kennb

This afternoon I started playing with the interior KennB

Cant even tell that there was a problem....Looks great now. Great save KennB

Will be posting an update on this ine tonight. It is in the paint shop getting primer. I have decided that the exterior chrome will all be applaied after painting and chroming. KennB

Next installment, forming the hood and roof are coming tonight.

Just a quick photo update. More later. The hub caps are made by heating plastic and pushing it into a short tube section with the end of my exacto knife. Note that the one I use for shaping parts and molding is without a blade for safty reasons. I slice my fingers enough without inviting it.

The ribs give it too much of a boat look. I think I am going with plain fins ont he back. Now off to finish the paint and interior painting. KennB

This needs to have a 1946 Chevy or Chrysler hauling this about. I did make it alittle undersized because the scale version looked a bit big. One thing to remember is that they were taller than they were wide. The main reason I wanted this is becasue of the shape. Now to try to figure out what the inside is suppose to look like, going to have to wing it there. Thanks for the comments....will be posting more on the concept tomorrow. Sleep, whats that. KennB

In keeping with the concept of setting up drawings for scratch building I am including this. I found a drawing on the net that I liked. This intreged me but alas there is little information on this trailer. The Airfloat Coach Company began operation in 1930 from a manufacturing location in Pasadena, California, and moved in 1935 to a plant in downtown Los Angeles. Company owner Omar Suttles helped organize manufacturers into the Trailer Coach Manufacturer's Association, a trailer trade organization. Airfloat patented the roof ventilation system, third-wheel and a double exit door. Models include the Commodore, Presidential Landyacht and the Skipper. Airfloat shuttered the doors on the factory in 1957. I did find a 1947 for sale that had all 4 views, so I made up a basic drawing and some front and rear half sketches. The 1947 was fairly close although it had been cobbled together and the door replaced It did give me some basic clues I did not get from the origional photo. From there I was able to come up with a relativly in scale representation that is quit credible. You can develope yourdrawings from any reference that you ave with a little care and scale reference. You measure how wide a car is and how long it is and you can guess from there other dimensions, if you have nothing to go on. I had no dimensions for his but used common ones from other trailers. KennB

That thing on the hood is the grill for this "thing".It has the bumper built into the bottom of it. This will be chromed. There is very little chrome on this car, the grill/bumper, the rear grill and tail lights, a strip alont the top edge of the front pop ups, and the belt line strip. KennB

additional photo

Forming the main body: Tools required: Exacto knife without a blade, wood ruler, exacto knife with blade, liquid glue. (I use Plastruct Plastic Weld). First we are going to cut two more pieces. They are the added side panels that will be glued on at this time also. The pattern outlined in red shows the cut, two are needed. Again take your time cutting these and cleaning the edges up. You will want to ease the upper edges some. The will be finished off more later. Now to forming, this will take some time. With the plastic on the ruler and table move the end of the exacto knife the full length of the piece. Repeat this procedure a number of times to get the sides to form a curve from the top to bottom. (See photo). You will want the sides to conform closely to the formers. To curve the top bar that connects the sides you may want to use the needle nose pliers to slowly curve them. Take your time with this and work the sides to curve as smoothly as you can. There are going to be lines on the outside but those will be taken care of later when we start to finish the body. After the sides are curve set the formers in place with tape over the top to each side. One former is to be near the firewall location and the other will be about where the rear axle is going to be located. (See photo). After they are taped up use the liquid glue on the formers to side locations. I tend to over glue. The formers will be removed later. Note that the bottom of the formers will line up with the bottom of the body. Let these set up for a good hour. The lining up the side panels with the wheel wells and top arch glue them in place. I draw a pencil line at each side at the top location of these panels and check from side to side that they are close to the same location. Clamp in place with the small spring clamps and run a bead of liquid glue at all the edges. This will hold them in place. The glue will suck into the joints sufficiently that you don’t need to glue the middle. This glue does set up fast at first but takes a little time to fully cure. Leave the clamps in place for about an hour. Actual working time is about two hours for this section. This does not include the time letting glue dry. You may want to take two sessions to accomplish this part. If you have any questions at this point be sure to ask. If anyone wants to post photos with questions or as progress feel free to do so. I hope that I am making sense to those following this. Sometimes when one is so close to something they may not be able to translate it properly. Speed is not the key to doing scratch building but rather taking your time and enjoy the process. As I build more cars I get new ays of doing things, get more detailed and make more parts functioning. I also pick up speed in doing what I set out to do. It is getting familiar with the process and gaining the skills needed. It is like your first model, it took a long time and maybe to not match your expectations but after you gained skill they become easier and you get more detailed with what you do. Many of the models I have done start outwith one method and then I trash that in preference to another way of doing it. This model is build differently from the one in the pictures at the start of this. The front and rear are different and easier to do. I am changing things to make them easier and repeatable. I am about read for primer on this build so am far in advance of the posts. There are two reasons for this. 1. I can work out the details to make them easier to do by making several variations of putting them together and getting the easiest to do. 2. To make sure that what I am putting together will work out for you as you put it together and to make a sensable and reliable sequence. Thank you for your comments, and hope there are a few that are building along with me. If you want more photos let me know. I have over 100 to date of the build. I have also posted the link to the photobucket photos that I am adding to with each post. KennB

