Plans for paper model of Marmon Wasp here.

[LUKE'57]

Ismael, here's the link for the pics. I posted them this way so that anyone else that was interested could also get them. Hope this is what you needed.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v69/mitchum/paper%20wasp/

[ismaelg]

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

[LUKE'57]

You are more than welcome, my friend. It's not often that an ol' redneck race car builder like me can help out here and I was more than happy to do so.

[GMP440]

Pretty interesting.

Just a thought. You can take the paper pattern and glue it onto thin sheet plastic and do all the parts in plastic instead of paper. It would make for a nicer and stronger body.

[Art Anderson]

Ismael, here's the link for the pics. I posted them this way so that anyone else that was interested could also get them. Hope this is what you needed.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v69/mitchum/paper%20wasp/

Luke,

Great that you still have the article! One cautionary note on the color of the car though! The writer for R&CM says that the Marmon Wasp was an "off shade" of orange, but it was definitely a yellow-orange color, pretty much as restored and displayed.

I have a DVD of the 1946 Indy 500, which includes a comprehensive set of interviews with Ray Harroun, sitting in the Marmon Wasp, still in its original paint, and it IS YELLOW-ORANGE, almost International School Bus Yellow in the film.

Other than that, the article is great, but I would suggest using the AMT/MPC '14 Stutz Bearcat (and if one wants the engine, start with two of the Stutz engines), and either the Stutz wheels, or the 1921 Beverly Hillbillies Oldsmobile.

Art

Edited February 22, 2009 by Art Anderson

[LDO]

There's also an article in a 1994 issue of Motor Racing Replica News. I'll dig it out and see if it has any more info you could use.

[Guest Davkin]

Hey, I have all the parts to build this in 1/16 scale! I just might do that some day. Thanks for posting the scans.

David

[jas1957]

Art,

Thanks very much I had wondered for years about the color of that car. I have seen conflicting reports over the years whether it was originally orange or the current yellow.

John Strick

[Art Anderson]

Art,

Thanks very much I had wondered for years about the color of that car. I have seen conflicting reports over the years whether it was originally orange or the current yellow.

John Strick

John,

There are a couple of reasons at least, why so many think the Wasp was a darker orange. For starters, a very common description of the color yellow, if it was on the red or darker side of that color, among contemporaries of Ray Harroun, was either Orange Yellow, or light Orange, the latter of which we today think of as the lighter of a red-orange color, while considering Yellow Orange to be just plain Yellow--also this is a color that is very much affected by light conditions--for example, the trademark McLaren Orange actually will appear as a very brilliant yellow in strong sunlight to the human eye, but may very well have photographed as an Orange on the very same day, same sky conditions. And yet, the same car, same paint, can look rather pale yellow if seen indoors under a skylight or artificial light. But a great many people living in those years would have called a "Yukon Yellow" (long running GM commercial color, and USDOT mandated color for school busses) school bus as being orange, rather than yellow.

Second are the several photographs taken during and after that first Indy 500 of the Marmon Wasp. They appear to show the car as having been quite dark, the white border around the black numbers being very stark indeed. With the black and white film most all of us know, an orange car would have photographed as rather dark (and yellow appearing as a much lighter scale of grey), but the earlier emulsions used on glass plate, even early film cameras of the era around 1911 photographed yellows as being very dark on the grey scale--times, and B&W camera films do change.

In the film of the 1946 Indianapolis 500 (paid for, and sponsored by, Firestone Tire & Rubber, of whom Speedway President Wilbur Shaw had been a vice president during the war years), the Wasp appears, in professionally shot footage, IN COLOR, still in its original 1911 paint, having had extra lettering handpainted on it shortly after the 500, denoting its status as "Winner Of The First Indianapolis 500 Mile Race, May 30, 1911" on the sides of the tail. The car was apparently retained by Marmon for years afterward, and then also apparently passed into the hands of Howard Marmon (founder of Marmon Automobile Company) when he left Marmon shortly before that company's demise in 1932-33, residing in a barn on Marmon's Indiana farm while Marmon himself kept busy with the newly formed Marmon-Herrinton Company (of Ford flathead V8 4X4 fame). Now, enter Anton Hulman Jr, who bought IMS in November, 1945 from Eddie Rickenbacker.

Hulman was one of the founders of AACA (Antique Automobile Club of America) in 1935, and by the 40's was one of their most noted antique car collectors, digging up cars that were both in excellent original condition, and having considerable historic provenance. The Wasp made its first public appearance in many years that May (1946) along with a couple of dozen other antique, even Classic Cars. The car, as I noted, appears in the films of the celebratory events of that race month, in a rather tattered, but YELLOW color, with some peeling and flaking of it's 1911 vintage yellow enamel paint (hand brushed in those days), with patches of raw aluminum sheet metal bodywork showing through it. This is what leads me, and many others, to concur that the yellow shown in that film is the correct, original color and paint. So, when the car was cosmetically restored for the first IMS Museum, which opened at the original Main Gate of the track, at 16th Street & Georgetown Road in Speedway City, IN in 1956, it could be proudly displayed, and was run in hte commemorative 50th Anniversary ceremonies on May 30, 1961.

Also, the name "Wasp" was never official, but rather the result of someone commenting that with its long, stinger-like, streamlined tail, it looked like a wasp, and in Indiana, wasps are also known for having a lot of yellow in their natural coloring.

