The DAF on YouTube.

 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.

Here is the YouTube video.

 

More experience and wisdom at Rocks By Rail!

Thursday. Not my normal day at the Museum but because of works at WMD HQ at the start of the week it was necessary to move my day to today - Thursday! A busy day too with dealing with some donations, grass cutting and putting out some banners on the surrounding road network for the next event a week on Sunday and delivering some leaflets to a caravan site! All in a days work at the Museum. However I did take time to visit the restoration shed where there was a lot of activity going on.

Firstly Thomas and Alex are doing some welding work on the body work of Ketton No1 locomotive. A long-term project, which is another way of saying its been undergoing restoration for some time now, it is good to see it moving on.

Would you believe the loco is being painted Racing Green! With a top speed of about 15mph it should be Slow Green!

Some neat welding there.

The guys have also been busy preparing the cab roof for paint having ground the old paint off.

Now for the experience and wisdom part of this post! John, who I think won't mind me saying he has a wealth of experience and wisdom, always has a way with things that just makes you think yes, why would I not have done that. Well you would not because you didn't have the wealth of experience and wisdom that John has. However, as always, I look and learn! Take today for example. John is bolting the painted running boards to the Shark brake van. He is using coach bolts which had that shiny chrome look to them when I saw the ones nearest to me.

These are the black headed ones - neat!

He must paint each one with a brush after putting them in place - that is a slow and painful job!

The reality is that he dips the head into a tin of black paint.

Then places the bolts in place.

Then just a gentle tap with a hammer and the bolt goes in and the still wet paint resettles around where the hammer hit. That's experience and wisdom!

Hoping it is a long warm summer!

 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.

The heat is building up at WMD HQ!

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!

Marty and Monty 'helping'!

Marty thinking that it is a very big mouse hole!

Milly wondering what's in the box? We will find out tomorrow Milly!

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!

New boiler at WMD HQ.

A model making free day as WMD HQ had a new heating boiler fitted or as our American friends call them a furnace. The old one has been leaking water for several years and probably should have been replaced before now. However at least I have been proactive and had it replaced before it breaks down in the middle of a freezing Winter when heating engineers give installation times in terms of months rather than days! Hope Mrs. Woody is impressed by my pro-activeness in this matter. The only down side was that the new boiler needed testing which meant turning the heating on to full blast on a very hot day. However I can cope far better with that then freezing in Winter.

as you can see by the unpainted brickwork in the garage the new boiler is more compact then the old one and there is a fancy magnetic filter installed to catch any metal fragments that have been formed by the metal radiators that may be floating about in the system before they do any harm to the boiler. It took the heating engineer about 6 hours to do the whole job including replacing the thermoset in the house and putting in a new valve for the motorised valve. I am impressed! 

There is some other work being done at WMD HQ tomorrow and Wednesday but more of that later! In the meantime I can tick off 'New boiler' from Mrs. Woody's list of jobs - if only there were all that easy!

When coal really was king!

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!

As well as the loco I have some of the coal wagons in the form of these Bachmann HAA hoppers in Railfreight livery. I should have about 10 of them but just took these two out at the moment.

As you can see one of them is pristine and the other weathered which is how these wagons used to look as they were never cleaned.

I think I have three or four of the weathered wagons which I bought second hand from TMC ( The Model Center) who ironically originally did the weathering on them. They certainly look good and fit for King Coal but I will need to weather the others to match - when I get the time!

Cake time!

 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.

I was also impressed by this smallest shed that I have ever seen!

You could probably store a watering can and a trowel in there or preferably some cakes. Never the less despite its small size it was a quality shed!

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.

The top wiper is the first altered one.

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!

Box 1T???

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.

A bit fiddly to do as the individual letters and digits wanted to slide off in all directions just like the WMD HQ fleet of cats at vet time! However eventually the two plates were done. I still need to fit the front one to the front valance but the rear one is in plkace.

Whilst in the decal mood I also did the various decals for the front grill and the interior dashboard.

The cab takes on a whole new look as the steering wheel and front marker lights have also been fitted.

Hopefully once finished this will not be a truck to box up and put away!

Seeing Red!

Not that I got mad and saw red but out today I saw this sight which I thought was beautiful! Not seen that many poppies in one field in this Country before.

My journey had been to drop some things off at an auction house including this 1970s HiFi unit made by Waltham. 

Unusually for the UK not only did it have a radio, turntable and cassette player but also an 8 track player. Much as I can recall playing my meager record collection on it as a child having got permission from my Dad and it has some sentimental value I don't have the space or indeed the need for it. Hopefully someone will want it and enjoy it.

Returning to WMD HQand having done some cleaning (hope Mrs. Woody reads that!) it was back to the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck. Work today consisted of finishing the air intake system with the filter and pipework. Also the strengthening cross brace to the chassis and the cover to the rear of the engine were fitted.

I have also fitted the front wings to the cab floor pan. Annoyingly, and it is my own fault, I had forgotten to fit the front of cab grab handles before painting. There have now been fitted as in the photo below. They are the grey bits just below the windscreen aperture and need painting black. Which reminds me I still need to fit the cab glass as well as the mirrors. 

It is nearly there and I cannot see much red of the chassis so I must be happy!

Historic case?

 If I were by the sea, enjoying a cooling ice cream whilst watching the passing World I could really appreciate the current heatwave. As it is, delving in a sun drench shed which was doing an impression of an industrial oven, hauling out stuff to be disposed of I did not appreciate the heatwave! However that long over due job is done! 

A lot of stuff is from my parents and much as I could keep it there is just not the space. Some is junk and goes for recycling but there are some gems like this suitcase which will go to auction.

About 70 years old it dates back to my Dad's days in the RAF when such cases were adorned with stickers from places visited. There is some history there and if the case could talk.....

fter a rest and cool down I needed a less then taxing job so I decided to polish the paintwork on the cab of the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck. I used the set of compounds from Tamiya which consist of a course, fine and finish used in that order with a fine sponge. Very much like the cutting compounds used for restoring car paintwork these do the same thing but in a much milder way suitable for models.

After that I started to paint the black parts of the cab which in this case are the door handles and window surrounds. To get a neat line i tend to use a fresh scalpel blade and run it around the outside edge of the item to be painted. The slight cut in the paintwork gives a sort of miniature ditch into which stray paint flows rather then spreading beyond where it is wanted.

My choice of paint for this type of fine work is the air brush version of Vallejo's paints. It flows well and covers - much better than the normal paint designed to be brushed!

Just the other side to do now then that is another job in the case!