Large Scale Central

Snow Dozer Build

Modeling Rolling stock
#21

Randy Lehrian Jr. said:

Craig, you’re doing an outstanding job. I love the detail. I admire your 15 minute rule. It will pay off in the end.

As for switching to brass, aside from the expense of material I’d invest in a resistance soldering unit for that kind of work. Having made the investment it should be a breeze. I’ve been doing some fairly advanced soldering on my first project, and am pretty pleased with the results. I haven’t even took the plunge and purchased a resistance unit yet, I’m just using a torch. Your skills will translate well.

Keep up the great work !

Yes, prior to any brass work I would buy a resistance soldering unit. It certainty wouldn’t be a cheap project but no scratch building projects are!

#22

Okay I haven’t forgotten about this thread… I was able to acquire some more drawings of the Snow Dozer from another member here! The drawings helped fill in some of the missing pieces regarding the side wing construction. I wasn’t sure how the side wing was constructed, but from the drawings it show to be built up from H beams and some other random parts. Hopefully I’ll get back to building soon, but the holidays and the the end of the first semester of teaching snuck up on me fast!

#23

no excuses get to work. I am enjoying this project.

#24

Craig I remember You showing me some pics of this on MLS chat… This is going to be Awesome!! when you have it completed… Keep up the good work my friend… :slight_smile:

#25

I’ve been reading Mike Cougill’s blog recently about his experiences trying to scratchbuild a PS 5344 boxcar car in P:48. He has published a short guide on the subject

http://www.ostpubs.com/the-missing-conversation/

A few selected blog posted

http://www.ostpubs.com/why-are-we-so-narrow-minded/

http://www.ostpubs.com/a-sneak-preview-of-tmc-11/

This converstation about personal modeling standards has made me really rethink the progress of this build so far. I haven’t physically touched the build in over a month now due to time constrants, and I’m doubtful that I’ll get back to it until the middle of March. Up until now I’ve only posted pictures of what looks good, and not the mistakes I’ve made. For instance, I’ve built 3 centersills already, 3 or 4 sets (I lost count) of crossbearers, 2 sets of subflooring, and created tons of scrap styrene. I’ve made errors that I’ve tried to justify by saying “that’s okay, it will get covered up in paint, or the prototype likely was bashed/torn up here so it doesn’t matter”. Since I have sat on the model for a month now, I’m looking back on it and seeing all those mistakes once again. I’m ready to scrap everything build so far and start verison 3.0.

What’s wrong? Nothing per say, but it’s the little errors that creep into the build. I don’t think I’ll tell my wife that my $100 worth of styrene has been wasted and now I need to buy even more, but is scratchbuilding about merely building something that hasn’t been made before, or is it an exercise in expanding our knowledge base and becoming better modelers?

Thoughts, comments?

#26

Craig,

I feel your pain. I am building my first large scale model and the mistakes are glaring. In HO I could deal with it because the things are so small that it was tough to make perfect, at least thats how I rationalized it to myself. In F things are so much larger and the scale mistakes in my minds eye should be much small (read a glue smear is much smaller in scale). I look at my nearly complete model and think wow I could have done much better if I only had take more care here or more time there. But I have soldiered on and I am about down mistakes and all. I have chosen to see my success and accept the imperfections.

My thoughts are finish this build. Learn from both your success and your failure. And then make the next one better.

#27

I’m not saying that I wouldn’t finish the build, it’s just a thought process to determine what’s good enough. Will I be willing to except a misaligned beam, or a complete part missing knowing that I have enough information on hand to build it correctly? Is there an excuse of I don’t have the right tools, or space so I should be excepting less of myself or am I driving myself to prefection? Is this the best that I can do at this time with my modeling skills? I don’t think so. I think I can do better, but in the rush to build something I’ve put aside high standards and have accepted below par work. Maybe I’m just to analabout everything…
I thought that this might spark an interesting conversation among the members here about modeling standards and what we as an individual are willing to accept.

