Right at the beginning

Although i can use and have access to a mill a lathe other specialist tools and have reasonable modelling skill the actual art of scale building of a working engine and vehicle is going to be a bit out of reach at present.

So i ask, is it wrong to start from from the get go and build over several years using all and sundry on here to assist with constant questions?

cheers

Malc

You may well find yourself making tools or jigs to make tools to do the particular job at that time!

In the future this will leave you with two problems

1 Where did I put the toll to do .....?

and

2 What does this tool, that i made for some job, do?

Howard

Hi Howard

One thing i have never been good at is making a jig or a tool to make a tool, but from what i have seen on here it seems thats a must and something i need to deal with, and lets not get near the topic of 'where is........................' :-D

Just pick a model

There are soooo many wonderful models i decided that i need to build something that means something to my history, so impossible as it may seem :

An AEC V8 mammoth major 6, already started on the engine and thanks to a generous member on here i have the material for the camshaft safely tucked away.

The drawings are ongoing as will be seen as i go through my list of 'how do i do this?''

Judged by what my colleague at C A V who dealt with A E C said, that was quite a vehicle!

You eat an elephant, one bite at a time!

Howard

1st account...correct

2nd account, i just love that saying, its the only way i'll get through this one

ME teaches you a lot about long term projects, I'm the sort of guy who was used to boxing everything off on a job within a week tops

My tears of rage and gnashing of teeth turned into a greater understanding of a different path

There's also the learning curve for a widget

Widget1 takes a month

Widget2 a fortnight

Widget3 a week

And widget 3 tends to be the best of the bunch

Edited By Ady1 on 03/10/2020 10:43:37

Ady1, that sounds just like my portfolio

Time to accept there will be failures.

This morning in case, i printed a v8 engine block with a view to using it as a template for preparation of the chassis position etc for engine mounts, trouble is, in my haste to get the pva out i put too hot water on it and it warped. It now sits in the bin and off we go to set another on its way.

My experience does not follow the tidy progression Ady suggests. For me it is often the start as having made the widget, you then need it to use it to make something else before you are in a position to make the jig you needed in the first place!

Brian

Hi, I've been in engineering all my working life and I still have failures occasionally, sometimes they are retrievable other times not, but you gain experience. I once remember fitting a wrong type of bearing at work, that cost over £300.00 apart from downtime and labour costs etc., many years ago on a callout, it lasted about 4 hours tops, luckily the machine had a bit of a design fault and was prone to knocking out these bearings quite frequently, so no real questions were asked. The machine did have modifications shortly after this, which were already in the pipeline. However, now all my failures are my own and the cost in time and money is also my own.

Regards Nick.

In a way its good to know that even the best can make mistakes.

I have and always will put people with high levels of skill on a sort of pedestal, reasoning being it gives me something to aim for, work towards, not for the want of being on a pedestal but to know i have made the grade where i show off the work answer questions with confidence and be in a potion to pass what i know and have learnt on, also knowing that they themselves are improving too makes it harder to reach that goal but without a challenge what is it all about.

My problem so far is i am doing the drawings and where i have known dimensions i have used them with great effect, trouble is information is hard to come by and a lot of people on other forums see me as an outsider and just on the take and do not want to pass the info on in some cases.

As an example this leads me to looking at a location on a chassis and saying that's very very close, but in my mind i know its not right and then i think of the precision engineers who would keep on and on and on until they got the right info, then and only then make a start. I can start to see with the replies above included just why it takes so long to make a true to scale of anything and if its semi scale accept the differences and if its true scale then it should be 'here's the documentation to show it'

I could be well off here and out of line, its how i see it and how i saw it as a young mechanic.

So i ask, is it wrong to start from from the get go and build over several years using all and sundry on here to assist with constant questions?

Welcome to the forum but the answer to that one is maybe!

When a beginner over-reaches himself and gets into difficulties because basic skills haven't been learnt yet, there's a risk answers will whizz clean over his head. Can lead to a breakdown of communication and mutual frustration: beginner is knocked back, maybe made to feel stupid, while the 'experts' soon get fed up having their perfectly good answers misunderstood! Could end badly despite good will on both sides. Probably not a good idea for a complete beginner to take on a difficult project and hope the Forum will put everything right in a kind of extended tutorial.

