What's on my desk? Part 12.
Hello and welcome to a sunny Tuesday!
Good news on the Mercedes front: the paint coat is finally done to my satisfaction. I even succeeded in filling some paint scratches. This week I'll have to add a gloss coat. To be continued...
The San Francisco cable car is nearly done. Funny thing happened last week. A customer came in, looked around the shop and then saw this car on my desk. Turns out he was actually from San Francisco (what are the odds?). I still had one on the shelf, so that was a quick sale. :-)
All I have to do is finish painting the handholds, bells and headlights.
This week saw the ornamentations installed. These were actually quite troublesome and a first big letdown of the kit, because they don't fit. At all. They're supposed to fit snugly into the 90 degree angles of the support posts. But the big curve doesn't go all the way. One of the two angles will float off the wood. Look at the picture:
There's no ready solution for this. I tried grinding the part until I got a 90° angle overall, but then you lose a lot of detail and it still doesn't sit well. I also tried bending the leg carefully, but the metal is too brittle, with this as a result:
The two middle ones touch, and this also is not akot: the legs are too long and need a bit cut off. My trusty Dremel and a small grinding disc made short work of that.
In the end, I just glued them in and thought I'd fill in the gap with putty. During the build meet on Wednesday, one of the guys suggested a better solution: cut and glue in some small wedges, completing the curve.
It wouldn't have been readily apparent, being half hidden underneath the roof, but I'm happy I fixed it and I think it looks a lot better this way.
Once the curlies were fixed, it was time to add the little footrests to the edge of the floor. The one at the end needed a little corner cut out, so I used my trusted method of numbering them so I knew where they go after painting.
I cleaned up the paint lines on the tram and got ready to stick on the stickers. These are actual stickers, not decals or dry transfers. Looking at the sheet, I noticed something:
Yes, there's a full-size guide printed on the sheet for how to bend the poles. I mentioned having some difficulties doing this in the previous blog. This just goes to show that you need to examine every part before starting a kit. :-)
Anyway, with the stickers stuck on the tram now looks like this:
I expect to finish it this week. I found a nice picture of this exact car on the interwebs**. There's some differences (roof & bell colour, hitch in the bumper, rubber strip around the roof, ad panel on the side), but I think they're minor enough not to bother. What I did find cool is that the front central window can apparently be opened.
The two passengers are also finished, but this is a bit of surprise, so I'll say nothing more for the moment... :-)
Some shop news: I've now got a chalk board to put outside and I'm always looking for punny/funny messages to write on it. If you have any ideas, let me know!
**Copyright information: public domain picture found on Picryl. https://picryl.com/media/cable-car-in-historic-chinatown-in-san-francisco-california-1