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1939 Jaguar SS100


Harry P.

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The hood folds open like the real thing. There are metal hinges supplied in the kit. The first step is to use a Dremel with a grinding bit to rough up the surfaces of the hood panels and the hinges where they will be glued together:

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Then I used CA to glue the hinges and panels together:

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Ok, gang... here's a little bit of scratchbuilding trickery...

The kit supplied top boot/tonneau is molded perfectly flat and straight, there are no ripples or wrinkles or anything molded in to suggest that the boot is made of fabric. All the edges are perfectly straight, and it's much too shallow top to bottom to actually be able to cover the folded top. I don't like the looks of it, so I'll scratchbuild my own, First step is to build the frame, or "skeleton." For this I used silver beading wire (found in the jewelry making aisle at HL). This wire comes in different diameters and is very useful for all sorts of modeling applications. It's soft enough to easily bend to shape with your fingers, but stiff enough to hold its shape. It's somewhere between aluminum rod and solder as far as flexibility. I used CA to glue the pieces together, but as you can imagine this results in a very fragile assembly due to the very limited gluing area. So I reinforced the glue joints with 5-minute epoxy. The trick here is to not get everything perfectly straight... I want slight ripples and imperfections in the skeleton because I want the boot to ultimately look like it's soft and flexible (not like the kit piece!). Here is the kit piece and my scratchbuilt replacement...

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And testing for fit...

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Looks good. On to the next step...

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Once I had the skeleton built and was satisfied with the fit on the body, I covered it with pieces of newspaper, using dabs of CA to glue the paper to the frame. Again, I'm purposely not trying for perfection here... I actually want slight ripples and waves in the surface:

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Finally, I gave the boot several thick coats of acrylic craft paint. When dry, I added contrasting piping (leftover rigging line from a wooden ship model). I attached the piping with tiny dabs of CA, then when all of the piping was attached I "locked" it all down with a coat of Future. Here is my scratchbuilt top boot. Notice the wrinkles and ripples that happen when you paint the newspaper with the acrylic paint. It gives a pretty convincing approximation of a soft fabric boot:

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I like the texture of the canvas?..

but that thread,..braided,,..mmm nope

Looking great Harry,.. so far

Cheers

I'll bet the modeling cops would let Harry free on the braided thread since he's holding an artistic license ... it juxtaposes well with the other colors and style.

Your original "embellishments" are always a great treat Harry!

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Actually the texture of the thread is pretty much invisible when you look at the model with your own eyes... but the camera lens sees all!

Anyway... here is the boot installed. The hardware is made of thin brass wire and sheet aluminum, "chrome plated" with Spaz Stix, and the straps are made of painted paper.

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Looking fantastic! One quick thing - whilst inaccurate in finish, the kit part for the folded roof is in fact pretty much the correct size - see here for a period reference photo. Almost certainly a single layer top, hence why it can be folded so tightly. There were a few production cars in this era that even had fully disappearing tops - click here for pics of an example.

Oh, and the marque is actually 'SS' - at this point, Jaguar was simply a model name, so the correct name for one of these is a SS Jaguar 100. No prizes for guessing why the SS name was dropped in early 1945...

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Looking fantastic! One quick thing - whilst inaccurate in finish, the kit part for the folded roof is in fact pretty much the correct size - see here for a period reference photo. Almost certainly a single layer top, hence why it can be folded so tightly. There were a few production cars in this era that even had fully disappearing tops - click here for pics of an example.

Oh, and the marque is actually 'SS' - at this point, Jaguar was simply a model name, so the correct name for one of these is a SS Jaguar 100. No prizes for guessing why the SS name was dropped in early 1945...

No offense, but through all my communications with Harry, he knows every nut-and-bolt detail about this car....and chooses to go his own way as he feels it

I don't know what you're adding here. The "fully disappearing top" is a Riley, not a Jag Plus, your other link shows the factory prototype -- the only one with "the Leaper" radiator mascot that came from the factory (also known as the Prince William) Harry has hundreds of reference shots. I know, because I gave them to him.

Edited by sjordan2
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