My famous last words but I can report that the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas truck kit is just about there!
The shortened side underrun guard is fitted and looks much better than the original.
The sun visor is fitted.
The mirrors are fitted.
The windscreen wipers are fitted.
All I need to do is touch in some of the black parts on the mirrors and wipers and glue the cargo body to the chassis so almost there!!!! I know I can do it!
Despite everything else that has been going on, my job of finishing the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas truck has progressed - just not as quickly as I had planned!
I have started with fitting the side underrun guards which has inherent problems. When Italeri produce a kit like the DAF Canvas truck, the basically modify one of their tractor unit kits and add the body from one of their trailer kits. The result is that not everything fits as it should and the guards are an example.
On the one side the kit part fits nicely once I added some extra bracing from plastic strip and angle so that it mounted to the bottom of the cargo body securely. It just needs painting black now that it is mounted.
But on the other side there is no way that it looks right as it covers half the fuel tank and shrouds the filler cap.
Following on from yesterday, when I probably unwisely announced I was going to finish off some of my outstanding projects in order to get rid of the boxes that contained the last few parts that these projects needed to be finished, I have actually ironically found a reason to have a spare box handy! Let me explain!
I was going to get the DAF 95 Canvas Truck completed but there were some parts to paint including the side under-run bars and the mounting parts for the windscreen visor. I painted these and left them to dry.
Then another layer of sand!
Anyone who has read this blog will know I have a habit of not finishing projects. The reasons are numerous and probably completely unjustifiable but every so often something coerces me to go back and do the finishing touches. This time it is the number of kit boxes scattered about the Man Cave with the last few pieces of kits that need finishing that is the coercing factor. If I get rid of the box before finishing the kit I will end up mislaying the parts so the box stays until the parts are used up!
These ar just a few of the boxes!
With the recent clear out of magazines I now have that desire to get rid of the boxes so I am starting with the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck which is just about finished apart from mirrors, windscreen wipers, windscreen sun shield and side under-run guards.
The box still has a lot of parts in it and I had to remind myself that I had replaced the wheels and dash board with resin items and did not use the air deflectors. Those parts can go in the spares box - oh dear yet another box!
On non-model making matters I did take Mrs. Woody to see the snowdrops at Easton Walled Gardens and if snowdrops are the indication that Spring has sprung then it certaily has with the number out. It did look impressive with carpets of white all over the large garden.
Apart from the delight of seeing so many snowdrops I also learnt that there are nine varieties in the Gardens thanks to this very informative display unit. Who says that learning has to be boring!
Not much time for model making at WMD HQ with other jobs to do such as those on Mrs. Woody's list! However I am determined to finish the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck and to be fair it is almost there. The only parts to fit are the windscreen wipers, the mirrors, the cab visor and the side guards. I will be fitting those as the weathering progresses which is what I am currently doing. It will not be a heavy application but more a light dusting in places just to show that it is a working truck. I am going to do that over the next few weeks at a leisurely pace as and when I am in the mood for it. In the meantime here are a few photos and there is a YouTube video on my channel from the What's On My Bench series where you can see in a bit more detail about this build.
Having left yesterdays post with Milly the cat wondering what was in the box, Murphy took over. Not so bothered about the box he was testing out the cool slates!
By this afternoon the contents of the box had been expertly fitted to reveal this wood burning stove.
Mrs. Woody is very pleased which makes my life easy but it also means my life is not so easy in the long run as I now have to paint the room! The paint is that faded that I cannot even get away with some patch painting of the new plaster. So, as I will be explaining to Mrs. W, I will await some cooler weather before attempting any pain work. Just hope it is a long and warm summer!
Meanwhile the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck has made a little more progress with the internal cab fittings glued in place and the airhorns mounted on the cab roof.
Although the weather has cooled down a bit WMD HQ continues to develop its strategy to deal with cold winters. After the new boiler yesterday the open fire place in the lounge came in for attention today. A lot of destruction but by the end of the day things have progressed for the final stage tomorrow - hopefully!
Meanwhile I have had a chance to fit the glass into the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck so there has been some progress with that too! The heat is on to try to finish this project by the end of the week!
One of those days which flew by! I had plans to do many things but only achieved some! My plan just to hoover the car out following several months of hard use take rubbish to the tip and auction probably scuppered my other plans as once I had cleaned the carpets the seats needed doing then the door trims and before I knew it I was on a full-scale valet including putting that tyre dressing on to make the tyres look shiny! Anyway my four hours of work concluded just in time for the rain which started and will now no doubt make the paintwork look streaky!
I did have time to take five in the Man Cave where I sprayed the mirrors and windscreen wipers for the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck black.
Not being in a mood to do much else on this model today I ran some trains including digging my Bachmann Class 20 in Railfreight livery out. Not run for some time it was good to see and hear it on the track. They were known as 'Choppers' by those who used to follow them. They certainly had a distinctive engine sound in real life and this model goes some way to replicating that. They were used a lot on coal trains were they were lashed up in pairs to haul the hopper wagons that were used on the 'Merry Go Round' workings at the coal powered power stations. It all sounds so old and almost unbelievable now but it was only 40 years ago that coal dominated electric power production when coal really was king!
Mrs. Woody and me went back to Easton Walled Gardens today. Our last trip a few weeks ago was great but made even better by the home made Victoria Sponge and Lemon Drizzle cakes that we bought. So todays visit was into the ticket office and straight to the cake counter to make sure we got what we wanted again! Having secured said cakes we left them in a bag with the staff and went off for a wander round. It is amazing how much things in nature can change in just a few weeks. The sweet peas had really blossomed and although not my favorite flowering plant I was suitably impressed.
Having safely returned Mrs. Woody and cakes to WMD HQ I did some further work on the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck namely the windscreen wipers and mirrors.
Firstly the widescreen wipers had to be reversed to fit the now right hand drive cab. That consisted cutting them in half and regluing at the right angle. The photos below probably illustrate what I did better then I can describe it!
The unaltered wipers on their kit sprue.
Mirror wise I am using some reflective sheet that needs to be cut to shape. I covered the appropriate area of the sheet with masking tape so that I could apply the sheet to the plastic part prior to painting. Once painted I just need to remove the masking tape so hopefully no problems! Famous last words!
After all that I think I will have some cake now!
No, Woody has not decided to take to the World of fisticuffs! Instead this relates to the number plate of the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck which is nearly finished. Having already adorned the cargo body with decals for a corrugated box company I thought I might as well make the number plate relevant! In the UK the choice of number plates for vehicles is limited to a defined format and layout set out by the DVLA. You do see some vehicles where the number plates are 'doctored' to make the letters and numbers read something that the owner wants rather then can legitimately get. I prefer the traditionally undoctored types though such as COM1C that Jimmy Tarbuck had or MAG1C that Paul Daniels had or Robbie Williams with his S8RRY plate on his Ferrari.
There are a lot of transport companies who also don't doctor the registration to get something related to their business or truck and you do see a lot of recovery vehicles with the word 'TOW' in the registration plate. The second hand car dealer Cazoo has a lot of its trucks with plates that look from a quick glance like Cazoo. So for my truck I thought that BOX1T would be a good plate. I did check to see which vehicle in real life it was registered to but apparently it has never been issued in the UK.
Luckily I had a sheet of number plates and letters from KFS so I could make up this registration plate.