Personally, I learn best by moving forward step by step, tackling moderate challenges until I've 'got it', gradually building up. Depends on what sort of model engineering is pursued but potentially there's a lot to learn about materials, tools, design, drawings, planning, workshop technique and perhaps maths. I made progress by mixing what I really wanted to make (experimental), with a range of modelling projects - simple workshop accessories, moving up to simple engines. Not because I'm particularly interested in engines, but because building a few stretched and developed my skills. Forum helped me enormously, because my beginner questions were asked at the right level, and that's been maintained as my skills developed.

Others learn best by jumping in at the deep-end. Motivation is important, and making progress by building one's heart's desire could be far more productive than my staged approach. Fine, but don't expect sympathy if caught in a storm half-way up Mont Blanc wearing shorts and a plastic mac due to not studying mountaineering and the weather forecast.

The forum is excellent at answering questions and keen to help so why not give it a try. Just try to strike the right balance.

Cheers,

Dave

We all learn in slightly different ways: dive in deep, spend days researching every last theoretical detail before even opening the workshop door, have a basic idea of what's needed before having a go and discovering what we don't know etc.

Readily available support and advice helps everyone of those, although the middle one has to be very careful not to be completely paralysed by analysis.

The important thing is that the parts get made.

Hi Dave

An excellent post and one that i can fully relate to.

I owned a model shop in my early days, was a mechanic and have built many rc models over the years, i have used with moderate success a sx3 mill and a lathe both with DRO (DRO is new to me), i use 3dprinters and i am quite ofay with Fusion 360, I say this because i do not want either to waste members time and resources and feel this gives me a good shot at understanding some replies to my questions.

As an example i understand how a full chassis rail is formed for full size truck, the rail has a curved profile top to bottom and left to right but not compound, i will be asking advice on how you would make a model one, i am hoping that this might offer a good balance, thank you gain for the post

Malc

Well put and thank you

Pick a simple part from the drawings and have a go! Worst case you have something that goes in the bin but you have learned something, best case you have taken the first step towards the complete model.

Looking back I picked the worst possible part to start to learn with; I made the lubricator for my britannia. However I'm pleased to say it was useable, and is probably been one of the better bits I've made. I

Jon, i want to start with a chassis frame, this way i can add to the main part, trouble is if i get the dimensions wrong of this then the rest will never fit

It seemed a simple part until i found the layout of it. I dont suppose it will do no harm to start here

Picture of my drawing and the other picture with permission of Richard Staines brochure collection.

The rail i was originally going to use Ali channel, but now i am thinking Steel but its the profile making that i need to get around as mentioned a bit earlier

Delighted to see you speak Fusion360 Bernie!

Just to get the ball rolling because I'm no expert:

Is the problem making the U channel, putting the crank in it and/or working out how long the unbent channel needs to be?

• If not available from the plan, I'd get the length of the unbent channel by bending a bit of thickish copper wire to fit the plan, then straighten it out and measure it, scaling as necessary.
• I'd mill the straight U channel from solid mild-steel. (Full size would have been rolled, but that's too hard.)
• Mild steel can be bent, I'm on thin ice here but in the absence of better advice I suggest making a jig consisting of suitably hefty removable pins let into a strong plate. Mild steel bends easily at red-heat, so the straight channel is warmed at the bend point, then plonked into the jig and worked around each pin in turn until the crank is done. I'd notch the channel edges so they don't buckle at the bends. Body fill the notches if strength doesn't matter at all, silver solder is good for strong models, safety critical should be welded.

If you have Fusion, the whole bus could be modelled and assembled in CAD to confirm dimensions, holes and joints etc. Not necessary to model every little detail because most designs have a limited number of key points that have to be accurate, then everything else relates to them. Be great if a loco modeller would describe how they do this sort of work rather than me mislead you by guessing.

Dave

Two thoughts on chassis rails making for vehicle models:

1. for smaller scale frame rails a flat rail shape could be cut out and strips welded or soldered on to form the rail

2. for larger scale frame rails, a "buck" or form could be cut out of heavy steel to the inside dimension of the rail, then oversize sheet steel / brass / copper clamped to it and formed down into rails with hammering by dead blow or rawhide hammers. The sheet would need to be annealed several times to be formed without cracking. Afterward the rail height could be filed back or round back with a Dremel type rotary tool. This method is like the process used for steam boiler flanged plates.

There are some books by a guy called Mr Gerald Wingrove that show the best car modeling and techniques I have ever seen. Well worth a look if you can find them. There used to be a website, worth a Google.

Just food for thought. Cut some metal, have a go. It is a great way to relax no matter if the results that day are great or go in the bin.