Making Models From Scratch

[Andy in Germany]

I was referring to enamel paint . Artists acrylic or even modellers acrylic paints will not adhere to some surfaces . I was angry when the acrylic paint peeled off the hull of a plastic model . It might be because I didn't use a primer but I have never used a primer for enamel paint .

Enamel is more solid and adheres better: I've found that primers are essential on non-porus surfaces with acrylics. It doesn't take much though; just a light dusting and the acrylics attach quite happily. Acrylics are opaque though, which can take some getting used to but can be used to advantage.

 

[Reynard]

Enamel is more solid and adheres better: I've found that primers are essential on non-porus surfaces with acrylics. It doesn't take much though; just a light dusting and the acrylics attach quite happily. Acrylics are opaque though, which can take some getting used to but can be used to advantage.

Not strictly true when it comes to acrylics - or oils for that matter...

The earth-based pigments tend to be opaque - the browns, blacks and whites. The rest are translucent to some degree, reds and yellows at the more extreme end of this. So if you need yellow detail on a black ground, you will have to do the detail in white and then glaze it over with several washes of yellow. It's a painting technique that goes back to the middle ages.

 

[Reynard]

Another update on the actual build. Again, a bit pic heavy...

Have been working on the seat, as I've decided to concentrate on finishing all the bits on the driver's cab. So first step was to prime and paint the seat, then weather it a bit where things have rubbed - harness, driver's bum etc. Stock cars of that era were a bit banged and bashed, although to be fair. the car I'm modelling was always immaculately turned out.

Next step was to make the belts. Thanks to the good folks over on the Old Skool Superstox FB group I knew I had to model a 4-point harness. I only had a decent view of the shoulder belts, so a certain amount of guesstimation was required. But then again, I have good familiarity with racing seatbelts...

The hard part was working out what to make them from. I had bought some hemming tape from the haberdashers last week, but it turned out to be too wide and too thick, so back to bouncing ideas around. I didn't want to use paper or card, as it's not flexible enough, but anything plastic-based won't take a paint. However, a rummage in my sewing basket yielded a length of baby pink bias binding left over from making a set of cat show drapes.

I folded that over to get the right width, and then glued it. The result was a bit stiffer than I'd have liked, but since it was a workable solution, I decided to stick with it. So on went the paint to match the belts in the photo I'm working from (the one on the cover of the July 1984 issue of Short Circuit Magazine) before cutting a pair of shoulder belts and a pair of lap belts plus a couple of other bits. Then it was making all the buckles and doodads and stuff - back to loads of tiny fiddly parts. The end result was this:

Next stage was to glue the lap belts to the seat. The "mount points" for those will be glued to the chassis rails. I have to wait to attach the shoulder belts because they fix to the roll cage, and I still need to paint that section. And I can't do that (to avoid damage) until I've used it to make the templates for the bodywork. I've made the shoulder belts too long because I've yet to work out exactly how to fix them to the model. But anyways, the pretty well much completed seat now looks like this:

 

[Reynard]

I've also been working on the rear wing, dealing with the paint problem and the end plate problem. The latter was easily solved by making a new set, using the old pair as a template. The former, I first tried adding a paper sleeve to the wing, but I still ended up with a waxy surface upon which the paint (artists acrylics) would not stick. My fault for coating the wing in epoxy in a bid to avoid the superglue...

In the end, I sanded the skin of the wing right back to the original covering. Lucky for me, I'd made that skin from cereal packet card with the shiny side in, which meant that the epoxy had only bled through at the seams. I then covered the seams with paper, and then fitted a new cardboard sleeve onto the wing proper - which meant that I now had a surface I could paint on. (The exception are the two sockets on the underside, which needs a different paint type.

Base colour on wing and end plates was pretty straightforward. The tricky bit was the sign writing and getting it to look right. Now I'm no stranger to a paintbrush, but it's a totally different ballgame painting on three dimensional shapes... It took me an evening to do the two end plates, and a morning to get the text right on the wing before slowly applying the paint - white initially, and then later glazing with yellow.

