Justice City Dioramish

[MartyO]

My vacation this years was a few nights in New England, in particular Bass Rocks, Gloucester. Whale watching was on the agenda and taking pictures of the docks to refresh my memory on how they look weathers and in the water.

The lower part of the piers had mussels (or something that looked like them) on the lower water edge of the piers. Then the upper part of piers were a "Creosote" look. with a moss green transiting between the two regions.

I used IPA and Olive and Must Green chalks to colour the lower parts that were in the water during tidal periods. The regions mostly out of the water got a base stain of India ink. Then watered down hobby black paint was put at the water level and higher. Then I came back with a light brown dye stain to give it the Creosote look.

The back wall was treated the same way.

A few details were added to set the mood for the 10% remaining to be done later.

I hope you like it, I do.

Until next time when I get back to the Dune Buggy.

[MartyO]

Hmm,

Opps!

New Plan is needed.

[MartyO]

I slept on it, or didn't sleep on it, but about it.

The most obvious thing missing from this Run About was the underbody frame and floor. I should have seen it from the beginning, but I was blinded by it.

I made a paper cutout of the underbody, traced it on a .5mm sheet of aluminium and sawed it out. The piece was cut larger to allow me to bend it and file it in place. This was a simple task, that ended up taking a lot of time.

With the bends on the ends, sloping the foot wells and firewall was hindered by the inferior toy casting. I ended up filing the underside of the toy to fit the radius of the bend in the aluminium.

I trip to HomeDepot to get some JB Weld (the steel stuff) to slather on the underbody and the two broken pieces of the car. I tried to fill in any gaps and corroded sections and will file them into the final shape. I may have to do more body work on them to get it looking right.

My plans now include crafting the interior seat, dash, etc. I think I will be using Modelling Clay, because I have some, rather than the JB Weld solid stick stuff.

Thats all for now.

[deemery]

Marty, good progress on an interesting project!  Are you going to use air-dry clay, or just conventional clay and not worry about it "curing"?

dave

[MartyO]

Dave,

I intend to us Sculpey, which is oven cured.

I do expect to get some shrinking and hope to minimize it.

[MartyO]

Boy this little "Dune Buggy" is just full of surprises.

The JB Weld is tough stuff! I had to use the jeweller's drill with. diamond tip to grind out the excess epoxy from various places. That stuff is sticky and is hard to spreads around smoothly. a spray of IPA helps, but it not a perfect solution for =those tough corners. The jeweller's drill will play an important role in re-shaping the metal toy.

There were spots of missing metal around the front of the the car that had to be built-up to match the opposite side. I used a scrap of paper to form a wall for the epoxy to stick to. When the epoxy dried, 24 hrs later, I could tear of the paper and sand it smooth, put grinding.

In the third picture you can see the "globs" of epoxy that needs to come out.

This took a long time to get it close to what I wanted.

Next is the seats.

[MartyO]

The seats could be done easily by buying some, however I just don't do things the easy way. So I am scratch building from a mix of styrene and oven baked clay and anything else that I need.

Searching around my scrap bin I found a cut-off from a storm window build for the cold winter winds. This piece just needed some loving hacking to make it work for the base of the bench seats. After roughly measuring the inside width I hacksawed off a section to the width and a a piece from the back of the styrene to make the rear window sill/storage shelf.

Then began the laborious task of fitting and figuring how to make the bench look realistic and pretty at the same time. Well at least functional.

Hmm, not a bad guess, it goes downhill from here, maybe.

[MartyO]

While I was pondering, I figured that I needed to build the dash board first so I can ge the spacing for the seats to be positioned correctly. Getting this fine detail gets tougher to build when you have had coffee, nasal spray and allergy meds all in the same morning. My hands were shaking like an after shock of an earthquake.

This sheet of styrene served as the base and floor (this helped raise the seat to a better level) and extremely thin strips of styrene were added to represent the dashboard and pedals. A hole to the steering will shaft were drilled and this assembly was squeezed into the tub of the car. I will clean it up later just before finally assembly is done.

