ShawnS

Hello again. I have finally managed to get around to casting the chassis sections and they turned out well. There was a little clean up to do but nothing too drastic. I added extra detail to it by removing the molded in diff cover and replaced it with a copy of the one I made for the full detail version. I also added springs that were cut up pieces from a spares box part and added brackets and nuts and bolts to the chassis and rear suspension. I made the exhaust too. When I cast the rear bumper I added some black colour to the resin. I cast the tail lights in clear resin and painted a set for effect to see what they looked like. I am happy with the way that things turned out and once I have finished with the rest of the details on the curbside chassis I can finally move on to painting the whole thing. Thanks for the comments and the kind and encouraging words. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for the curbside version so I will keep swinging away at until it's done. Cheers ShawnS

Hi guys. To counter the fact that the curbside version of this build lacks that something extra I decided to build a box trailer for it. It's modelled on the one that my grandfather owned at the same time as his Falcon and will be finished with a fair bit of weathering. It's mostly Evergreen with Revell '68 Mustang tyres on some sort of Chevy wheels. It also has T2M nuts and bolts and some chain from an unknown source. The tray is diamond plate from thepartsbox.com. At the moment I am in the process of moulding and casting the chassis parts and the other parts that are yet to be cast. I think its pretty darn close to being ready for paint. Cheers ShawnS

A strange request I know but If anyone has this kit, would you please be so kind as to post a pic of the bench seats. I'm doing some research for a future project that may require me to by 3 of these kits and it all hangs on what the bench seat looks like. Thanks ShawnS

Hi guys. Even though updates are getting scarce as life continues to take priority, work still goes on for my Falcon build. Here is where I'm up to. In the 80's, rear window louvres were a very popular addition to all shapes and sizes of cars here in Australia. They weren't factory supplied but they were aftermarket items made by Aunger that were easily available for most makes and models. The two Falcons that I am building both had them so I had to make them too. Evergreen to the rescue again. I decided to make some reflectors for the tail lights too. They fit nicely in the body. And a tow bar was required. I put a piece of sprue into my Dremel and used various blades and chisels to machine a towball. Everything in place. I wasn't happy with the tail light lenses that I made earlier so I remade them and I also remade the lower roll pan panel and tweaked the bumper to fit better. Here is a real one. I still need to cast the tail light lenses in clear resin. I think there is no more major construction left for the curbside version so I need to switch back to the full detail version to get it up to spec with the curbside car. Thanks for following. Thanks for looking. Cheers ShawnS

Thank you all again. Some people are born lucky, others have to work hard for it. I was looking at the pics of the assembled car in my previous post and I wasn't sure about the slab sided look that it had so I got some masking tape and a marker pen and blacked out the lower sill and the chin strip and I think it really made a difference. It just needs the window frames and bumpers blacked out to complete the effect. Onward and upward. CheersSS

I also had to make and cast the reflectors that sit inside the buckets. While I was casting things I also did the mirrors. Once all of that was sorted I started on the headlights and indicators. The headlight lenses are from Tamiya's Nissan TRX, I had to add a small strip of evergreen to the bottom to get it to the right height. I cast those in normal resin and glued them to the indicator lenses that I had made from Evergreen. I then polished them up (an important step for clear casting) and cast them in clear resin. I painted the indicator lenses with clear orange for effect. Test fitting showed that the resin coloured reflectors gave it a weird blank stare. So I hit the reflectors with some BMF. Still a few little tweaks required here and there but nothing too serious. Work will continue updates will follow. The next stop will be the rear end of the car. Thanks for looking. CheersSS

Hi again, It's been a while since the last update so I better fill you all in with where it's at. I have moved my attention to finishing off the nose of the car. I started with the bumper and airdam. I originally wanted to cast the bumper separately from the airdam but when I recently noticed that the bumper had a bow in it I changed it to be one part. I remade the bumper and tweaked the airdam a little too and then I cast it in resin. The top of the bumper now has two notches for the light buckets to sit in and two tabs to help mount it to the body. When I was working on the airdam my clumsy fingers damaged the fragile vertical slats in the grill. Unfortunately I couldn't fix them or get them to how they were before so I had to make up a separate part that could be inserted in to the back of the airdam. At this stage I also needed to make the grill that goes inbetween the lights. I also made some resin copies. I made it the same shape and curve to fit flush with the back of the nose. I also added some styrene to the sides to make the slots for the bumper mounting tabs. I had made some headlight buckets not long after I made the body but I wasn't totally happy with them so I had to make some more. You can see the notches on the bottom that fit into the bumper notches. I also cast them too. To be continued................

