Hi All. Sorry about the paragraphs, I do type them in but they disappear when posted. I presume there is a little
button somewhere that does this so will see what happens this time.
Ah! the button that says "indent" may be the one in question, let' see what happens this time. I do appreciate
that drilling out the buffers may perhaps need a fuller explanation in my instructions but that would probably mean a much larger set of instructions if one was to explain in minute detail how to tackle every step and give alternate ways of doing it for the solderers, gluers and sticky back tapers. I know the answer would be a "textbook for the beginner" but who would buy it and could I afford to spend the time and money getting it into print. I have never been happy writing reports and instructions although the computer has made it a lot less frustrating. I tried to avoid having to buy a computer but my catalogue eventually defeated me and like most things in life, it was not as difficult as I thought, even though I still learn new things regularly, like "indents" !!
I only found Western Thunder by accident when looking for other forums to see what people thought about
certain products but it was extremely pleasant to meet a few of you in person at Kettering. It has also been very gratifying that most posts are complimentary.I am pretty bad at faces and names, in fact I think some of my friends consider I may be bordering on the autistic ( rivet counting, lists, railway modelling etc etc )
With regards to using appropriate materials for certain parts I do ENTIRELY agree and when I started
making kits I would have dearly loved to have made them mainly in plastic. I made my own injection moulding machine with some help from the British Aircraft Corporation (I think it's too late for them to take any action)
but at that time Spark Erosion and other currect mould making techniques were either not yet invented or vastly expensive. On my limited budget I was stretched to buy a casting machine so it had to be the only means of
production for most things. Etching for model kits was in its infancy although I did do castings for some of
the George and Alan kits because some parts could never have been made using etching. I realised 40 years
ago that etching was great for certain things but the tooling costs and production costs were very high, and
have become even higher recently. When G & A folded I realised that sticking with "In house" casting was
perhaps the best thing and keeping etching only for things that could not be cast was the best approach.
Once certain parts are available in white metal the tendency is to continue using them and although today I
would use other techniques it must be remembered that 40 years ago home computers did not exist let alone CAD or home publishing. 3D printing was not even dreamt of, certainly not by me at least, home photo copiers were not available and computer driven machining centres had only just arrived at BAC and cost millions. Basically the digital age had just arrived and it's applications were still over the horizon.
In the early '70s there were very few plastic kits available, mainly from Airfix but the quality of many of the other kits proved that better definition could be achieved in whitemetal, at least my me anyway, so I stuck with it and that's the way it still is in some ways. The big plus with using rubber moulds apart from very low cost is that undercuts are possible and no draught angle is needed which cause all sorts of problems with plastic moulding.
adrianbs
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</ahem!>
