not be here. My condolences, this is an issue that gets far too little support. Good luck.