Hi all, It's time for another update. I have been working on the last of the major construction for the curbside chassis. I have been busy filling the gap that was evident with the lack of any steering detail. I started by gluing some Evergreen half rod to some strip that was the same width and then cutting it to size and gluing the pieces to a section of Evergreen sheet. I boxed in the part with some off cuts from my scrap styrene box and used that as a mould box. I then poured my moulding sillicone and had myself a mould from which I cast the part in resin. Here is the part in place after having the excess resin removed and cleaned up. It will remain a separate part and not be part of the chassis casting. As I wanted the wheel backs to have some detail too I made a resin copy of the brake disc cover from the full detail version and mated it to a wheel back from my spares box. I then made a mould of that and cast it in resin too. For the rear wheel back I made a copy of the drum brake back from AMTs '60 Starliner and mounted that on another wheel back from my spares box. All cast and ready for installation. Once I had fitted everything together it was time to check the ride height. I knew from earlier test fitting that the rear ride height would be a bit too high but I wasn't expecting it to bee this much. So after a bit of fine tuning I got it down to a better level. The other thing that needed my attention was the big hollows in the top of the chassis so while I was messing around with the resin I filled them in. Resin was the best choice for this task as it dries hard and sands smooth. Before. After. That's all this time. There is still a little work left to do but that's all the major construction complete on the chassis, it won't take too much time to finish the minor stuff and then I can move on to some other area of the build. Cheers ShawnS

Thanks guys. I don't need to tell you all that this isn't a Shake'n'Bake hobby and everything we do is labour intensive and takes time and effort. If I didn't have to keep taking photos it wouldn't have taken me more than 1-2 hours to get the end result. Ian, that was just the beginning for the Mini grille. There was still a fair bit of work to get it thin enough for the Morris and to put the surround around the outside and to get the right curve to fit the front of the body was a pain too but it all worked out in the end. I'm glad you like them. Cheers ShawnS

Hi guys. If you like scratchbuilding, I just posted a thread in the How-To section on how to make an egg crate grille. Check it out and let me know what you think. Cheers ShawnS

At this stage the liquid cement will have softened the whole lot up and it will begin to bow outward. To counter this I put the grille between the ruler and the saw blade and weighted it down with the glue bottle overnight for the plastic to re-harden. Badabing she's done. I developed this technique to make a grille for a Morris 850 a couple of years ago. One word of warning though be careful with how wide you make the slots between the slats as the thin styrene can't handle the liquid solvent cement too well and you end up with something that's not too straight. Well there you go. Happy scratchbuilding. If you have any questions or want me to clarify anything please let me know. Cheers ShawnS

Put the spacer jig in one of the outside slots and cut all the way through. Clean up the end with a sharp new blade and mark the end with a marker pen. You only need to mark ONE END of the slats. Now cut the other end off and clean it up too. With the ends removed and cleaned up you can separate the slats. Join one each of the vertical and horizontal slats at the marked end and one each at the unmarked end and tape them to a square edge of a metal surface. I am using an old carpenters square. Apply some liquid cement to the join. When the glue sets, remove them and join them together with more cement to make the outer slats a frame to help the other slats . Continue by adding the centre slats first and gluing as you go. You should end up with this.

Put the first bundle of strips in the mitre box and saw a groove in the middle. GENTLY saw it to a little over half depth. CHECK YOUR WORK CONSTANTLY if you over cut it you will have to start all over again. This is where the spacer jig comes in. Put the spacer jig in the first cut and return the part to the mitre box. Gently push the spacer jig against the saw blade and start sawing again. Once again- check your work as you go. You should have the idea by now so continue cutting either side of the original middle cut untill you have the amount of the grooves you need. Make the spacer jig for the other slats as before and repeat the cutting steps.

Hey guys here is something I've been working on. Egg crate grilles have been seen on many vehicles through out the ages so if you need to make one here is how to do it. The shape and size is up to you. Whatchoo need. Pencil, paper, ruler, marker pen (texta) Super (CA) glue and thin liquid cement. Saw and mitre box with grooves in the inside. You'll also need evergreen 8106 for the grille slats and 157 for the spacer jig. I used 8106 strip because it's the same width as the saw. The first thing you need to do is figure out the outside dimensions of the grille you want to make as well as how many slats it needs and then draw it on paper. This one has vertical slats 3mm apart and the horizontal slats are 1.5mm apart. Then cut the strips with about 2cm extra length than the final result requires. Bundle the strips of the same length together and superglue the ends. Make sure that you glue THE ENDS ONLY. You should end up with two neat bundles. Put those aside and start work on the spacer jig. The spacer jig will allow you to cut grooves at an even and consistant spacing. Cut about 1 inch of the evergreen 157 strip and mark the width of the slat onto it. Put it in the mitre box and cut it to half way deep. Lightly glue a piece of the 8106 strip into the slot and turn it over to add another chunk of 157 to the back to be a handle.

