Starting to show signs of a good build, Robin well done finding the clipart badge makes all the difference.

Regards

Trev

Nice work Robin. Just catching up on you build, looks like it is going very nicely.

Mark

Man, I am happy you are having so much fun with this! It seems the kit went to someone who is gonna make a work of art!

Now, about those decals! You and Roy should pair up, and put them out via Roy’s eBay store. I know a lot of builders out there would love them.

Best,

Mark

Grateful thanks again for those kind words from Mark, Andy, Big Mark and Chris! Thanks for that Andy, I do have a 'Range' store in the area, about five miles but not on any direct route (other than my cycle), when the weather improves I'll try and have a look out there!
Ok then, Photo 1 illustrates the next pack of parts. This is continuing on with the wheel, top left is the main section of the disc brake, then the two parts of the wheel hub, bottom left are the upper and lower halves of the air intake which cools the brakes, below the gold hub is a little bracket which goes on the bigger silver disc brake part (and later encloses the discs themselves), in the centre is a set of silver doo-dahs which go into the rim of the silver hub (absolutely no idea what the heck they are for) and finally, below them a set of Type A screws. I must check to see if these Type A’s are the same as the Type A’s from the earlier pack, at the moment I’m writing the section and phase numbers on the packets as I come to them. One thing I do like about this kit is that they give you a spare item or two in the small fittings bags – in this pack you need four of those silver thingies but you get five and there were a couple of spare A and B screws in the last pack too (which is why I’m labelling the bags!)
Photo 2 shows the two wheel hub halves out of the pack. The chrome one on the left is a plastic component and if you look closely at the 11 o’clock and 1 o’clock positions at the top you can just make out two of the holes for the silver things to fit into (and almost at 12 o’clock in Photo 3). The gold hub however is a big weighty metal casting with a pre-painted silver tyre air valve set into the bottom. There are four holes set in the bottom, two smaller ‘nut’ shapes ones and two larger rimmed holes. On the rear of the silver hub are four corresponding lugs or pegs. The small ones fit into the nut holes and the two larger hollow lugs fit the rimmed holes – this is where the hubs are joined together with the two screws. Unfortunately for me, the gold hub also has detail moulded on the reverse side as shown in Photo 3 which shows the two hubs in their joined position. The only way to cast both sides at once would be with a two part silicone mould, the problem then is the likelihood of air bubbles getting trapped inside. I decided therefore to attempt to cast the two hubs in three parts – a single mould for the chromed rim and a pair of moulds for the gold one. Photo 4 shows the first two moulds under way. The lego boxes each have a base of softened plasticene. The silver hub is pushed down to the bottom of the rim, with the four pegs buried in the plasticene. The gold hub beside it has been pressed down into the plasticene and the liquid silicone poured first inside it and then allowed to overflow to fill up the rest of the mould just above the top of the metal hub. Photos 5 to 7 illustrate the three moulds with the kit original parts and the resin castings alongside. Photo 5 is the silver hub. To cast the replica the rubber mould is pulled out slightly to allow the resin to be poured into the gap filling up the mould until the ring with the holes in it is covered but not the raised central disc. Because the mould is open ended, any air bubbles can escape easily leaving the nice casting on the right. Note there are no pegs on the replica! In Photo 6 we are looking at the bottom of the mould which was seen filled up in Photo 4, this is the part that was pushed into the plasticene. Again the mould rim is pulled out a bit to fill it up until the resin flows between the four raised quadrants and fills the central shaft. The casting is shown on the right, perfect apart from one small air bubble in the top rim (at about the 1 o’clock position) this doesn’t matter at all though as the entire rim sits inside the rubber tyre once fitted!