Will be posting next segment tomorrow. Posting a teaser on the tailight design segment coming up later. We will be cutting some more and forming that body for assembly. KennB

Layout and first cuts: Tools required for this step. Tape, Exacto with sharp blade, small needle nose pliers, needle nose files, and a ruler. Plastic to be 40th from U.S. Plastics or 30th from others. Note: if you don't have a pattern I will email it to you. It is PDF format If you don’t have a cutting mat you can use some thick matt board. Starting out in the first step. I am not going to present too much at one time. It can look like a daunting task if I try to go to fast or with too much material at a time. Besides, you probably have 6 other projects going at a time. In making the patterns up I try to get both sides and some roof to hold it together. This just makes the assembly go better and keeps things lined up. Starting out straight in the beginning makes things go faster down the road. The added parts will reinforce the body shell, not using them to try to force the body into shape, On this project layout the paper pattern and tape to the plastic sheet. I don’t get things right up to the edge but leave at least 1/8” clear around the drawing. It just makes it easier cutting things out. I save all the scraps until I am done since they will be useful later. It needs at least a 6” by 8” piece of plastic. I started out with a 12” x 18” piece for this. This should take care of most of the needs for this car. Very slowly and carefully score the plastic around the pattern with a sharp exacto knife. You may want to add tape parts as you go to keep the pattern straight. Some places may be easier if you use a straight edge. I do everything freehand. You don’t have to cut all the way through, just a sharp scoring of the plastic. It snaps apart very easily. Use the needle nose pliers to help snap at the scoring and take your time. You will need 2 of the formers. Later down the road these will be removed and be reused for other parts. Take some time to clean up the edges of this part. You don’t need to get critical but rather a few minutes to smooth them out a little. This should take less than 2 hours to finish. Don't rush through any of the steps, take your time. We will get into some forming of this piece next time and gluing this up next time. Have fun

Tonight I will be posting the first of the cutting procedures. One small step at a time. So get your plastic ready and onward to the construction. KennB

I am having trouble deciding whether to include the ribs on the rear "wings or not". that is about all I need to finish on this one. Painting the interior and wheels. KennB

Planning: Getting a drawing to a scale drawing is not as hard as it may appear at first glance. It is a matter of getting the drawing to scale and then to a line drawing to work from. You can do this with any side drawing and front or rear views. You will need two programs to do this. Word and some photo program. I use Photoscape, it is easy to use and FREE. The link to get this is as follows. http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.php You will need to get the wheelbase and tread specs for your car. In this case it is 102” wheel base. (1955 Thunderbird). Then divide this by .25 for 1/25th scale or .24 for 1/24th scale. This comes out to a hair over 4” Now go to photoscape(or your program) and open this in the edit option and find the filter option in the main column to line drawing and choose edge. And save as JPEG. Reverse the drawing and save again as reverse. Now open word and set the sheet to horizontal. Insert you’re drawing and set the margins to 0” along to top is a scale that you can use to size the drawing. You can adjust the drawing until you get a tad over 4” center to center of the wheel covers. It will be close enough. Save this drawing as a JPEG and PDF. The drawings are shown here for reference. In this caes the roof sections are 2 1/4" apart. If you have questions please post them. I will send PDF file for those that need it. It will print in scale. To make this model you show make about 4 to 5 copies since you will be using them as a pattern to cut. KennB

It is being sanded down at this time. I noted the rough areas too. I have been having trouble with the filler on this one and going to use different fillers on the next models. I am sanding and taking care of the bad spots and then refinishing in a darker color. This is far too light for what I wanted. I would like a color shift in the dark bronze hues but not sure this is even possible, so just may shoot smoe highlights.

