Harry P.

Actually I knew that!

(In by best Curly Howard voice): Oh, a wise guy!

When you don't have any competition you can charge whatever you want. Their parts are the best... finest quality and craftsmanship you'll ever see... but man, those prices!

No, it's dust! Should've cleaned it up first...

The coach was equipped with heavy leather or canvas shades that could be rolled down to cover the windows in bad weather: It's hard to see, but here is a shot of the interior: The brakes were nothing but large wooden blocks that rubbed against the iron "tires" when the driver pulled the brake lever: That brake lever was to the right of the driver: Questions, comments, critiques and general cracking wise will be cheerfully accepted!

This is a 1/12 scale model of a Concord stagecoach. The model is about 13" long and 9" high. These coaches were used between the 1830s and 1861 to carry mail and passengers between St, Louis and San Francisco. They had a capacity of 9 passengers, plus mail and baggage in the "trunk" at the back and also piled up on the roof. One of these coaches weighed about two tons. There was no suspension system (as in springs). The body of the stagecoach was suspended between front and rear uprights by thick leather straps, and would sway back and forth as the coach traveled (remember... this was in the days before paved roads). The trip between St. Louis and San Francisco was almost 3,000 miles over rough, dusty terrain and Indian territory. Let's just say that the Indians along the way were not always very happy to see a coach full of whites coming through their land. You can guess what happened sometimes. And then there were the regular stagecoach bandits to deal with. Couple that with the fact that the coach had no source of heat (or cooling)... it made travel in the hot summer or cold winter extra fun! Congress discontinued stagecoach mail service in 1861, and the transcontinental railway, finished in 1869, pretty much made stagecoach travel obsolete. But for 30 years or so, if you wanted to head west, they were the only regularly scheduled service available. Anyway, enough of the history lesson. The kit is mostly wood (laser cut pieces) with a lot of smaller detail pieces being cast white metal. The roof rails are brass rod that the builder has to bend to shape and assemble. There are also photoetched parts (mostly buckles and stuff like that). The model is built pretty much the same way as the original-piece by piece, tiny bolts holding everything together. While the bolts are all real, individual pieces, they are not threaded... you hold them in place by gluing on tiny cardboard "nuts." The front and rear axle assemblies alone have dozens and dozens of individual pieces to them... once everything is assembled and painted, it's hard to see how many pieces are actually in there, but there are a lot! Each wheel spoke has to be carved to shape by the builder, which is a very time-consuming process. The "leather" luggage boot is actually paper that I painted with acrylic craft paint to look like leather. The chassis and coach body are painted with acrylic craft paints and glossed up with Future. Pinstriping was done with red and black fine-tip Sharpies. I scratchbuilt real padded diamond tuft upholstery for the two interior benches. Here are the pix: Some detail shots of the chassis... front axle: And rear axle: In the above two photos you can see the leather straps that are suspended between the axles that the coach body rests on. Yes, they are real leather.

Right, especially in black. All those seams just visually disappear and the rims look like one solid piece. BTW... have you seen Marvin's new wheels? They're working on them... one piece rims! Bet they're going to be expen$ive...

Impossible. I attached the hood, it's not a lift-off anymore. I pushed the kit-supplied hood center hinge's pin back so that it sticks out at the rear, and added a short section of piano wire in front so that I had hinge pin extending out from both ends of the hinge... then I drilled a hole in the firewall and carved a small block of styrene that also has a small hole drilled in it and glued it to the grille shell, with the hood held in between by the extended center hinge pins, like on the real car. And because my paper piano hinge is on the inside, you can't see it unless the hood is open... then you can see it as in the photo I posted. But there's no way for me to get "inside" the hood now and photograph the hinge. Trust me, it looks just like the kit's metal hinge, only not quite as crisp and precise, because it's made out of paper.

Not at those prices!