The third section was a little more complicated. I needed to create just the detail on the reverse of the metal hub (with the tyre valve) and to do that I had to ensure the silicone couldn’t get inside the hub (effectively entombing the whole thing in rubber!) This was accomplished by pushing soft plasticene in from the back or inside as shown in the inserts in Photo 7 sealing off the quadrants, the central shaft and the four rim holes. Once that was done the hub was pushed down into a new lego box mould with a soft plasticene base and silicone poured in until the whole thing was covered under a centimetre or so depth. The resulting mould is shown in the middle, to cast this part, the resin is poured in slowly just until the quadrants are almost covered but not quite! This casting is so thin its best to leave it overnight before attempting to remove it from the mould, the others can be removed much sooner but care must be taken not to deform the hubs whilst pulling them out of the deep moulds (overnight is better really). The rear detail casting is shown on the right. Taken earlier, Photo 8 was the mould with the sealed hub in place just prior to the pouring of the silicone rubber.
So the result of those three moulds is the line up shown in Photo 9. You can see that unimportant little air bubble up the top more clearly in this shot (I love it when the bubbles are ‘unimportant’!) The most important part that comes next is the sanding down procedure that ensures that these three components have the same height as the model kit’s two parts but I’ll show that in the next installment. That left just one more small addition to model – those little silver thingies. The mould for them is shown in Photo 10. This one was slightly different in that I didn’t need a soft plasticine base, instead, I glued the four beadlock bolts (yes I’ve just re-read the official instructions again and that’s what they are – the silver hub is a beadlock apparently and the golden one is a wheel hub) anyway, I glued them onto a narrow lego block with a tiny drop of Deluxe Card Glue and used one of my lego bases I found in the local B&M toy section, building up a small wall around them as shown in the photo. After mixing up a much smaller quantity of silicone than the other moulds required I ended up with the diddy mould seen in Photo 11. A pouring in of some resin later resulted in the set of bolts shown in Photo 12. Now unlike the big hubs, which were better with a longer cure, these bolts are the opposite. Removing the block from the mould after an hour or so, the resin is set hard but still soft enough to slice off the block using the razor blade in its handle as seen in Photo 13 – leave these overnight and the resin could become too hard to slice and would need to be sawn off instead. The beadlock bolts are shown fitted in place in the final Photo 14. I was really pleased with the way they fitted, didn’t need to even glue them in, just pushed them in from outside and they snapped into place with a satisfying click! The back of one of those bolts is indicated by the black arrow in the photo. Now it did occur to me that I could have simply put the kit bolts into the kit rim before I created the rubber mould (I forgot to actually) but those little protruding bolt heads in the rim are almost begging for an air bubble during the casting process so overall, with them fitting so well, I’m glad now that I left them off to add separately.
The second part of this section will see how the three parts of the hub come together after a few additions along with some of the pitfalls I came across designing the castings and the solutions I found (plus actually painting the things at long last which I haven’t got to yet).
Until then, stay safe, get your jabs (my second is next week, the day before I go to have my broken tooth looked at ) and Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

