Reverse engineering!

As a day for doing any model making today was not the day! However I did reduce the old cooker into kit form using a screw driver and pair of pliars in my reverse engineering escapades so that could count as some form of reverse kit building! It is actually quite interesting to see how something has been put together - a good insight into both design and engineering - whether it is reverse or forwards!.

Meanwhile, whilst I have been reverse engineering, Ben the electrician has fitted a new consumer unit as the old one which was state of the art 32 years ago is now classed as barely adequate - a bit like me!

Wish I could wire that neatly!

In the kitchen itself things are progressing with handles and splash backs being fitted and held in place with clamps and wood so it still looks a work in progress. One thing is certain though, I don't want to reverse engineer that kitchen - Mrs. Woody certainly would have words to say even if I just mentioned it!

Abraded, worn and weathered - and that is not me!

A great day at WMD HQ as the kitchen rebuild skip has now departed! That does not mean that the Kitchen rebuild is complete, just that the skip was as full as it was safe to do so!

The skip had obviously been recently painted and with its shiny paint yet to be abraded, worn and weathered by use and nature. The Tiger has also recently been painted with a clean looking coat of paint that will be abraded , worn and weathered by me!

First I need to finish the turret though but this project is moving on again!

Where has the year gone?

Whilst a cliché,  the phrase 'where has the year gone' did strike me yesterday evening as I put up the banners for one of the final events at the Rocks By Rail Museum this year.

Hopefully it and the other two remaining events will be good ones! In one way I will be glad when the season is over as I won't have to make the adaptations to last years banners to save on the cost of new ones! Then again will next year mean I have to adapt the already adapted banners? 

Whilst I mull that over in my somewhat confused mind, more progress with the Tiger build with the hull now being fully primed.

Before I prime the turret I thought I would confuse my already confused mind further by trying to put together the brass etch latches on the storage bins. These are so small that my camera doesn't seem to be able to focus on them! However one is partly in place so just three and a half and my sanity to go!

 

More of the etched brass to brass me off!

Things are moving on with the Tiger build but there have been some more etched brass parts to fit. One largish piece that has laid in the box for some time mystified me. I had been looking at the plans for some days to find where it went as I did not recognise what it was supposed to represent. I thought it was a grill mesh but I finally found it on the plans and it all clicked! It is designed to replicate the zimmerit coating over the join of the deck to the lower hull. Easy once you know!

It was glued down just by melting the plastic surface with some liquid glue and gently pressing the part in. You can also see that I have rammed some tissue paper into the drivers vision block to mask the clear part behind it. One of those things about digital photos is that they pick up things that my aging eyes miss. In this instance I did not realise that the bow gun moulding even has a representation of the barrel being a tube! Must go to Spec Savers - usual disclaimer in that other vision enhancing purveyors are available! 

Talking of eyesight, mine was really tested along with my sanity by these padlocks. The main body is plastic and the shackle is a brass etch. You can see the sizes involved by scaling with the scalpel. Doing a few of these can really brass you off!

 

After an hour the four etches were glued with super glue to the plastic bodies. Again, digital photography is not forgiving! Whilst this close up may show some crudeness in assembly, at normal viewing distance and with aging eyesight they look fine!

I had a few minutes to start priming the main hull in my usual black colour. It needs a few more coats but it does provide a good base for the top coats.

Tiger hull glued!

It has been a busy, interesting and varied week. Getting over Norovirus, the kitchen rebuild, working at the museum and making some progress with the Tiger tank rebuild. 

The Tiger now has a glued together deck and hull following some final fettling with the bow gun and masking off of the two forward hatches and the turret aperture. 

The fitting of the deck to the hull was not without a few near miss contributions to the swear jar but it all eventually went into the right places. With some liquid glue seeped into the joints it was all successfully held together.

With the hull and deck together it was time to fit the side track guards - a fiddly but greatly rewarding task once done as the pair really added to the character of the tank..

Placing the turret on top of the hull shows what a beast this tank was.

