Project Galaxie: Update 1

Model kits have been available in some form or another since it was practical to make them. Balsa wood planes and boats appeared early on, and when plastic injection moulding became cost effective after World War 2, all manner of model kits began to appear, including cars. As with many things in the 1950s, the big commercial strides were made in the United States, where real car manufacturers were quick to catch on to the concept of plastic model cars as a promotional tool. The bigger brands offered ‘promos’ – 1/25-scale plastic replicas of their new cars to give to children, all part of securing a sale with ‘Mom and Pop’. These promo models were also offered as kits which required assembly, and in this manner the US scale model car kit as it has existed for the last several decades was born.

Such was the origin of the kit in question today: the AMT 1965 Ford Galaxie 500. Back then, American car brands operated a marketing technique called planned obsolescence, which is to say they purposely released a slightly revised model every year to encourage owners to return to the dealership and trade up. That meant the promo models changed each year too, and as such kit manufacturer AMT produced a new ’65 Galaxie kit for dealers to promote their new model for that year. Of course, promos were often released as model kits available in hobby stores, as this kit was. AMT continued to produce it on and off for decades, along with many other similar models based on dealer promos, and that gave us the back catalogue of American model car kits which has formed the backbone of the hobby in the US for so long.

I picked up this lit on Ebay a few years ago, during a phase in which I was mad about crisp 1960s styled cars. When it arrived, I was dismayed to find that many parts had been removed from the sprues and were loose in the box with no part numbers. Anyway, I got stuck in and gave the body a lovely coat of Peugeot bronze metallic paint, with a few coats of lacquer. I decided to follow the 1960s theme by adding a vinyl roof: this was pretty easy - all I did was mask off the rest of the body and give the roof a few light coats of Plasti-cote stain black spray paint, which gave a satin black and slightly uneven finish like a vinyl roof. The same satin black was used more carefully to give a vinyl look to the interior.

The Galaxie 500 has a lovely Ford 427 (7-litre) big block V8 engine, and this was built and painted with a blue similar to Ford engine blue. I also added sparkplug wires using 0.3mm black wire, and painted the relatively simple chassis and underside in suitable colours. The kit includes custom parts like 5-spoke racing wheels and a supercharger, but I decided to keep it razor-sharp and stock, 1960s style: some cars in my view benefit from being left factory standard, and the Galaxie is one of them.

To complete the sharp original look, I decided to use Bare Metal Foil (BMF) to dress the model’s window edges and body trim. BMF is a very thin self-adhesive chrome foil designed for this job, and with a lot of patience a very realistic look can be achieved. The foil has to be cut roughly to size, and is then placed onto the relevant area and rubbed down firmly with something like a paintbrush handle. After that, a sharp scalpel blade is used to trim the foil to size: if on a window frame for example, the blade is run along the edges of the frame leaving the chrome foil in place on the trim. I have so far done the window frames but still have to do the chrome side strips.

Next jobs on Project Galaxie: finish the chrome. Fit the glazing. Assemble the main parts and add finishing pieces.

Project Heavy Haulage: Update 4

I had started to have a few doubts about Project Heavy Haulage, mainly because of a few details which I thought were wrong. So, I decided to take a few steps back and get the truck back on the right track. My main concern was over the chassis length: European trucks are only as long as they need to be because of legislation and the general need to save room in towns, depots and ferries, and the Volvo’s chassis had become unnecessarily long when I converted it into a 6x4 (see this post). I decided that the chassis needed a reason to be long, and what better reason than an extra axle? Also, I realised that the cylindrical diesel tank supplied in the kit was outdated and not right for my truck, so I decided to make a square tank which would fit into the space left between the axles.  This meant removing the diesel tank and battery box I had previously installed.

Several small companies make conversion kits to enable truck modellers to add extra axles, and add new diesel tanks. However, I decided to do some research and make my own new parts. First job was to make an extra axle: I decided to make a lift axle (an extra axle which can be dropped down onto the road to allow the truck to carry more weight, then lifted after the job to save on tyre wear and improve cornering) as these seem to be common on heavy haulage trucks. This was created starting with a spare steering axle complete with steering mechanism, onto which a frame was made out of plastic L-beams to mimic a real lift axle frame I found online.

Real lift axles use airbags to raise and lower the axle: I made a pair of airbags out of Milliput (epoxy modelling putty) and stuck them onto the frame. After a coat of grey paint to match the truck chassis, the lift axle was installed using superglue. I will need to add some mudguards for the wheels, though I am not sure whether to make some or buy a pair from a resin parts manufacturer.

Adding the lift axle meant there was not enough room for the cylindrical diesel tank which came with the kit, and which was inaccurate and outdated anyway. So, I decided to make a modern square tank to fit the space (heavy haulage trucks often seem to have odd-sized diesel tanks). My main concern was weight: truck diesel tanks are notoriously difficult to attach to the chassis because they are big and heavy but only attach via a couple of small brackets. To help overcome this, I decided to make my new tank out of balsa wood which is a nice lightweight building material. After measuring the space the tank needed to fit into, I cut several pieces of balsa wood to the required size and glued them together using PVA glue.

After letting it dry for a few hours, I sanded the balsa block to shape and gave it a layer of Squadron Green putty to begin to make a smooth finish. A few coats of putty were required before the block began to look smooth enough for painting. After all, it needed to look as smooth as metal when finished so it was very important to smooth over the grain of the balsa wood.