Hope this begins to lay aside some of the controversy.

Art

[lordairgtar]

If I print that, will it print in the correct size? It seems too large for my printer.

[jas1957]

Thanks again Art, those old B&W photos had me wondering, as the car did LOOK too dark to have been the yellow it is now. So with that cleared up we can ether use those plans to scratch build one or wait for Lance Sellers kit. As I've got several projects in process it will be a while before I get to it anyway.

John Strick

[LUKE'57]

If I print that, will it print in the correct size? It seems too large for my printer.

I scanned it and then resized it so it wouldn't be such a large file and would load quicker. I'm on dial up and try to be considerate like that for others. All I did was copy and post as a favor. If I had known it would be this much trouble I would just have sent it to Ismeal instead of trying to share it. I'll know better next time.

[Art Anderson]

I scanned it and then resized it so it wouldn't be such a large file and would load quicker. I'm on dial up and try to be considerate like that for others. All I did was copy and post as a favor. If I had known it would be this much trouble I would just have sent it to Ismeal instead of trying to share it. I'll know better next time.

Luke,

You didn't do anything wrong here! By clicking on the pic in your album, you will enlarge it, and it can be saved either to one's computer as a resizable picture, or to say, Fotki, which also allows for resizing. Also, it can be run through a decent photo-editing software to do the same thing. (I've already done it).

And, BTW, THANK YOU for doing this for all of us (along with your great Nascar models). I know I have that article someplace, but finding it could take months!

Regards,

Art

[ismaelg]

These templates can be used to do ANY scale you want. To me that is part of the fun.

Just take the measurements of the real thing noted in the first page and adjust accordingly. Just divide it by the scale you want.

For example: The wheelbase is 116"

for 1/25: divide 116/25 Print it with a wheelbase of 4.64 inches (4 inches and 41/64)

Hot Wheels size 1/64: 1.81" wheelbase

1/43: 2.7" wheelbase

etc etc.

Just keep in mind to keep the aspect ratio constant. (height relative to width)

Luke, you have done more than what you imagine: I'm now thinking on resizing and printing in heavy paper so my cub scouts can make their own paper cars.... bottle cap wheels

hmmmm Paper car derby anyone?

I also have the idea of doing it in paper first to get a feeling for it before doing it in plastic or brass......

I'm really excited about this! This is just what I needed to get back to cars, since I've been doing aircraft models only for the last 4 months or so......

Thanks again Luke!

[Art Anderson]

These templates can be used to do ANY scale you want. To me that is part of the fun.

Just take the measurements of the real thing noted in the first page and adjust accordingly. Just divide it by the scale you want.

For example: The wheelbase is 116"

for 1/25: divide 116/25 Print it with a wheelbase of 4.64 inches (4 inches and 41/64)

Hot Wheels size 1/64: 1.81" wheelbase

1/43: 2.7" wheelbase

etc etc.

Just keep in mind to keep the aspect ratio constant. (height relative to width)

Luke, you have done more than what you imagine: I'm now thinking on resizing and printing in heavy paper so my cub scouts can make their own paper cars.... bottle cap wheels

hmmmm Paper car derby anyone?

I also have the idea of doing it in paper first to get a feeling for it before doing it in plastic or brass......

I'm really excited about this! This is just what I needed to get back to cars, since I've been doing aircraft models only for the last 4 months or so......

Thanks again Luke!

Izzy,

Rod & Custom was printed, I believe, on 8" X 10.5" format, which is a very standard magazine size (perhaps Luke could measure the size of his copy just to make sure?). Standard printer paper is 8.5X11 inches, so size your print down by that percentage difference, then simply measure the wheelbase on the printout, see if it comes out right. Oh, and it's far easier to think Metric, if you are doing 1/25, as 1"=25.4mm--and when you divide that down, 1mm to the inch in scale is plenty close enough--so use 116mm for the wheelbase, both on the drawing, and on your model.

As for the bodywork, there are no compound curves whatsoever on that car. Every piece of sheet metal was run either through a rolling brake, or done in a bending brake (for all those angular "creases" in the tail sections. Also, it might be interesting to make the rear section of the tail as a separate component, just as it is on the real car (There are at least a couple of pics of the Wasp without it's "stinger" tail extension--the forward section is actually the fuel tank). But, given the simplicity of shapes, it's just as easy (or so my late friend, and Co-Indy Car modeler Alan Bingaman said, way back in the days of our annual hobby shop window displays of the cars of the Indianapolis 500 said---see the 1977 Carl Hungness Indianapolis 500 Mile Race Yearbook, our window display was a feature article that issue! Al did the Wasp twice, the first go-round was done in Strathmore Board; Al wasn't satisfied with the finish on that rather rough paper--so he built a second body shell on it, entirely in sheet styrene (.020"), and it worked out just fine. Making that bodywork in brass should be almost as easy, it's just rolled and folded sheet metal anyway.

Art

[ismaelg]

OK the numbers are in:

Save Luke's scans at full size

resize them to 125% constant aspect ratio to print at exactly 1/25 scale

Enjoy.

Thanks again Luke

Thanks,

[LUKE'57]

You are more than welcome Ismael, that resizing thing was a happy accident as I just sized it down a couple of steps to make it easy to upload.