I've not glued anything in place just yet - I'm leery of doing that too early. But everything just slots together, so the painted and "assembled" rear wing looks like this:

And just because, the rear wing and the seat on the car:

Have to admit, putting the race number on the car feels like a MASSIVE step forward. It makes it feel like a real thing, not just a random collection of parts...

 

[Jameshow]

Paints have changed over the years . VOC's have been taken out . Paints have less body as I call it . The paint is so thin just like water . Gone are the nice smells that you used to get when you opened the tin . I can remember the small set of bottles that my brother used to buy for painting his models . That was before Humbrol came along with their model paints . The pack contained the basic colours which had to be mixed to get the right colour .
Paints have different resins in them for different applications so artists paints will have a different make up to modellers or household paints .

We were given some professional enamel paint grey primer and red for our santa sleigh build and it's really strong stuff!

Goes off well and really tough too!

 

[Andy in Germany]

Very nice work @Reynard; I particularly like the weathering on the seat and straps.

 

[Reynard]

Very nice work @Reynard; I particularly like the weathering on the seat and straps.

Thanks @Andy in Germany

I'm very much a novice at this, so yeah... On the face of it, the weathering on the seat looks too much, but bearing in mind that it will be inside quite a dark cab, I need the edges to stand out some. I think it will be OK.

Next step is to deal with the front of the roll cage and the roof rails. Then I can think about making the dashboard and the templates for the bodywork.

 

[Reynard]

It's funny how, when you sort out a couple of sticking points, so much then suddenly falls into place...

The front of the roll cage and the roof rails have been bugging me for ages, and was one of the reasons I stopped working on this. I did buy the plastic box section from the model shop, but it just didn't sit right with me - especially the two that make the A-pillar. So I made the equivalent parts to the same cross section out of rolled paper and covered in a cardboard skin that just threaded onto the wire I'd bonded in to the front of the rollcage. The first iterations were too short once I trimmed the ends - and to be fair, I trimmed too much off one of them in a bid to get the angles right... Ooops, you live and learn...

Then I made the piece that joins them to complete the "windscreen frame" section - although of course there's no glass on a stock car. This bit has a wire core that protrudes 2mm out of each side, as the ends fit into holes pierced in the vertical section. Nothing is glued together yet, as I need access to the driver's cab at this stage. Then I re-made the roof rails - from the original drawings this time, and guess what... They fit first time! The fore and aft rails were bonded in on the underside to complete that particular assembly.

While my brain was set loose on working out how to construct some of the remaining parts, I took the opportunity to make the dashboard for the car. Now this again is where guesstimation was required, as the two forward-looking shots I have of the interior are so poor that it's difficult to see any real detail. But I do have a good interior photo from a Higman contemporary to this one, as well as a few from the OSS group of another replica Superstox that was being built.

Given that there's only two gauges (water temp & oil pressure), ignition light, starter button and an electrical cut-off switch, there's a finite number of ways this can be displayed on a dash. And yes, I had fun with a hole punch again to make the bezels for the gauges... Oh, and the u-shaped bracket is to accommodate the steering column.

Which painted up, translated into this:

While I had the paints out - and to take a break from the glue, I went back to the side irons and the front and rear bumpers. They were some of the first pieces I made way back when, and if I'm honest, I could have done a better job. I'd also primed them - badly. So cue a lot of filing and sanding and smoothing over gaps with wood filler, followed by priming with a rattle can this time. And those parts then translated into this:

After priming, they were painted in two coats of black, then two of silver, before giving a final coat of black. And then the fun started, sanding back to expose the "bare metal" resulting from scuffs and scrapes, and then adding smears of other colours to simulate the paint picked up from contact with other cars. Overall, I'm happy with the result, both of these and of the dashboard, but I might change the paint a bit later on prior to final assembly.

 

[Reynard]

While I was doing the above. I was also trying to work out how to construct the bodywork. This was the second of the aforementioned sticking points. Well, more specifically, the lower half of the driver's cab. It's critical to get this right, as the fit of almost all the other bodywork panels are dependent on these two pieces - one on either side, and each piece a mirror image. The problem stems from the fact that it's a double curvature i.e. not only does it curve fore-and-aft, it also curves in the vertical plane.

