Old Ambroid/NESL coach kit

[Philip]

  I didn't realize they had all those nice details. Great website!

[jbvb]

Here's the one I finished.  IIRC I cut the oval with a hobby knife and filed the shape smooth.  It also shows how I dealt with a roof warp while keeping it removable in case I wanted to add an interior later.  Screw was 4-40, nut epoxied in place. A screw/nut at each end, opposite the toilet block.

[deemery]

I'm using Bob Parrish's approach to assemble the long scribed siding strips:  https://www.labellemodels.com/manuals/Scribed%20Siding.pdf



I'll go back and glue the pairs together tomorrow, after the glue dries overnight tonight. 

Also, I put a light coat of sanding sealer over the sub-sides.  Since this is old wood, I'm sure this will help the wood take paint.  The second photo shows how I'm weighting the sides, leaving the gaps for the belt rail sticking up, while the sealer dries.




Same thing for the car sub-sides, I'll probably spraypaint the red trim color.  (Car sides will be yellow oxide with red trim.)

dave

[deemery]

I sprayed the subwall the trim color (Vallejo Model Air Fire Engine Red).  You can see a mock-up of the wood pieces that will go on top of that, which will be painted the car body color (Yellow Oxide).


I'm matching this car, which is a resin Silver Crash Colorado Midland prototype car.


I assembled the two sets of scribed wood car siding that go beneath the belt rail.  Tomorrow I'll untape those, check them out, and sand to fit.  

dave

[Jerry]

Dave it looks great so far.

Jerry

[Bernd]

Looking good Dave. I've got several Labella kits. One is of the Hall Scott motor car. Even have the spring drive trucks and motor kit. Going to have dig those out someday.

Bernd

[KentuckySouthern]

  What an interesting, complex, to me, project! 

[deemery]

Besides painting the sub-sides, I put sanding sealer on the molding that goes between the windows (that will be painted the car color), the side pieces with the oval cut-outs, and the fascia boards.  The latter gets painted the trim color.  I also drilled the railing holes in the 2 end castings.  Those are now soaking in a weak vinegar solution, to etch a bit before I paint them.  

Tomorrow I should be able to work on the car scribed siding pieces, sanding, test-fitting, and painting those.  

dave

[friscomike]

Howdy Dave,

The coach is progressing well.  What type of sanding sealer did you use?  Did it raise the grain? 

Have fun,
mike

[deemery]

Howdy Dave,

The coach is progressing well.  What type of sanding sealer did you use?  Did it raise the grain?

Have fun,
mike

I'm using some stuff from Deluxe Materials.  No real impact on the grain that I could see.  I'm working on the fascia board, I want that to be smooth to accept decals well.

dave

[deemery]

Today was mostly detail painting of trim pieces, etc, before assembly.  So nothing to show, but still forward motion.  I may need to do some more work to get the fascia boards as smooth as I want, one still shows some grain.  

dave

[Mr. Critter]

Perhaps use thick ACC as a sealant?  I seem to recall that it did a fair job of filling grain on a plank I inadvertently got some on, back when I still had hair.

[deemery]

Well...  I assembled the scribed siding that runs the length of the car sides, by gluing together the little strips provided in the kit.  The problem is that some of the siding wood is darker, and I couldn't change that with thin coats of paint:

I had three choices:  (1) prime and repaint, which runs the risk of filling in the scribing.  (2) cut new side pieces from NESL wood (1/32 thick, 1/16 scribe spacing).  (3) cut new side pieces from styrene.  

I'm going for #2, because I do have 1/32 thick, 1/16 scribed siding.  Of course, I'll get the full set of pieces from a single piece of wood, so mis-matched wood color won't be a problem.  And I have that tool from batch-cutting scribe siding pieces for the B&M car 'kit' project 2 years ago.  Of course, that will set me back a couple of days in the overall project schedule...

dave

[jbvb]

It might be worth airbrushing a light coat of the same yellow over the uneven brush painting.  Sometimes I've found that airbrushing wood is less sensitive to differences in pore size, possibly because the paint is less liquid after arriving in the air blast.

[deemery]

It might be worth airbrushing a light coat of the same yellow over the uneven brush painting.  Sometimes I've found that airbrushing wood is less sensitive to differences in pore size, possibly because the paint is less liquid after arriving in the air blast.

True, but yellow is one of those colors that doesn't have very good coverage in the first place.  If I were digging out the airbrush, I'd prime and then airbrush the finish color.  Easier to cut new wood sides :-)

add:  This is my 'Duplicutter', inspired by the NWSL tool:

Here's how it works:  I use the existing wood strip from the kit to align the square.  Then I use the T-Track piece at the top of the tool to set the position of the square to the right distance from the (wood) fence on the left.  The white styrene piece at the bottom provides an offset from the bottom of the cutting pad.  (I learned after using this a bit that the wood would chip out if the bottom of the piece of wood was aligned to the bottom of the cutting pad.)  To use, first I cut a new end on the scribed sheeting. (A shop teacher taught me, "never trust an edge you didn't cut yourself.")  Then I slide the stock up so the end aligns with the fence and the bottom aligns with the styrene offset along the square.  I'm using a scalpel blade to make the cut.  (For maximum precision, take where the knife cuts into consideration when setting the square's distance from the fence.)  Repeat as needed to get a number of pieces all the same width as set by the distance between fence and square. 

You can see the 6 pieces (3 per side) I cut using this on the bottom right, and the 2 pieces from the original kit I used to set up the tool at the top right. 

Next step is to glue 3 pieces together to form a new side (twice, once for each side) using the Parrish technique I described earlier.

dave