....to be ended.... I glued the tank and spare wheel well on and added the other chasis rail as well as the heat shield that goes between the exhaust and the tank. The interior tub gives both location and support to the two chassis sections. That's it for now. thanks for looking. Cheers ShawnS

......to be resumed..... Everything in place. I made the spare wheel well the same way as I did for the full detail chassis. and made a resin copy of the fuel tank that I made earlier. Next up was the uprights for the watts linkage. I decided not to include the watts linkage as part of the chassis but I will cast the centre pivot separately and use evergreen rod. To be continued.......

Hey guys. Work continues on the Falcon so here is the new update. The last weeks have been taken up with doing the rear section of the curbside chassis. I wanted do make it with some moderate detail and keep it reasonably easy (?) to cast in resin later. I started by making a section that fits the bottom of the interior tub. There is a step in the bottom of the interior tub that this new part sits comfortably in. I then added the whole rear section and cut out the wheel wells. It fits very nicely. I then moved to the diff. I made the axle tubes first by glueing a length of square rod to a length of tube. I added extra detail to the diff centre. Before I installed the rear axle I added the rear chassis rails, and made the rear suspension arms. I also made the diff cover. To be continued.............

Guys guys guys, I don't know why you would need a book when you can ask me anytime about how I did something. I'm more than happy to take questions and if I can help you with what you need to know I will. Call it an interactive book.... Cheers ShawnS

Thanks again. You are all very generous with your praise. Here is another quick update for you all. This week I made a mould of the sump and trans mount and cast them in resin. I found a gearbox in my spares box and cut it up. I glued both the gearbox and the trans mount onto the chassis. I then cut a section of evergreen sheet and glued it to the top of the gearbox.. This will sit inbetween the front chassis rails. I added the gearbox extension and a CV joint, I also continued detailing the main underbody. The driveshaft is temporary until I figure out how I'm going to do the rear section. I cut a section out of the sump that was the same width of the crossmember and made a dummy oil filter and pulley/belt. Once I had glued everything together I ran some Tamiya liquid primer around the areas that butted up against each other. I also made a sway bar. Everything fits nicely where it is supposed to sit. It's cold, windy and rainy where I am at the moment so I haven't had the chance to hit it with some primer yet. Still plenty to do so stay tuned my friends. Cheers ShawnS

Hi Roger. The shock towers are easy to explain as they are just 5 separate pieces of evergreen sheet. First figure out the dimensions and cut out one large flat part and two sides then glue them together. After the glue set I sanded the back side to get the angle that I needed. The get the rounded face I cut out a section of thicker evergreen sheet and cut it to be the same shape as the rest of the tower, glued it on and then I rounded it off with sand paper. I also capped the top with a scrap piece of styrene sheet and blended that in with sand paper too. The original on the far left with the resin cast parts. Hope that helps you out. Cheers ShawnS

Thanks guys. Yeah I do seem to have accumulated a lot of different sizes, shapes and thicknesses of evergreen styrene as well as a selection of glues, knife blades, sandpapers, drill bits and scribers in the last few years. I am always on the lookout for new tools to help me along.

Hey guys I am pleased to return with a new update. It's been a while but something clicked and I hit the workbench a few days ago and started some more scratchbuilding. I find the best way to jumpstart myself after a slump is to do some major construction so it's time to do a curbside chassis. Obviously I intend to do more than one version of this car in the future so I will need to make a resin castable curbside chassis. I thought about it for a while but I couldn't find a way to successfully cast the chassis that I had previously made so I had to start this one from scratch. The plan is to keep the parts count to a minimum so there wont be a separate diff or suspension or driveshaft etc.. but I want the detail to be reasonable without going over the top. Visuallise something along the lines of an Aoshima or Fujimi style curbside chassis. I started by cutting a slab of evergreen sheet to the right width and started to go from there. I measured and cut out the main underbody sections and scribed some detail into them and sanded them to shape. I bent the front lip of the main flat section the same way I did the interior tub. I put that aside and then took a chassis from an AMT Mercury and cut off the front section. The kit part was too narrow so I had to make it wider. I also had to fill in the under cuts to make life easier when I am casting as well as blank off the main engine area. I also needed to extend the rails at the rear of the front section. Evergreen to the rescue again. The wheel locating stubs are temporary and will be removed before casting. The main rails were added to underbody. Everything fits nicely. I will be building and casting the chassis in two parts which will give me the option of doing different rear end configurations that the Aussie XD/XE/XF Falcons came with. The next step is to add engine and gearbox detail so I will have to make a resin copy of the 6 cylinder engine oil pan as well as the trans mount that I have made for the full detail version and go from there. It's really good to be back at the bench and I hope to keep it going for a while. Cheers ShawnS

Sorry no new updates yet. I'm just taking a break and trying to recharge my creative batteries, but I do hope to get back to it soon.

Thanks for the kind words guys. You can never build too many of them Geoff. Never. CheersSS