What's on my desk? Part 11.

Welcome to blog post 11. It's almost spring. That means longer days and more modelling time!

The Mercedes body has been resprayed (again...). I really need to buck up and get it done. There's a cool motorcycle under my desk that is eager to be built.

The tram is almost done.

The wooden posts hold handrails and these need brackets to hold them in turn. For this I needed to drill some holes in the 3mm wide wooden slats. This was a bit of  precision work, but it turned out fine. The posts were then glued in and the bottoms filled & sanded. The tram body was then painted in this nice bright blue colour.

Next up were the handrails. These consist of two pieces: a bent piece that slots into a hole in the footstep, and a smaller piece between the top bracket and the roof (except on the corner pieces). The brass rod is thick enough to make this relatively difficult. I guess with proper tools it would be easier, but I did it all by hand. Bend and fit one, then use that as a template for the others. Still, almost every rail needed some slight adjustment to make it fit nicely.

The brackets are a bit too wide for the brass rod, so I used some plastic putty on the top ones to make sure the rails are firmly held in place.

What's left now is painting the rails, fixing some ornaments and adding lights and bells. The ornamentation consists of these curly cornerpieces. I didn't feel like individually brush painting each and every one of these, so I took them home and airbrushed them. Way easier and quicker!

My estimate of 2-3 weeks more work will probably be accurate, so expect a joyous exclamation of DONE!!! in the near future.

See you next week!