What's on my desk 3: Return of the Build Log.

Howdy!

Mercedes interior parts are coming along nicely. Seats have red lines, still need light tan lines along the other squares.

The body is in the process of painting. Only the gloss coat to go. I'll have a lot more to show next week!

San Francisco tram: the outer benches are done. First: a good sanding to make everything smooth.

Next: a layer of Oak Dye. This is like wood stain; a thin, translucent liquid that will colour the wood while preserving and emphasizing the natural grain. Unlike regular wood stain, this one from OcCre is acrylic and odorless.

Each seat gets a metal armrest. These didn't fit well, so I had to add (and sand) a small wooden block to the middle supports. When finished, the benches look like this:

OcCre would have you paint the entire backside grey, but I opted to only paint the supports and use the Oak dye for the planking.

Up next are the interior doorways. These are cut from the sprues in one piece, then painted in three colours on the outside and dyed on the inside. Some masking was required and after several painting sessions this is what they look like:

The insides are dyed and this is where I made my first mistake. As mentioned, the oak dye is quite liquid. If you apply too much to the thin wooden parts, they will start to warp. Which is what happened to me (you can see the right one is not laying flush on the table). I put them in between sheets of paper and put the paint box on top for a few days, hoping they would straighten out while drying. This wasn't completely succesful, but I'm sure with the additional supports it will work out fine.

Finally, I glued the walls and side supports in place. The benches have received a satin coat and are now complete.

Up next: the middle benches need to be assembled and painted and some wood filler used for the walls.

The Mercedes should be nearing completion by next week.