This is looking really good Robin!

Regards,
Phil W.

Many thanks as always to Trev, Kev, Ken, Phil and Chris for their kind words! Definitely outside the comfort zone Kev but its nice learning new things and how to do them - plus I just can't ever seem to build a kit 'straight out of the box', no matter big the box (and this comes in a BIG one . Somehow I always have to add something along the way!
So, with the three castings completed, there were just a few minor bits to add (or in the first instance take away) before the parts can be prepared for painting. Photo 15 illustrates the two wheel hubs together. Although it’s not readily noticeable, the resin copy is about 2mm or so higher than the kit original. The reason is those three parts instead of the kit’s two. The thickness of the separate top face detail when added to the rest of the hub has to be the same as the one piece metal moulding. I first measured the overall height of the kit part(s) and rather than continuously measuring the resin copy during the sanding process I decided to make a simple height gauge. Again, at first I was going to take a suitable sheet of plasticard and cut out a hole through which the kit parts would just slide through. Once the resin one could also ‘just’ slide through they would both be the same dimension. Fortunately, before I got to marking it out and cutting a perfectly good piece of plasticard to shape I suddenly realised it would be far easier and take much less plastic if I just made some 2cm strips, long enough to go along the top of the kit hub with enough overhang to poly glue a couple of legs on each end. The simplified gauge is shown in Photo 16.
Before continuing, another thing I had realised during the casting of the first trial hubs was that I could do with a better pouring cup! The need to pull back the top of the silicone mould AND carefully and slowly pour in the resin meant that the round mixing cup dribbled the resin underneath the mouth of the cup and all over the work mat. This didn’t matter to the mat as the resin can be easily removed cleanly with the razor blade tool once cured – but it was a waste of resin which is better spent filling up any little moulds if there’s any left over. I looked on Ebay and found a supply of mixing cups with little pouring spouts – only two problems, they were in China and they were 40ml cups whereas I’m using little 25ml cups which are quite big enough. The solution was easier than expected – taking a 25ml new cup I held the lip up to a candle flame until the plastic was seen to soften and then I used a thin wooden paintbrush handle to push down on the lip. After a couple of seconds of spinning the handle between thumb and forefinger to make sure it didn’t bond to the hot plastic I had a perfect little pouring spout on the previously plain cup as shown in Photo 17. I’ve used the ‘new’ cup to cast a new large hub and it works perfectly, no drips and easier to pour down the inside of the mould!
The next job was to add the stepped hole into the centre of the gold hub as shown by the arrow in Photo 18. Because of the manner in which I had to cast the bigger hub with the extra detail moulding on the top, there is no hole down through the middle of the shaft. Because the hole has a flat shelf part way down I can’t use a ‘normal’ drill bit as that would leave a slanting shelf following the point of the bit. Instead, I needed a special type of drill bit called a “Forstner” as shown in Photo 19. This one had to come from Germany as that was the only place that had them on ebay in the size required! I had a set of five of them in a nice wooden box from the local Tool Box DIY store which I purchased some years ago to set the brass ID disk into the buttstock of my SMLE, but they ranged from 15mm up to 35mm and that’s a little too big for this task as you can see in Photo 20 with the 15mm up against the German Forstner– to fit the kit hub shown in Photo 21 I needed a smaller 8mm bit. This is when the fun and games began! I’d been working on the first casting of the hub carefully sanding down the thickness of the top until the three pieces would fit the height gauge and it was taking ages! I had to go slowly and carefully to avoid imparting a slope to the sanded surface (which I admit I’m very prone to doing!) I then decided it would be a lot easier just to cast another hub, this time ensuring the resin only just covered the top of the mould resulting in a much thinner layer requiring much less sanding! This was achieved and after just a few minutes of rubbing the resin hub in circles on the sand paper it fitted the gauge perfectly. The new casting is shown marked ready for the Forstner in Photo 22. The problem was I hadn’t realised that the new thinner top would also be much more flexible than old ‘ironsides’ the first one I made. Consequently, as I pulled down on the pillar drill with the Forstner bit I didn’t see that the centre was de-forming under pressure, taking the point of the bit off centre as it went down. The result was the chewing up of the central shaft as shown in Photos 23 and 24. Ah well, all part of the learning curve! The solution, after thinking up many more far more complicated fixes is shown in Photo 25. A simple wooden pillar with a drilled out centre to accept the slightly larger bottom section of the central shaft, allowing the delicate cross spokes to rest on the wood as illustrated in Photo 26. The wooden pillar was gripped in the tool vice on the pillar drill with the Forstner positioned over the previously drilled guide hole as shown in Photo 27. With the pillar drill turned on the bit was slowly lowered down and a perfect stepped hole was produced with no de-formation problems this time. Once the flat hole was in I could then use the pillar drill with a smaller 5.5mm standard drill bit to drill up through the shaft from the other side to produce the finished hole(s) as shown in Photo 28. The final casting is shown against the original in Photo 29, all ready to be washed off in soapy water before gluing the top detail piece in place ready for the painting to begin.
Photo 30 shows my brand new collection of home made airbrushing supplies. We have a bottle of Flow Improver in the white top bottle composed of ¾ of a bottle of water (out of the tap down here, distilled if you’re in a hard water region) plus about ten drops of Glycerin. In the centre is my airbrush cleaner; 1/3 Isopropyl Alchohol, 2/3 water and a squirt of concentrated car windscreen wash (easy to tell apart with the blue tint from the windscreen wash) and in the dark blue topped bottle, my acrylic paint thinner: made up of 1/3 Isopropyl, 2/3 water plus ten drops of Glycerin again. All three liquids were made up in cleaned out meat paste jars, even this small quantity will last for months of airbrushing though you could make this up by the gallon if you needed to!
The difference these additives made was very noticeable – the fine spray of the black primer can be seen on the test paper shown in Photo 31. Instead of taking ages to build up the black as it did with the front wing, the hubs took just minutes to cover with light coats leaving a fine smooth finish as seen in Photos 32 and 33.
In the final installment of this ‘side project’, I’ll be completing the painting of the resin hubs (with a final change of plans along the way) and fitting the new parts into the spare tyres. Then, I can get back to the actual model again and move on to the first part of the disk brake (no resin required!)
Until then, stay safe as always and Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Many thanks for that Mark, this is progressing well I'm glad to say!