Hopefully getting to this stage makes the rest of the build a bit easier but that is never my luck!

Woody meets a blog reader!

A day at the Rocks by Rail Museum today but lets talk Tiger tank kit building first where the steps towards getting it finished have become somewhat glacial in speed! However, it is not always about the speed, but about the journey itself. Just wish this one was a bit more interesting at the moment! The bow gun has been painted and is in place and the clear vision block for the drivers position is in place.

To help in the painting process and to try to avoid painting the clear vision block and blasting paint over the bow gun I have just hand brushed some base colour around the required places. Whether it works or not is something I will find out later! 

Meanwhile at the Rocks by Rail Museum, things are looking very autumnal with fading greenery, a low sun and long shadows. But on a day like today there was no better place to be! 

And interestingly I met someone who reads this blog! That was a surprise to me, both that someone other than Mrs. Woody and Mr. Beecham reads it and to actually have met them! A great chat was had and thank you Margaret for taking the time to read my ramblings!

The Museum played host today to a short commemoration alongside locomotive Singapore of the allied losses suffered when two Japanese Hell Ships were sunk. You can read more about that on the museum website by clicking here! For me a poignant moment as my Uncle was captured in Singapore during WW2.

As always, white orchids were laid by thoose present and the poem below tells why.

The work of the museum does of course continue and Alex is still making progress on Ketton No1 having moved onto painting the engine bay and all the ancillaries. It is somewhat concerning in my mind that he may finish painting this loco before I get my Tiger kit finished!

For me, the grass never stops growing so it was a day of mowing! How unusual!

Running water!

This picture marks a massive step towards completion of the kitchen rebuild and my return to more model making - unless Mrs. Woody has other plans!

However getting to that point took both Phil the builder and myself on a journey neither of us had been on before. Having installed the waste pipes - always best to get those in before the running water is connected - Phil connected up the water. Testing the connections, the cold ran and the hot ran, both without leaks. Great! Turn the two on together and all was well for two minutes before the overflow at the top of the house started gushing! Not great! Phil had never seen that before and neither had I. What was going on? We had running water in two places! Phil had a theory which was backed up by my perusal of the internet. 

The issue was that the cold water was being supplied straight from the mains at a high pressure. The hot on the other hand was supplied from the hot water tank upstairs using gravity and its pressure was low. Inside the mixer tap, when both the hot and the cold were turned on full, the outlet of the tap could only allow a certain amount of water out which was less than the water being supplied by the cold and hot inlets. Therefore the cold water, with its much higher pressure, was able to backfeed into the hot pipe and push the water back into the hot water tank. The hot water tank then needed to expel the excess water which it did through its feed from the cold water tank in the loft. The cold water tank then had to get rid of the excess water through its overflow pipe hence the gushing water we saw outside.

The answer was a one way valve on the hot supply which Phil had one of in his van - almost as good as WMD Stores! Once fitted, the problem was solved and we only had running water in the sink! 

Gunning it!

Gunning it usually means putting your foot down on the car accelerator and moving off at a fast speed. In this case, and as is usually in Woody's World, speed is usually slow! However at least there is movement and on the Tiger 1 build there is just one last piece that I need to finish in order to glue the top of the hull onto the lower part and that is the bow gun. Not a big part but it will be seen through the open hatch above it so I managed a few minutes to start getting it ready for painting. A few sprue mountings need sanding and then it is time to get the paint out. Once it is installed then the whole tank can begin the paint process. No doubt that process will probably be as slow a process as the masterpieces produced by the great artists of the World only my end product won't be a masterpiece!

And despite trying 'gunning it' on the model build it is the kitchen rebuild that is actually moving on quickly now with Phil the Builder, with my assistance hindrance now having got all the worktops joined and in place complete with the hob plate in position.   

The joins between the worktops are all but invisible and to see the way it is done is quite an eyeopener. Definitely something that I could not have achieved if I had done it! However I did have to lend Phil one of my model making needle files to carry out some fine adjustment to the joins so I at least felt as though my assisatnce hinderance had been of some use!