OK, I do have the small sheet of wire mesh I bought in the model shop, but it was £2.80 for an A5-sized piece, so I really didn't want to be making any mistakes. And, quite frankly, I'm no panel-beater...

Ergo I kept that in reserve and tried to solve the problem another way. Paper templates of various kinds came and went, and after a frustrating evening of doing that, then cue me trawling through the house and in the recycling wheelie bin, looking at plastic bottles and comparing them to a cardboard frame I'd devised. The first try saw me cut up a washing up liquid bottle, but it was just that little bit too small. Hey ho.

In the end I settled for a 4-pint milk bottle, as it was the closest I could find to the shape I was looking for. All well and dandy until I'd glued the two sections into their respective cardboard frames, and then while the bottom was fine, the top of the curve was too flat. So some surgery was required - one to cut down the plastic to half its height, and two, to fit a wire bent to the right shape across the top.

Then I went all Blue Peter and resorted to the Ancient Art of papier mache to join the lot together...

After several more layers of paper, I now have quite a stiff structure - but there's just enough give on the wire to bend the sections to the exact profile needed. I did have to add a strengthening beam along the bottom to stop the frame from going all origami on me. This does have the benefit of making the part slot directly into the side of the roll cage, and also gives me a platform to add the metal plates that sit either side of the driver's seat in lieu of side impact protection.

They still do need some work prior to tidying up, and then I'll need to sand to a smooth surface before to painting. They do fit rather well onto the rest of the model however, even in their unfinished state.

Just as an aside, I've only ever seen this car in photos, and there's a world of difference between a photo and seeing it come together in front of you, albeit in 1:10 scale. And one thing's really struck me, is how cramped the driver's cab actually is. For a young man who was pushing 6ft, he would've had to pretzel himself to get inside...

 

[Reynard]

Other than modelling four bonnet catches - which I'd much rather do in daylight - the Higman's bodywork forward of the rollcage is now complete and ready for priming. I'll post an update once I've sorted out the catches.

I've also moved all the other completed parts to a new (bigger) box where things are less likely to get dinged and dented. Which made me realise that the wheels and tyres - which haven't seen the light of day for a while - really aren't up to snuff. They were the very first things I made, and well, let's just say that I've improved a lot. I could bodge them with filler and stuff, but quite frankly, I think I'd probably be better off making another set...

 

[Jameshow]

Other than modelling four bonnet catches - which I'd much rather do in daylight - the Higman's bodywork forward of the rollcage is now complete and ready for priming. I'll post an update once I've sorted out the catches.

I've also moved all the other completed parts to a new (bigger) box where things are less likely to get dinged and dented. Which made me realise that the wheels and tyres - which haven't seen the light of day for a while - really aren't up to snuff. They were the very first things I made, and well, let's just say that I've improved a lot. I could bodge them with filler and stuff, but quite frankly, I think I'd probably be better off making another set...

I admire your patience and dedication!

Keep going!!

 

[Reynard]

I admire your patience and dedication!

Keep going!!

Thank you.

The driver of that car (it was his first really serious race car) is someone who means a great deal to me. I want to do right by him, you know, keeping the memory alive like...

 

[Reynard]

Oh, and my motor racing historian friend has identified the specific type of bonnet catches - made by Dzus, they're a quarter turn cam-based mechanism rather than the more commonplace spring-loaded jobbies.

Either way, that's a lot of tiddly parts with the potential to become sproings or pingfeckits...

 

[Jameshow]

Thank you.

The driver of that car (it was his first really serious race car) is someone who means a great deal to me. I want to do right by him, you know, keeping the memory alive like...

Ditto the boat I made....

 

[Reynard]

Ditto the boat I made....

Paul was my hero when I was a schoolgirl - though he was only a handful of years older than me. I actually started watching motor racing because of his older brother Derek and THAT moment in the 1982 British GP, and when you then find out that your favourite driver has a kid brother who also races, it was kind of a no-brainer to be a fan of both.

Paul was killed in a F3000 accident when I was 16, and I was absolutely heartbroken.