Here is a shot of the paper piano hinge on the right side of the hood. It's not perfect, but it works. And you never see it unless the hood is open; when closed the hinge is hidden because I mounted it so that the hinge knuckle is facing inward (unlike the main central hinge that is mounted "knuckle out" and is visible when the hood is closed.

It's a curbside, there is no engine.

Yes, sort of. The basic construction of the body is straightforward enough, but it gets a little tricky when you have to start adding the details. For example, the builder has to form the rear stairway skirts (and signboards) out of flat aluminum parts, and you have to get the curves exactly right to fit tightly against the sides of the steps with go gaps. Also, the builder has to bend all the brass rod to form the handrails, and it's a little tricky to get that rear stairway handrail curved exactly right, because it has to be bent in the correct curvature in two dimensions... the curve as the rail goes up the stairs, and also the curve that follows the curve of the stairway as it curls to the top. It took me a little while to finally get it right. The rear stairs was definitely the hardest part of the whole job, the rest wasn't too bad. Another challenge is getting the curve of the roof. The roof is obviously a flat piece of wood (it's actually very thin plywood!). I had to soak the wood overnight and then clamp it into the correct curvature while the wood dried, so it would hold it's curved shape. Again, getting that curve exactly right was a little tricky. All the rest of the laser-cut wooden parts fit very well and precisely, there's not much trimming or sanding needed before a part fits into place.

This is an expensive kit... $400 MSRP. But I got it for a lot less, it was on sale for $220. Still not exactly cheap... but better than $400!

Oh, on the wheels... I attached a longish stick to the wheel as an axle and "twirled" the stick as I sprayed, so that the wheel was turning constantly as I sprayed. I did that front and back... got pretty good coverage everywhere. I did find a few semi-bare spots on the hubs afterward, but that was easy to touch up with a brush and some gloss black paint.

The camera batteries are recharging, so no new pix tonight. Tomorrow. I added a scratchbuilt piano hinge to the right side hood panel. I made it out of card stock. I find that card stock is much easier to work with and cut to shape than thin sheet brass for an application like that. I just laid out the two hinge leaves on the cardstock and cut them out with my X-acto. Then I took one of the hinge halves and taped it doen (I left "extra" card stock on each end). Then I taped a length of brass rod across the "fingers" of the hinge, and folded each finger over the brass rod and glued each finger down with a dab of white glue. I glued each finger down one by one. When the glue was dry I taped the other half of the hinge in place so that the fingers were in the correct alignment with the first half of the hinge, and repeated the process of gluing the fingers around the brass rod, like I did with the first half. Once the glue was dry I simply pulled the brass rod out (white glue won't stick to brass!), then I took each half of the hinge, trimmed them to length, and "painted" them with superglue. The superglue soaks into the paper and makes the paper pretty stiff and strengthens the paper "loops" that go around the brass hinge rod. Then I reassembled the hinge and the brass rod and glued it to the hood panels. I painted the hinge leaves red before I reassembled the hinge, and I glued the hinge in place after I sprayed the hood panels red, so that no paint would "gum up the works" on the hinge.

The driver's station was open to the elements... that had to be fun on cold winter days! Access to the upper deck was via the rear stairway: The people in the lower part sat on long wooden benches... While the riders "upstairs" had individual two-passenger benches: I added a scratchbuilt sun visor for the driver. The headlight "lenses" are clear 5-minute epoxy... Comments, questions and critiques are welcome!