There was a plan!

I thought that I would have a quiet day today and maybe catch up with the Tiger 1 build. After all I was still getting over Norovirus. The kitchen was coming along nicely and all the units were in place.

That was the plan anyway. However, like so many of my plans it did not quite work out! Phil the builder arrived and said it was time to bring the washing machine in. Now I have moved washing machines myself and they are no fun to do as you get older but that was going to be a quick job to help Phil then back to my plan.

Anyway, with it in I thought my day would return to plan but Phil announced that it was now the ideal time to move in with the worktops for the kitchen rebuild. Now I now the worktops came in a 4m and 3m length and were somewhat cumbersome and heavy so it was going to be a two person job to do anything with them. There was Phil and there was me so that made the two persons and the end of my plan! To cut a long story short you need to get the worktops right and there is a lot of cutting to size, routing at joints and routing for the joining clamps so it was a case of in and out of the house but we got there and it fitted!

To avoid the risk of cutting the hole for the sink in the worktop outside  and then for the work top to snap as we carried it in due to be weakened, Phil cut the sink sized hole in situ. Somewhat dusty but it did the job!

And the sink unit fits without falling through almost as if it were planned that way!

Now should I make any plans for tomorrow?

Turret buttoned up!

Not fully recovered from the Norovirus but good enough to have an hour on the Tiger 1 build. In Mrs. Woody's eyes though, that hour does mean I am fully recovered! Anyway, that hour has enabled me to button up the turret with the top having been fitted along with a few other small hatch type parts and the gun muzzle. The only part that I need to deal with is whether I attempt the etched brass padlock fasteners for the two stowage bins on the rear of the turret. They do look, from my examination of the parts, somewhat small, complex and a possible reason for some major contributions to the swear jar! I will have a think about this as I am wondering whether you would really notice them even if fitted?

Looking through that side hatch there is enough to see of the main gun to make it look interesting and not just a blank space.

Day 2!

Day 2! I have had Norovirus before and it is never pleasant and this particular instance has been as bad as I can recall! However I am on the mend so whilst I have not done anything today apart from be in Mrs. Woody's way I can talk about a couple of things that happened before the dreaded virus.

One is the Tiger 1 build which is very slowly advancing. A bit more work on the turret with the opening side hatch being fitted in place and it works!

The etch below the gun has also been fitted, all of which means I am now in a position to put the turret top on and then it is more or less ready for painting.

Before this Norovirus, I did have a day at the Rocks by Rail Museum where Mr. D, who had been an issue a week before with staying on the track was actually doing what it should and running on the track!

Going to the other extreme, Richard was hand propelling the trolley down the line - shows the extremes of what we have at the Museum! I do like this photo for its atmospherics. 

For me, it was a case of grass cutting but this time with a strimmer which was an interesting change from th emower!

I did a fair bit of vegetational butchery which means the face shovel can actually be got to without having to beat a trail through the long grass!

I am hoping that the next few days will see me get back to some normality! 

Norovirus!

Sometimes the best laid plans go astray due to something unplanned and for me that is Norovirus! It started this morning and is still active in me so it has been a day of doing nothing but alternating between bed and bathroom! Nice! Hopefully tomorrow may be better - I just hope so!

Hinges.

Things are moving on with the kitchen rebuild but I have had a chance for a short hour (I don't like having only 30 minutes in the Man Cave so it is called a short hour!) to work on the Tiger 1 build. Nothing major but the hatch hinges for the front two hull hatches have been fitted as that would be difficult to do once the hull is glued together. This and the other parts I will need to deal with are in an attempt to get everything finished on the underside of the hull deck so that I can get that glued to the lower hull and then get on with finishing the painting so that the wheels and tracks can be fitted - there is a logic there even if it takes me time to understand my own thoughts - almost unhinges me in fact! I  have also had the opportunity to finish applying a black wash to the remaining running wheels which finishes that job. I had originally thought that there were 20 wheels on this tank but there are 28 which is almost double that on a Sherman.