Moving on to the next projects and it's time to begin getting all the bits together, as intimated earlier these are not out of the box builds and I also want one for myself long term and there are some areas I am personally not happy with in the kit.
Let me say that again, some areas I am '
personally' not happy with....before the hate mail and threats of litigation come rolling in. I'm not doing these works because I have to, I'm doing them because I want to and the Finney7 kit is a bloody good place to begin.
The cab will get a few tweaks to some parts, mainly to make construction easier for my way of building which leaves the main area for me to modify, the resin casing. It's good, very good in fact but it has it's points of frustration, nothing to do with the casting or detail but due to the material used.
The germ of the idea goes way back to 2017, over five years ago and only now am I getting an opportunity to flex the bigger cutting and hacking tools.
Way back then I did a test 1:32 casing and cab, the logic was that sheet metal is a better medium for the big slab sides and resin for the curved roof sections.
The metal sides have a few advantages over the resin casing, the lower edge is razor thin which means the pipework that runs up from below the cab is nice and close to the surface, not set back by the thickness of the resin casing, you can thin it but it's a chore.
The second advantage is fixing the deflectors, it's much easier to solder them direct to the metal casing than butt solder tabs behind then to poke through the resin. It's also easier to add the brass L gutter and deflector top edge securing ladder
Third, those small front winglet sections can be secured direct to the main shell to give a good flush joint, in fact I'll may evolve the 1:32 design and add them to the main skin for an even better joint.
Fourth you can add sliding sand filler doors to the side casing as well as Golden Arrow clips/fixings much easier, the etch will already come with the front one filled in for BR engines, something that is a right faff on the resin casing, filling and blending that opening is the source of many sleepiness nights
Fifth, the metal front allows you to not have to worry about blending in the oil lines with the cast ones, on the two previous builds I cleaned them off and ran copper right through but sticking the brass clips to the resin is a mare and they keep popping off. The metal front also now allows a smoke box door opening with thin edge around the rim, into which you can better see the 3D printed smoke box module.
Mk II is a more detailed version seen previous here and elsewhere, the Mk II stemmed from a request to develop the module further for a client that does already have an open front model, so we're killing two birds with one stone here.
Essentially the Mk II is a test shot to see if it is even practical to print a super heater header and tube plate, turns out it is, I've not counted the small tubes but it's pretty close I think.
Mk II has evolved into Mk III as I've spent most of the day learning how to loft pipes in three dimensions as opposed to one flat plane previously, therefore I now have both the plain steam pipes to the header and the two corrugated ones as well.
I wasn't sure how best to add the super heater tubes, 0.4 mm wire is certainly an option but getting them all bent the same and uniform might not be so easy, nor drilling the header to accept them. It should be perfectly possible to print them, they'd be very fragile but it's a zero impact area; once you've got the supports off and fitted them they should be fine. I'll evolve that aspect once the Mk III goes in the printer after a couple of Royal Scot ash pans for customers finish.
According to the 3D slicer, Mk III and pipework should take five hours so maybe another mini update later
. I'd forgotten how many parts the both of them were split down into, lots of bright work to piece back together now.
tarnished models are not good adverts for your skills.
Nice build Mick, looking forward to the two Bulleid builds.