I applied some color and did not like the outcome. It is far too light for what I wanted. Back to the auto parts store There was some light finish distortions on the hood also, rather strange since i did no work in that location.. will sand it down and do it ove with a darker bronze finish.

Welcome to the 1955 T-Bird design study build. I am going to take you through the entire process of scratch building a car from the plans stage to the final display. This will be done is small increments that can be done in less than an hour or two. Each stage will cover completely the materials used, the tools required, and the process to get to the next step. Anyone with a few models under his belt and some small scratch building experience will be able to complete this project. I encourage those following along to post pictures of their progress, to ask questions, and to offer up alternative methods. I would like to have an exchange of ideas, and ways of doing things. What I am offering up is by no means the only way to do this, but rather the way I am doing things at this time. During the build if you see better ways or different ways of doing something I encourage you to post this. Feel free to modify the plans to create other variations of this car, Can it become a pickup, convertible or something that is rusted out and falling apart. Maybe it could be used as a platform for something entirely different from what is presented. I am hoping to accomplish at least to things here. First to show others that scratch building is not as hard as it looks, and second to have fun with it and exchange ideas. The drawing is of a concept for the Thunderbird done in 1955. I have a few photos of a quick design study taken from this drawing. It is by no means a finished model but rather an assembly to find out the problems that we will run into and to try to make the process easier. It is rough and is not intended to be the quality I hope to have when we get done. The first installment will be in a few days and cover creating plans from renderings or other drawings that you may have to create layout patterns to make your model. I will have a set of plans in PDF format that you can download that will print out in scale. This is very rough and not detailed out. The windows are held in place with masking tape. There are some obvious problems, it is too naoorw and the front end is too clunky. All this will be fixed for the build. This is the reason for the concpet build, to find problems and fix them. Note that I have lest than 10 hours in this build at this point. You will need to order a sheet of plastic from http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=22883&catid=715 Item number 43332. This is .40 thick and is what I will be using. If you don’t want to order an entire sheet I can sell the required amount of plastic for a small fee plus shipping. Let me know via message for details. I would like to have some idea of how many are interested in this project so let me know. You don’t have to do the entire car and can just work on some areas. I will cover the body, interior, frame, wheels, and motor. Even if you don’t follow you may find some interesting ways of doing things. KennB More photos: http://photobucket.com/T-Birdconcept

Will be posting further information on this this week end I have been working up some ideas that I hope some will find interesting. KennB

Actually this is a marriage of 2 drawings I found on the net from some 1950ish designs. I used the front from one and the rear from another, the only drawings of the car. I dont have a name for it as of yet, maybe someone can come up with a suggestion. They do have the T Bird look to them for sure. By the way.....I dont use kits for my scratch builds for any parts. I am going to be adding color to this tomorrow, a light bronze metalic, Chrysler Champagne Pearl.I have to finsih some details and have it done his weekend. I am a little behind on this project becasue I have another I started last night. It is for another thread I am posting. It will also be finished this week end KennB

Bob I have put all that in another thread for everyone. 1955 style studio. I am also thing of doing a tutorial, see proposal for next project thread. Thank you for looking. I am going to get back to this one next week. Needed a break from it. KennB

Paint-----Thank you for posting those. That is a few of the sites that I have been to in researching this. You are right on all counts. The 50's were very busy at the design studios with a lot of crossing information. It was a time of exploration of the definition of automobile in this area. I have found reference drawings from the same designers that show the rear and front thinking of the time. We can see design cues in other concept cars they worked on. These I am sure you have seen. As for the build, I am planning on aving the drawing for download to anyone that wants them. There is nothing to say that you cant just build one part. If all you want to do is the body great. You might just have to adapt some to fit the donar chassis. I dont have a T-Bird to size it to. This is not something that I am going to start this week . I need to do an actual build a few days in advance to work the kinks out and make sure that I dont lead everyone down a blind ally . KennB

4 days in. First coat of primer. Most will be sanded off. KennB