What's on my desk? Part 9.

Hello and welcome to a new week.

What have I been up to last week?

Mercedes-wise, not much has changed. I've failed to make any real progress and am starting to really appreciate the skills of model car builders. My paint coat was nice and smooth, and then I ruined it by applying too much GX-100. This gloss coat needs to be thinned a lot. If you then spray it too thick, the thinner starts softening the paint and it runs off. Thus ruining the roof of my Mercedes. So: resprays (again!). One day it will be okay... I hope.

San Fran cable car time!

I painted the roof (which I thought was nice and smooth) only for a lot of pits and imperfections to show up. My good-enough-itis reared its ugly head, until someone pointed out the pitting... So more filler was applied. You can also see the planks prepared for the next step in the build: the roof of the skylight.

Inside the tram, the handhold stanchions needed to be added. These are made up of brass rods 10 cm long. The instructions say to cut them down to 9 cm and bending them. I bent them to shape from the top but did not cut them down (you'll see why in a minute). Then they were painted white, using some very high-tech manner to hold them. :-)

To install the stanchions, you need to feed them through holes in the floor and pin them up against the roof supports. This is where not cutting the posts comes in. Having an extra centimeter to manipulate the posts into place from the underside is a definite plus. Once glued in place, you can just snip the ends with an old sidecutter.

And this is how they look in place:

Up next: still more sanding, then painting and building the skylight roof. The internal lights are already painted (just black and white) and fastened to the first, middle plank.

The U-2 has now been completed as far as I can in the shop. It's now coming home with me for painting.

Sunday it's Shopping Sunday in Mechelen. It's the last Sunday I'll be open for the next couple of months. April 7 is the second Holy Day of cycling: Paris-Roubaix. I'll be taking a few days off beginning of May, and June 2nd I'll be attending KMK's ScaleWorld 2024! If you're there, come say hi!