Lunajammer

Have you just considered therapy? Wonderful, minuscule detail here. Also, I never thought brass era Pyro kits offered such nice material. Learning something here. Watching.

I recommend it. That color flatters these Toros. Not sure if I used the exact same red on this one, but close. John, I don't know why but you almost can't go wrong with that color on those A bodies.

Thanks guys, I appreciate that. I'm enjoying this more than I expected.

BTW Mark, thanks for posting these. I find myself referencing back to them occasionally to look something up.

The doodlebug tractors that I see have shortened wheelbases and the look I want will replicate that. I removed the muffler, which is exactly 1/2-inch (one scale foot) and also that much of the frame. It didn't feel short enough so I took another 1/4-inch more out. Which quickly brings me to the first mock up. That feels right, so I shortened the drive shaft and support rods to fit, salvaging the shaft's front flange. One of the AMT Fruit Wagon options is a custom cab, which includes just a cowl and windshield. Good. Now I don't have to cut up the kit's runabout body. Don't need the windshield. I don't want the full hood either, so I cut off the sides to reveal the engine, but if I'm driving this, I still want the cover.

Got to finalize the wheels, needs hubs. Again, I scrounged the house looking for bits and bobs. I started with a pen cap. It's interesting, but again, it's soft plastic like glue bottle caps. Glue might not stick. Not throwing it away yet, it's still interesting. When in doubt, KISS. The hubs from the remaining Model T wheels fit the hole perfectly. There's a little suspension of logic here, lots of bolt heads on this wheel, but I'm free-wheeling here. Problem solved. At this point, I feel like if I never complete this project beyond this point, I will have at least contributed a cool wheel idea to this forum.

The pics are great! What a fond memory for both you and your dad and restoring them would be a very enjoyable hobby because it's purely mechanical and it's not critical or imperative anymore that you get it fixed. Just a leisure hobby. Unless, of course, you're doing it for someone else. I'd never seen one in my life until just a couple years ago at a steamthreshers reunion. Love the pic of your gramps.

They're like plastic but they sand like resin, dry and dusty. Might be a sort of resin. I didn't try styrene glue on it, I just measured them into where I wanted then wicked in super glue.

I'm rarely critical Tony, but I care about this piece; your expert execution, knowledge of the subject and thorough research. But I think the base cheapens your effort. The visceral impression is the model was set down on the kitchen table and my eye sort of fills in the peripheral with the rest of the table top. That said, I totally understand your reasoning. If it was mine, and didn't want to do a diorama base, I would consider maybe a piece of vintage wood with some oil and grunge, possibly a piece of dull aluminum, or a board wrapped in plain Army canvas. Anything that could be sympathetic to the visuals or the era. Just my 2-cents my friend.

I just chose a random width for the wheel which is a scale foot, so half inch slice. Using the circle guide on my cutting mat, I marked off spacing for ten cleats on each wheel. The buttons only needed to be sanded down slightly to fit inside the PVC. They fit just snug enough that I could adjust as needed without them falling out. VERY important to keep remembering is that the wheels are directional so I had to keep double checking that the cleats faced the right direction. The angle strips measure a scale 3-inches deep, which seemed appropriate, but felt a little aggressive. However compared to the photo above, it still seems right. These wheels were completed in one modeling session and I'm giddy with happiness. They were so important to the look of this project and ended up being so easy and relatively quick (less than two hours at distracted turtle speed). This is pretty much the hard part. The rest is just cutting and gluing on the rest of the kit.

Digging deeper I found another (1-inch inside diameter) PVC pipe designed for less pressure, which means thinner walls and more scale appropriate. An excellent development. I gave a lot of thought to how I would build the rest of the rim when I remembered I've had these steampunk gears in the parts box for a couple years. They seem to be an excellent answer to make the wheels and there are a variety of choices. Problem is you only get one of each variety so I had to shop for another pack. Meant for scrapbooking, they are metal, but paper thin. I struggled with whether I could live with that. Naturally, the store I bought them from a couple years ago (Joann's) no longer carries them. It's a fabric and craft store, so I walked the isles looking for alternatives when among the buttons I came across this packet on the right. Looked like pretty good prospects but I then went to Hobby Lobby, still trying to match the steampunk gears when I came across the packet on the left and each packet contains at least two of the same shape. One of these two should work.

I established a diameter of about 1-1/4 inch and scrounged the house for plastic circles that size. Bottle caps offer the most size options for rims but once I started cutting and working them, it occurred to me that the plastic is the same material they make glue caps out of. Might not be good to glue things to. Then I went to a plastic bottle that had better plastic but was too thin and flimsy once cut. Then I went to my first preference, PVC pipe, but it looked way too thick and out of scale.

Okay, this has been growing on me like a fungus. I'm pulling the trigger and doing it. It's in "All The Rest."

The drive wheels is the achilles heal of the project and it sort of determined what kind of vehicle I would build. I didn't like anything I could readily find on toy vehicles. In the spirit of the project I didn't want to invest the time, money and delays in finding the perfect choice online. I have no vintage truck wheels among my parts so I'm building my own, which means I guess my doodlebug will be a tractor. The article on how to build one HERE recommends modifying the Model T's existing wheels, but wood spokes seem a little light duty to me so I'm making iron wheels.

"There's no wrong way to build one," is the term most often associated with these because they were individually built by resourceful people according to need and parts availability. But before starting you have to pre-imagine the need and era; barnyard helper or field plow, 20's or 50's, cared for or trashed. Fortunately, there are several currently or recently available Model T kits, especially when they come in 2-in-1 kits. I pulled this one from my stash because it offers some extra farm based parts.

Glad to see the wide shots. It's much smaller than I thought, which means this project is even more insane than I already thought. I hope you're sharing this on therpf.com.

Missing headlight bezels. Nice touch.

I don't know if this helps, but when my tube glue gets old and stringy, I glob it into the (overly thin) Testors liquid cement and stir till I get a consistency similar to the MM glue, which works as a great glue (with brush) that falls in between the excellent Tamiya liquid cement and Testors tube glue. The consistency helps control the work time. (Thinner, less. Thicker, more). It helps if you have an almost empty liquid bottle that you can combine the two into. +

My fiancé operates in the purebred dog world, it's her passion, her life and her expertise, so she talks about it A LOT. What she tells me daily about the gossip, back stabbing and drama makes me believe some of these people are incapable of human friendship. Which is probably why their only relationship success is with captive animals.

If the paint is still soft you can sometimes carefully, lightly, scrape it off with an Xacto blade. Just not sure in this case if it will leave a shadow on that white.

It's funny, I did a forum search of his name and the result is pages of posts thanking him for tidbits of help or referencing his builds or emulating his style or acknowledging his sharing. What a hole he's left in this forum.

Researching whether I wanted to try and model one of these, there were many things I didn't understand because none of the photos I find ever get into the construction. Mystery solved.

You may be referring to NNL North in May? If table price vs. transactions is a concern, maybe you could split table cost/space with another modeler and see what kind of a response you get without paying the full price. The extra body would also free you up to still get time to wander through the show.

Your retail $30 kit loses almost half its value when you walk out the door. It would be a lot of years before you would get $30+ for that kit second-hand resale.