This is a 1/24 scale model of a 1910 Type B bus built and operated by the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC). It had a capacity of 34 passengers (16 inside and 18 on the upper deck) and is considered to be the world's first mass-produced bus. It was built on a wooden(!) frame, had steel wheels, solid rubber tires (I mean "tyres"... ), and had a top speed of about 15-16 mph, which was actually faster than the speed limit at the time in London (12 mph). The kit is made by Occre (a Spanish company) and is a true multi-media kit. It's curbside, and like the real bus, the frame is wood, as is the main body (made up of many laser-cut pieces). The hood (I mean "bonnet"), fenders ("wings"), wheels, axles, springs, and various small detail parts like the handbrake lever, the steering wheel, the spring shackles, headlights, etc. are cast white metal. The kit also supplies brass rod to for the handrails, a photoetched sheet of aluminum parts (the skirts on the rear staircase, the staircase signboards, and various small hinges and detail parts). Also included is a sheet of thin Lexan that you cut out the windows from. All of the graphics are printed on an 8 1/2x11 sheet of paper and have no adhesive. It's up to the builder to figure out how to attach them. I find that painting the surface that they're going to be applied to with Future and then placing the cut out marking onto the wet Future is the perfect way to apply the markings. I built the kit mostly OOB but added several small scratchbuilt details per my reference photos. The biggest change I made was to scratchbuild a new front axle, spindles, tie rod, pittman arm, etc. in order to have poseable steering. All paint is acrylic craft paint with Future clearcoating (except the fenders, the various control levers, the pedals, steering wheel and headlamps, which are Model Master semigloss black). Bare wood like the seats and floor boards are stained with Minwax stain. Slight weathering via black wash was applied overall. Here is a photo of one of the real ones (restored). And here is my model:

It varies from kit to kit. This one was not too bad. About the only thing I did was to add a thin styrene shim along the lower edge of the right side hood panel to tighten up the gap between the hood panel and the top of the frame rail. The rest of the body panels fit pretty good (for a Pocher!)

To wrap things up, a few more photos for ya... Another view of a few scratchbuilt fittings... Another shot of the scratchbuilt step plates ( i painted them semigloss black and then drybrushed a little silver on them to simulate the black paint having been worn off)... And finally, a general shot of the rear half of the car with a good view of the scratchbuilt windshield frame and rear view mirror... One last thing I forgot to mention. The piano hinge that Pocher provides for the hood is supposed to be held in place by six large, out of scale bolts whose heads would show on the outside of the hood. No good! The real hod hinge is held in place by a series of rivets all along the length of the hinge... so I filled the "Pocher holes" in the hood panels, and drilled new holes in both the plastic hood panels and the metal hinge, to fit my sewing pin "rivets." Also, the left panel of the hood is hinged on the real car, but Pocher doesn't supply a hinge (you're supposed to glue the panel in place). Well, that won't do... if you do it the Pocher way, when you open the right side of the hood, the side panel wouldn't fold and would stick out into space! So I scratchbuilt a piano hinge and attached it between the righthand top and side hood panels, so the hood opens and folds like it's supposed to! This model was a blast to build. I've built enough Pocher kits to be familiar with the pitfalls and quirks these kits have, so there were no real surprises (I've left out a lot of the "gory details"... you'd probably be bored with them all), but I've covered the highlights. All in all, this was one of the better Pocher kits I've built as far as fit goes. Hope you like it. And feel free to ask questions, comment and critique.

Let's move on back to the rear end of the car. Here is an overall shot showing you the dual friction shocks. Pocher supplies a lot of small metal bits and pieces to replicate the suspension on this car... it's probably the kit's best feature. My reference photos show cars with the shocks both painted body color and unpainted, raw metal. I liked the look of the bare steel so I left the shocks unpainted. I cut the tip of the kit-supplied brass exhaust pipe at an angle to match reference photos. Also seen here are the scratchbuilt rear fender stays and the "rivets" added to the fenders where the stays are attached. Also visible in the above photo are my scratchbuilt fuel lines and fittings, which Pocher didn't include. In their defense, I have photos of this car without these lines, so Pocher was obviously using one particular car as their reference when engineering this kit. But most of the photos I found show some variation of these lines visible, so I added them... once again, fittings made of bits and pieces of hex and round styrene rod. The "washers" between the fittings and the body are simply two of the metal washers supplied with the kit, painted flat black to simulate rubber. The lines themselves are black insulated speaker wire from Radio Shack. Note that all the louvers on the body panels are molded open... a nice touch that greatly adds to the overall realism of the model. Here is a better view of those fuel lines and fittings: And you guessed it... more to come!