Now to the to carve the bench seat and the fold down backs of the split seats. While this cary is great, it was a bit too soft to work. I would have liked to to be harder. There is art modelling clay/epoxy that you can work for a few hours and is left overnight it cures to a very hard. I use the handle end of a jewellers file to get a cross-hatched sticked pattern on the seats. However, I messed it up and and went a different route.

From the back view of the ca, you can seat the seats are about right, however, again it is not in balanced.

Marty's "brilliant" mind hits again!

I needed the ensure the seats were hard and I could work them into the shape I wanted.  I cut smaller single layer paper towels and used thin CA to glue them to the clay (BTW: There were already baked I the oven for 15 minutes and left over night.) Now I can grind shape to my hearts content.

You have to wait until I figure out how to finish of the rest of the interior. Until next time.

[MartyO]

This model car is really not a good model. It is bent, twisted and has all sorts of unique features. So on with the show...

I previous talked about the seats were not going as I intended, It even go worse. Too hard to file, CA did not bond with dried clay and just looked too puffy. However, the idea of puffy seats with tapered headrests is a good one, it was too time-consuming to get it perfect. They looked great if you were 6' feet away, but that was not good enough for me. I need ay least 3 foot view.

So I repeated the cutting the styrene and carved the seat cushions in that. You will see them later. Now I sprayed on some black Floquil enamel paint and let it dry for 48 hours before looking at it. The metal had been scuffed and cleaned with Acetone as you would normally do when painting metal.

The next post is 48 hours later...

[MartyO]

I then began working on the interior details. Boy this was lots of fun, not!

The re-made seats against the black exterior looks great. The dashboard looks great also, too bad it is not going to stay that way.

I said the body was all twisted and with this type of metal, it is VERY scary to try to bend it without it breaking. This is a common thing with these types of metal toys. This is evidenced by the broken Axel supports on the bottom of the car. I used JB Weld to re-build the Axel supports and sticking the axels in place permanently. You can see the front half of the car is not in alignment with the backend.

Here comes a whoose!

I used a bit of IPA to clean the floor of the car to CA the seats in place and it melted away the paint. The paint just did not bond at all and I haven't a month to wait for the paint to totally cure.

So out comes the big guns, Toro Red Touch paint from when I new mower had flaking paint.

The first coat was horrible. All sorts of trash on it.

1000 Grit wet sandpaper solved that and a second coat looked better, at least from 3 feet.

[MartyO]

We are coming to the end of building this Dune Buggy.

The wheels get a coat of flat black spray paint. and then mounted on the axels. The axels were trimmed to be flush with the hub of the wheels.

The next part is harder to explain - Weathering.

I dulled the paint with lacquer thinner, it dissolves the paint. If you apply a bit of thinner on a rag and quickly wipe the paint, the gloss disappears immediately. Sometimes the thinner will remove more paint and will leave black/shiny metal exposed.

This exposed paint if touched up with a very very very small dab of black paint, then three tones of "rust" chalk is applied over top of the still wet paint. Then I used my finger to smudge the colours together, very lightly. One or two quick touches and your done.

Finding out were to "rust" is simple, it is were water would collect or were driving over the dunes would cause damage to the car.

Then some grey chalk is applied to sort of blend everything together. I use a softy makeup blending brush to aide in this.

Money shots next post/

[MartyO]

Here are the money shots for the Dune Buggy.

Notice how the peeling paint on the garage walls and lighting sets the scene for the garage that loves to work on cars rather then maintain the premises.

I start a new build in the next post(s) that will last a few months.

tata for now.

[MartyO]

Now that the Dune Buggy has been completed I can return to the waterfront. There a few things that had to be updated and improved on.

Firstly, the the dock pilings were unfinished and need help. I added wire straps around the pilings to allow the docks to stay in place and move up and down with the tides. The algae and wet look had to be added and floatation devices were added under the docks to keep the dock afloat.

The second thing was the handrails for the stairs going to the dock area.

Road barriers still need to be added along with handrails at the top of the dock area to keep people from falling onto the docks.

Now I need to put my attention to the other end of the dock. I wonder what will go here and will it be a kit?

[deemery]

Marty, that came out great.  I appreciate the discussions of what when wrong and how you fixed it.

dave

[Zephyrus52246]

Great job on the garage and the dune buggy.  The night shot is quite dramatic. 

Jeff