#28

Craig Townsend said:
I’m not saying that I wouldn’t finish the build, it’s just a thought process to determine what’s good enough. Will I be willing to except a misaligned beam, or a complete part missing knowing that I have enough information on hand to build it correctly? Is there an excuse of I don’t have the right tools, or space so I should be excepting less of myself or am I driving myself to prefection? Is this the best that I can do at this time with my modeling skills? I don’t think so. I think I can do better, but in the rush to build something I’ve put aside high standards and have accepted below par work. Maybe I’m just to analabout everything… I thought that this might spark an interesting conversation among the members here about modeling standards and what we as an individual are willing to accept.

Great thought, Craig, with lots of possibilities. I’d sure suggest starting a new topic post about that if you want to get something going.

#29

I second Bruce’s thought.

I think every modeler has some sort of personal standards and that is what they have to be is personal. Since being on here I have seen people very willing to accept the ten foot rule for their modeling standard. I have also seen some modelers here that very obviously adhere to a much tighter tolerenace and I fall somewhere in between. Not one of us is wrong either. When I was new to forums I found out that rivot counter is actually an insult to many, carrying with it a negative stigma. On the other hand I have also seen people make comments about people’s work that comes very close to fitting the bill.

So at the end of the day should you accept less than what you know your acabable of… good question. I know personally I would never get any project done if I had that mentality based on my own self-evaluation. I always see the flaws in my work and I always know I can do better. So I balance my ability at the time with desire to finish and tell myself next the I will do better and really strive to do so.

What is important is that is what works for me. You have to find what works for you. I do believe whereever you go with it, the next one had be much better or you haven’t gained anything. My son is a great little hockey player, I tell him how he should be proud of himself, but he can also be twice as good as he presently is and should strive to be better. Not to anyone else’s standard but to his own. He does and it shows with every passing game. I think we cheat ourselves when we accept our own personal progress as having reached its limit. No matter where we started from or where we are we can always do better and should try to do so. But we also can not let ourselves get stuck in rut of and have no progress at all.

Good thoughts. But finish the snow dozer, I am looking forward to it.

#30

With a couple of ‘free’ days from school (boy’s basketball team made it to state, so we got Thursday & Friday off), I’m forcing myself to work on this project in the evenings after everyone else goes to bed. I’m trying to figure out a mock up of the side panels to see if I should model it with Z channel and .010" sheets, or solid .100" stock.

I was able to acquire copies of the drawings of the side wings for the Dozer, so I thought I would take a step back and work on those. The drawings show that the side wings are 21’ x 40" made up of 5" H beams covered on with 1/4" sheet. Here’s the problem, some of the photo’s I have show the entire backside as covered, while other photo’s have just portions covered, but it’s even more complex.

Here’s the photo’s from various dates. Left Side.

Rightside

And finally the detail shot.

Detail and viewing wise it seems more reasonable just to model it as visible H beams and the support structures, but if this model ends up actually working as a plow and not a static display than a solid approach would be better.

So far I can’t find any commercial styrene “H” beams that scale out to 5". Everything is either too big, or too small. Keeping in mind that styrene shapes are offered in similar brass shapes, I’m doubting that a 5" H beam could be found?

#31

Craig,

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Build one with the undersized beams (4.5" approx) and build one with the oversized beams (5.5" approx). See if either satisfies you. Then you may be inspired to make the 5" beams yourself…or not.

#32

Brian Briggs said:

Craig,

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Build one with the undersized beams (4.5" approx) and build one with the oversized beams (5.5" approx). See if either satisfies you. Then you may be inspired to make the 5" beams yourself…or not.

I started last night trying to make my own beams, starting with 0.010" sheet with strips of .030" glued on to represent the flange of the H beam. The web is only .010" thick, so I’m worried it might not be strong enough. When I order more styrene, I think I’ll order some undersized beams and see what they look like. I’m fairly confident that a 010" web would work, as that’s the thickness of the webs on the crossbearers and it seems to hold fairly well once both flange ends are glued together.

#33

Craig Townsend said:

Brian Briggs said:

Craig,

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Build one with the undersized beams (4.5" approx) and build one with the oversized beams (5.5" approx). See if either satisfies you. Then you may be inspired to make the 5" beams yourself…or not.