Moving right along... The dash is a simple flat piece. Unfortunately, this kit was probably sitting somewhere for many years before I bought it, and the dash was severely warped. I tried to gently bend it back into shape, but 40 year old plastic is brittle. It didn't bend, it snapped. Not a big deal, though... Like I said, the dash is perfectly flat, so I used the warped kit part as a template. I laid it on a sheet of styrene and traced around it, drilled all the gauge and screw holes, and finally cut my new dash away from the rest of the styrene sheet. I painted it with Metalizer "Aluminum," epoxied the metal gauges into place, and there ya go! New, unwarped dash! The gauge faces are kit supplied. All I added was "glass" on each gauge using clear 5-minute epoxy. I also added the scratchbuilt levers on the left and right ends of the dash, following my reference photos. More to come...

Ok... now on to the windshield frame that I mentioned earlier. The kit comes with twin windshields, and I have a lot of references that show such a setup, but I also have photos of this car with only a single, driver-side windshield... and that's the way I decided to go on this model. The Pocher windshield frames are awful. They're more a cartoon than anything resembling the real thing. They consist of a flat metal "frame" that you're supposed to screw to the cowl with two completely out of scale screws. The real car's windshield frame and mounts are completely different, so I axed the kit pieces and made my own. I used styrene "U" channel for the main frame, and bits of styrene sheet for the brackets. "Bolt heads" are once again just faked with slices of hex-shaped styrene rod, and the brackets are mounted to the cowl with more of my soon-to-be-famous sewing pin "rivets." Note that I had to fill the existing holes in the cowl for the twin windshields' mounting screws and drill new holes for my sewing pin "rivets." I filled those existing holes (and all other unneccessary holes in the various kit parts) by taking a piece of styrene rod that was slightly thicker in diameter than the hole I needed to fill, sanding the end of the rod to a taper and jamming the rod tightly into the hole. Then I just cut off the rod a bit above the surface (both top and bottom) and flowed a bit of liquid styrene glue over it. When dry I sanded the "nubs" smooth and level with the surface. The kit-supplied "glass" was used, but I painted the bottom and side edges (but not the top edge) black. When you do that it gives the illusion of a thinner piece of "glass." I added a bit of black wash (thinned black acrylic craft paint) around all the various joints and seams to give a slightly dirty, "old" look. I did that black wash trick on all the various exposed "rivets," screw heads, seams, etc., throughout the model. It really adds a touch of realism that you don't notice at first, but makes the model look much less like a model and more like the real thing. The "rivets" you see on the body are also sewing pins. I sanded down the molded-in rivets and drilled holes for my new, more three-dimensional "rivets." They are a subtle touch, but look much more realistic than the little molded-in nubs that were there originally. More to come...

Tell me about it...

According to the reference photos I found online, the oil tank is supposed to be on the left side of the car; Pocher puts it on the right side. I went with what my eyes (rather than Pocher) told me and relocated the tank to the left side. Before I attached it, though, I used a razor saw to remove the filler tube. Then I added a mounting flange (cut from cardboard) and four sewing pin "rivets" to the flange before regluing the filler tube back. The tank is symmetrical front to back, so turning it around to mount it on the opposite side of the car was no problem. Of course, relocating the tank meant making the oil lines differently than the patterns Pocher provides, but that was easy enough to do. I also replaced the inaccurate Pocher cap with another of my scratchbuilt "quick-release" caps. The cap is actually a lens from the front turn signal of a 1/9 scale Harley motorcycle kit! The metal grab handle is a length of aluminum rod and the actual "catch" is just a strip of cardboard that I bent to shape and painted silver. Also visible in the above photo is a scratchbuilt step plate seen in some of my photo references (styrene sheet and bent aluminum rod, attached to the chassis rail with sewing pin "rivets." Photo references vary-it seems no two of these cars were exactly alike, but I saw the step plates on one of my reference photos and added them. I think it's a neat detail. More to come...