The other Scalescenes Christmas Card

Back to Scalescenes. The other Scalescenes Christmas card was made for my Mum. She is very creative and makes a lot of her own cards, employing all sorts of skills and techniques. So no pressure then.


I decided to use the Garage Kit T017 and essentially built it as per the instructions. The same snowy glitter effect was used as that on the Cinema card but with the addition of icicles. These were made from clear plastic packing material cut into thin triangles of varying sizes and lengths, then coated with a glittery version of the snow effect. When dry they were glued to appropriate edges and gutters for effect.

I used the garage as I had the idea to put Santa's sleigh on the forecourt. The only problem of course was that I had to build the sleigh from scratch and quickly. The side of the sleigh was drawn out on plastic card and then two thicknesses cut out at the same time producing two blanks. Straight spacers between the sides were added and allowed to dry before adding the outer body. This was gently curved by hand and then one end glued in place. Once dry it was gradually curved and glued in place a little at a time and then excess material trimmed back. Pipes, handles and fittings from the scrap box were then used to make the lights, gauges and rocket engines.

Finally the figures were added. Santa was a business man with his coat extended, waist line increased and a pointy hat added, all tiny amounts of green modelling putty. The elf was a European station guard with paddle, which became a lollipop. He was cut off at the knees and glued back on his boots to reduce his height and a pointy hat added, again with green modelling putty. Finally I had some ground crew brought second hand at a show and employed a couple of them as mechanics trying to fix the sleigh. There was no time to add interior detail to the garage but fortunately the viewers focus is on the sleigh outside. I am pleased to say that Mum was delighted with the results.

Building a Class 71

Taking a break on the blog from buildings I thought I would show you the Class 71 I'm building.

I bought this old MTK kit a couple of years ago from one of our club members before he sold it on our second hand stall.

Now I call it a kit, when really it's no more than a basic body shell with bogey sides. This of course turns my 'cheap kit' into a not so cheap project, as a) it requires a donor vehicle and b) a pantograph. Fortunately I managed to acquire both at the Erith show in Dartford, namely a secondhand Lima Warship for £22 and a pair of pantographs that looked about right for another £18. In order to recoup some of the cost the I'll be selling the body of the Warship and the spare pantograph on e-bay.

The first step was to put the shell together. There were two halves to each side, two ends, two roof sections and a box section that fits in the bottom to help maintain the shape. As the castings were so thick and heavy I decided to solder them together, as I felt gluing them with Araldite was fraught with problems. Sections would have to be held in place until the glue set and then one careless fumble and you get all your parts back in kit form again.

The castings are quite basic and the white metal is very soft by today’s standards. I presume the softness is due to a high lead content, when modern white metal castings tend to contain little or no  lead, having a higher tin content. This makes the metal harder but a little more brittle.  

All the flash and casting tags were removed and the sides flattened by pressing them on glass. All the components were then checked and filed for a good fit before soldering. The two halves of each side were soldered together first, then the ends were added to make an open box. The two halves of the roof were then joined together before checking and adjusting the fit.  I also soldered the join lines on the outside of the body as well, covering up the joins and adding strength to the body shell. I had to be careful filing back the solder though, as it was harder than the white metal of the body shell. This made it essential to hold the file parallel to the surface of the model or to avoid filing the body away while just rounding off the raised solder.

There were still a number of fine imperfections in the outer surface of the castings but I decided to primer the shell before filling them, to to better show up the imperfections. The photos show the body shell after it was scrubbed with a bleach kitchen cleaner to remove all the oxidation of the old metal and then afterwards in the primed grey.

I could go a lot further and remove some of the cast details, such as the lamp brackets and hand rails, so they could be added in brass but I decided not to as the detail in the overall model is very basic and I decided a good coat of paint and gentle weathering would be better. Some things will be added that are not on the casting like the distinctive front handrails and possibly a headboard. I will be adding some plastic card  battery boxes as the cast metal pieces were appalling.

My next blog on the Class 71 will show the dissecting of the Warship Chassis and fitting to the body shell, so watch this space.

Scalescenes Christmas Cards

No Scalescenes don't do Christmas cards but with the festive season upon me I decided to turn two of their kits into cards with a difference. It was also nice to be able to build a couple of the Scalescenes kits that normally wouldn't have a need for on my layout. 

The first Christmas card utilised the Low Relief Cinema kit T006. I regularly go to the cinema with a friend of mine and thought this would be an ideal theme, as long as I could make it look Christmasy enough.

As usual it was a great kit to build and the options are excellent. It's almost two kits in one as you can build it as a cinema or shop, with a brick or block faced building. The centre aperture in the upper section becomes the stairwell and lifts for the shop and it comes with a variety of popular high street names for the entrance. The cinema also comes with several period names and styles, from pre-war to modern day. There is also a selection of film posters to suit the various decades since the war. The clever bit is that while the Scalescene's Pdf's are protected from editing, the designer John Whiffen has enabled a clever little facility to allow the reader to add their own text above the entrance. While this is meant to be for the film of choice it was an ideal opportunity to add a Christmas greeting.

 

As usual the kit went together very well and the instructions were very clear. The only glitch I had was the opening in the stone block frontage that goes around the entrance. Although I made it to the correct size, once wrapped around the building there was a large gap between the walls and the doors. After some head scratching and double checking it became apparent that it was the material I was using and not the kit that was at fault. Scalescenes recommend 2mm greyboard and the link to a supplier listed theirs as 2300 microns, which I presume is 2.3mm. I was using regular mount board from the art shop which was only around 1.7mm. It was the slimness of this mount board of up to half a millimetre that was causing the problem. However, all was not lost as I simply printed the required pages again and created a new building front with a slightly narrower aperture for the doors. It's worth noting that the wall coverings in these kits wrap around the edges of  the windows and doors, so the fact that I made the opening a little smaller didn't mean I had bare card exposed down each side.

As a personal touch I didn't use the film posters supplied with the kit but went to Flixter and downloaded the film posters of what we had seen over the last year. I then scaled these to size in Word, printed them off and cut them out. Colouring the edges of course as all the borders were black.

Next came the snow. I wanted the snow to have volume, look realistic but to also have that Christmas sparkle. Fortunately my mother is an avid card maker and gave me three different samples of snow and sparkle effects. One was like very fine scenic scatter, one tiny sparkly snow and one more like a glitter. I sampled them all and none of them gave the effect I was looking for. The answer was to mix all three together, so it had volume, whiteness and sparkle. I avidly applied PVA to all the top surfaces and edges and carefully added the scatter before turning in for the night. I though it look great, however I didn't know it at the time but I had made a newbie mistake. The snow was applied to the white PVA which acted like a primer base but by the morning the PVA had dried and was now translucence, so the nice white snow on the pavement was now a dirty grey! It was very disappointing and I prevaricated for some time as to what course of action to take. It was too horrible to leave as it was and too delicate scrape off, so I decided to paint all the snow white and then re-flock everything. To my surprise this turned out for the best, the snow was now very white and the second layer gave it added volume.

The final touches were to add two people, a bus stop and a greeting on the back in the form of two Christmas themed cinema tickets. Interestingly these are original Airfix figures and not the Dapol figures. Although they are fundamentally the same their size and the detail is slightly different. The Dapol figures still have detail, so I don't think it's the original mould that has just started to wear, it is more like the originals have been copied and new tooling used.

What was the other card? It was the garage, again covered in snow but this time with icicles and Santa's sleigh broken down outside. I hope to cover this in my next article, so watch this space.