I started last night trying to make my own beams, starting with 0.010" sheet with strips of .030" glued on to represent the flange of the H beam. The web is only .010" thick, so I’m worried it might not be strong enough. When I order more styrene, I think I’ll order some undersized beams and see what they look like. I’m fairly confident that a 010" web would work, as that’s the thickness of the webs on the crossbearers and it seems to hold fairly well once both flange ends are glued together.

I’m sure the .010 web will look great every time you open the wings up and show it off Craig. I’m also sure the .010 web will crumple like a sheet of tin foil the first time you attempt to use the wings to move snow. Now if you could only make 1:1 snow fall on your RR in 1:29 scale only maybe you’d be OK.

Please take this as MHO, all in all the build is great and I’m waiting on pics

#34

Craig, I share Dave M’s opinion on the .010 styrene web. I would go with a thicker material and feather the ends to scale if that appearance is important to you. Your other opting would be to make them from brass, but again, even in brass that thin a section has very little crush strength.

#35

Bob “IA3R#7” Cope said:

Craig, I share Dave M’s opinion on the .010 styrene web. I would go with a thicker material and feather the ends to scale if that appearance is important to you. Your other opting would be to make them from brass, but again, even in brass that thin a section has very little crush strength.

After poking around on the web last night and trying to figure out if this idea would work, I came to a similar conclusion. I’m going to stick with .156" H beams from Evergreen as they have a much better overall structural design being a one piece (extrusion? How is different styrene shaped, anyone know?). .156" is also available in brass as well for the future ideas. This is one of the problems with having such detailed drawings, where do you compromise on scale if the exact part doesn’t scale down? If I didn’t have the drawings, I think I would have just picked up a sheet of .125" styrene and called it good enough. But now that I have more information, replicating it becomes a challenge.

My other idea last night was to simple cut out the both sides of the flanges of the H beam out of solid .030" sheet, cutting out the empty space between the H beams, but that got thrown out as well, then make the flange somehow out of thinner stock.

I just need to bit the bullet and order more styrene… Told the wife last night that I should buy one of every kind that Evergreen sells, as it seems like I always need the one size smaller or bigger than what I have on hand! And with no LHS, I can’t run down and pick it up. Birthday present? Some Evergreen styrene please? (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-undecided.gif)

#36

Craig,

I acquired my supply of Styrene over several years. I realized that as you stated, it seemed I always needed a size I didn’t have on hand. Eventually I decided to fill in all the gaps and now have at least one sleeve of every size and shape. As I use them up I try to buy a replacement before the supply runs out. Once in a while I go thru and assess where I 'm at in my inventory and place an order accordingly.

Here’s a picture of my styrene supply area in my basement…some might say I’m better equipped than a LHS…they may be right in some cases.

#37

A few years back I was checking out a LHS that was going out of business, and they were selling everything, including a Evergreen styrene rack with a decent selection still on rack. I was being to cheap at the time and I passed it up, but now I regret it big time. I would have stocked me for awhile and given me a place to store everything. Now that I’ve got a growing family, the hobby money is even less.

#38

A note to the evergreen shapes. If you go to Evergreen.com they have a lot of their shapes in bags of 20 pieces and they will also do special quantities for large amounts.

No I do not have any affiliation with evergreen.

#39

Dave Marconi said:

A note to the evergreen shapes. If you go to Evergreen.com they have a lot of their shapes in bags of 20 pieces and they will also do special quantities for large amounts.

No I do not have any affiliation with evergreen.

When I worked at a LHS in Kirkland, WA, one of the guys used to order directly from Evergreen because they were just up the road a few miles in Woodinville, WA. He used to get custom lengths and sizes… Now I know why!

#40

While I love to work in styrene, I just don’t see it being very useful here. I would consider using brass shapes from K&S.

They have a 1/8" brass H column. Yes, it’s a bit small at 3.6" scale, but it is strong.

Or, how about the 3/16" I column? 5.4" scale. Yes, it’s an I, but you could make it look more like an H by using some JB Weld to glue some thin brass strips to either side.

Of course, like you said, each of those choices is a scale compromise, but if it ever gets outside the strength will be worth it.