Part 1, Part 2, Part3, Part4, Part 5, Part 7
Some work has been done on the cockpit of the truck. In fact the whole model has been painted and weathered but that will follow in a subsequent post as I haven't taken any photographs of that as yet.
I made up a helmet for the 1/16 scale Bruder toys driver figure. It possibly a little big but that's what he's getting.
It was made in two halves joined down the middle by pressing a half dome shape into heated 1mm styrene. To heat the plastic I used my Bosch heat gun which is designed to strip paint among other things. It looks like a hairdryer but it puts out industrial grade heat. You would not want to mix up the two.
I made a domed ended bit of broom stick and pressed that into a hole in a piece of wood that was slightly larger. You can see the stick, hole and result below.
The two plastic domes were sawn off with a razor saw, sanded flat and joined with my usual methylene chloride solvent. A dremel was then used along with a sharp olfa blade to cut away the hole for the neck and face. I used a couple more presses of the 1mm plastic to make some side discs and added a strip of 0.5mm styrene down the join. I also added some pieces of closed cell foam as padding on the inner sides which also makes it stay on his head.
Still needs a bit of sanding and then painting to finish.
To cover up the rolled up sleeves molding on the drivers arms I used some heat shrink tubing, with a smaller piece as some sort of cuffs around his wrists. I also put a larger piece around his neck. You can see a bit of filler as yet un-sanded in the v neck of his shirt. A few Drops of thin super glue has been flowed into his arm joints to fix them in position. Eventually he will be painted to look more like he's wearing a jump suit with gloves.
The chassis has been disassembled so that it could be painted with flat black. I always use a Rust guard epoxy style spray paint for any aluminium parts as it sticks very well without flaking off. A couple of lightish coats are sprayed on without any primer. It takes 24 hours to dry fully but a couple of extra days does no harm before reassembly with scratchy tools. Here is the chassis hanging up on a wire hook.
On the shelf behind the chassis are a couple of my old spaceship models readers of this blog will be familiar with, built many many years ago.
More soon...
I've never tried forming plastic into complex shapes before. Very clever :)
ReplyDeleteThat heat shrink looks very much like a folded up sleeve too!
Another method I used to use when painting metal was to bead blast or sand blast it beforehand. Really aids the adhesion....act's like an undercoat.
Cheers.