I would have to say though that alongside these additives to make the paint so much easier to airbrush shown in the previous installment, the other most useful addition is shown in Photo 34 – the screw on airbrush holder! This is so much easier than trying to hold the airbrush in one hand whilst adding more paint or propping it up against the compressor whilst making more paint or getting the cleaner out. I wish I’d got one of these ages ago!
Anyway, the greatly improved airbrushing continued with the gold and duraluminium paints as shown in Photos 35 and 36 with the kit original alongside. It was only when the original was compared to the airbrushed copy I realized that what I had taken for a gold finish was actually more of a brass one! Unfortunately the Metal Colour range doesn’t (yet) include a brass but Vallejo does have that colour in their smaller Model Air range (smaller bottle that is) so I’m just awaiting a delivery of that to see if the copies can be made closer to the kit parts – if not, I do actually like that gold effect and it does match up nicely with some of the bodywork frames shown in the Haynes Manual on the 312 so with a bit of ink washing on the details I’ll go with that.
Photo 37 was just a little experiment, using a spare hub I thought I’d see just what that Metal Colour would be like if airbrushed onto a raw resin casting without either soapy water washing or priming – as you can see – not bad covering power at all!
A quick comparison of the kit colours and the resin copies is shown in Photo 38, the resin ones on the right, are finished in the Duraluminium on top and the Gold underneath. The difference in Photo 39 is hopefully more obvious, once the gold had been lightly over-sprayed with the Vallejo Model Air Brass, the difference between the resin copy hub and the metal kit part is negligible! Now that the colour was acceptable, the next stage was to pick out the details with a wash of Citadel Skaven Brown acrylic. This was used on both the ‘chrome’ hub in Photo 40 and the now Brass hub,(both sides on the larger brass one). Just before carrying on, Photo 41 shows the ‘upgrade’ to the height gauge I made to check the size of the triple layered resin hub. Using just the plasticard gauge on its own meant checking each time that I was actually holding it dead vertical – this little set up does that automatically. The gauge is liquid-poly glued to an offcut of Perspex with a couple of strengthening supports glued in as well. Now I just slowly push the hub stack through the hole, sanding down until it fits!
I also discovered a way to (almost) cut out one of the stages in casting the bigger hub! Photo 42 shows the piece of silicone that I originally thought was a piece of waste! This was stuck on the top of the mould and I actually had to pull it off in order to get the original kit metal hub back out of the mould. It never occurred to me that it might actually be a part of the mould though. The slightly redder parts are where I filled in two large air bubbles after trying a resin cast with the ‘top hat’ placed back in position as per Photo 43. The resulting casting is shown in Photo 44 and as you can see that stepped hole that I needed to drill out with the Forstner bit is faithfully reproduced (unfortunately along with a pair of ‘dimples’ caused by those air bubbles). During the ‘removal’ of those resin lumps I managed to once again prove the fact that human finger flesh is far easier to remove than cured resin – managed to keep the blood off the painted hubs though! I subsequently rummaged through the Ferrari’s big box of bits and dug out the other front wheel hub set (I might as well paint up that one too whilst I’ve got the airbrush set up) and used the metal part to cast a little rubber plug to use for this area. Now I can fill up the mould until the resin just covers the top details as before, then fill up the central shaft and push the plug down inside. Once cured, remove the plug to find a perfect stepped shaft, which just requires the Forstner to be hand turned inside to clean up any defects – this cuts out the entire pillar drill task! The final result of all this extra (but very interesting work) is shown in Photos 45 and 46. Two spare tyres turned into two spare wheels! And finally, since I’ve now got the other set of parts handy, Photos 47 and 48 illustrate the differences between the kit stock parts (on the right) against the re-painted kit parts on the left. Both the front spare wheels are shown in Photo 49 with the rear one still awaiting the painted on lettering. (Done now!)
In the next installment, an object lesson in reading the instructions properly when putting the kit wheels together! Until then, stay safe and Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Some great scratch-work there.
A pity a few more people don't give moulding/casting a try as I'm sure they would see it's not the 'black art' they imagine.

Keep it coming - fantastic stuff.