After a few coats of putty, smoothing each layer with sandpaper between coats, the diesel tank began to take shape and was then sprayed with several coats of satin black enamel paint to prepare it for a coat of Alclad chrome lacquer. The Alclad will give a natural metal finish like a real diesel tank.

I also did some more work on the crane, which will be mounted behind the cab. I completed assembly and added the decals, and I also added some hydraulic lines which were missing from the kit (these were made from black sprue heated in a candle flame and stretched to the correct thickness). I then applied a black oil paint wash to highlight the details and add a grubby, used look to the crane. I will talk more about washes in a future post: they are easy to do and can add a very realistic look to your model.

Next jobs on Project Heavy Haulage: finish the diesel tank. Add the crane and cab details.

Down Memory Lane: my early days as a modeller

There is something about miniatures which fascinates children. Though adults are often interested to see scale recreations of things, children in particular seem to be absolutely enthralled by the sight of real things captured in miniature. Of course, many children’s toys have traditionally been scaled-down versions of real-world things like cars, houses, guns, animals and so on. So it is probably not too surprising that when I first saw scale models, I was very impressed and wanted to make my own.

My childhood experiences of model making relate to my dad and my older brother, Ash. My dad has been a railway modeller since as long as I can remember, and Ash was into military aircraft and became a very respectable young aircraft modeller in his teenage years. Seeing my dad’s model railway layout made me familiar with the idea of creating a world in miniature from the word go. I also remember the fascination I felt as Ash removed the lid from a new aircraft kit and revealed all those grey plastic parts attached to frames, which I knew would eventually become a colourful and dramatic-looking miniature fighter plane. This being the early 1980s, our village was encircled by airbases from which RAF and USAF jets flew daily. My young friends and I were quite used to our peace being momentarily shattered by low-flying military jets, and I wanted to be able to build models of those thundering kings of the sky.

The first model kit I ever built was a Matchbox kit of the RAF’s Canberra bomber. Like many young modellers, I did not paint the plane – it remained in its plastic colours with the various RAF transfers (decals) being applied on top. I did not have a blade with which to cut parts from the frames, instead using a screwdriver to punch the parts loose! Still, I learned a lot even on that first build; the kit made me choose whether to make the bomb bay doors open or closed, and whether to build the landing gear down for landing or up for flying (I chose gear up and doors closed).

My memory is a bit clouded over my next build; I can recall building various planes and painting them with my dad’s old Humbrol paints, along with a Renault 5 police car (given to me by our neighbours) but the next kit I remember distinctly is an Airfix Stuka dive-bomber given to me by my grandma for Christmas. This one was painted by me in all-over olive green paint donated by my dad, and the transfers were applied, though they fell off later (I had much to learn…)

Once my family realised I liked building models, I regularly received model kits as presents – mostly plane kits – and soon built up a collection. It wasn’t long before I started building more car kits: I have been into cars since I was very young, so it was an obvious choice to build models of them, starting with the police Renault 5, followed by a 1979 Ford Mustang and then a 1956 Chevrolet. Again, the car bodies were left unpainted and any paints needed for the engine and interior were borrowed. However, it wasn’t long before I was buying glue and paints specifically for the models I was making, and at this point you could say I was taking model making seriously as a hobby.

To be continued

Project Heavy Haulage: Update 3

During any build, whether it takes a weekend or a year from beginning to end, it is always very pleasing when the main parts of the model start to come together and give an idea what the finished model will look like. Project Heavy Haulage reached that stage this evening as the Volvo’s big red cab was finally united with the chassis. However, this heavy haulage Volvo FH is still a long way from completion.

Since the last update, I have added most of the chassis details such as the diesel tank, battery box, exhaust system with turbo pipework, front mudguards and a few other bits. This required a little extra thought as I have altered the chassis, as you can see in Update 1, meaning I had to carefully check the location of these parts. The other complication was the unfortunate fact that the kit manufacturer, Italeri, had based this 2000s truck model on an older 1980s Volvo kit chassis, making many of the chassis details including the engine incorrect and outdated. Rather than replacing the engine and all the other parts, I have decided to leave the old-style engine in place and use most of the old details with a few updates where I can. I am not a truck expert, so as long as the finished model looks good I will be happy, even if there are a few inaccuracies here and there.

The other tricky job was to attach the tilting cab to the chassis via a pair of plastic brackets which are fixed to the cab floor. As with the steering gear which allows the front wheels to be turned, the cab brackets allow the cab to tilt by allowing free movement of the pieces against each other, the pieces being pierced through to allow short rods or kingpins to run through them with the kingpin ends slightly melted to stop them falling back through the holes. This is all a bit hard to describe, but it’s just like a rivet which holds things together by slipping through a hole then having its head flattened. However, that wasn’t the tricky bit – it took only a minute or two. The tricky bit was hoping that the cab, made of numerous parts, would sit correctly on the chassis and over the engine and mudguards, again assembled from many parts. Luckily enough the cab sits pretty well, maybe a bit low at the front but good enough, and it sits perfectly on the rear cab support, a nice surprise.

The biggest problem came when I fitted the front bumper and headlamps unit, which fixes to the chassis rather than the cab: I have ended up with too large a gap between the bumper and the bit of the cab below the doors. I can’t think of an easy way to remedy this so it will have to stay as it is. Otherwise, I am pretty happy with how the cab has fitted.

The truck is now starting to take shape and I can now concentrate on the details: the crane which will sit behind the cab, the rear mudguards, and all the external parts like spotlights and the 5^th wheel (the trailer coupling).

Next jobs for Project Heavy Haulage: finish and fit the crane. Fit remaining cab and chassis details.