Model Citizen

I've got quite a bit done now as you'll see so here's a couple of updates put together.

Tricky bit here. See the small wheels on seperate bogeys, they're held in place by a spindle that just touches the outer carriage. Thing is, a slight shake and they all fall off. I got round this by adding more tension to the assembly, and I did by that by boiling a cup of water, dipping the carriage in the water and while hot bringing the carriage closer together. So when the bogey goes in it's held under greater tension and is a lot more stable.

This is the lower assembly pretty much done. P.S., see the tweezers on the right? You'll need those!

And here is where my trouble began.

It's those blooming hinges. I had 3 attempts to get this right. Instructions say use super glue, and those are tiny rivets that stick through into both pieces. The hinges just wouldn't stop peeling off as I tried to open and close the doors after it dried. The hinges are pretty stiff, I'm not using oil on them though! So, super glue didn't work, next I tried just plastic gle, allowing the rivets to hold the hinge in place. That also didn't work, again the hinges are just too stiff and pulled away again. Patience, remember patience.

Lastly I tried the hot glue gun. It's a very unweildly way to work but I managed to just rub the hinges on the nozzle getting enough glue on them to allow to stick. Remember, your dealing with a piece of hinged metal the size of a baby's fingernail here! I could have I suppose just glued all the hinges in place without worrying about them ever opening, butI bought a kit that will show interior and I'm going for it!

So, the hot glue worked, but was a bit messy. it holds strongly enough to allow open and closing. The doors aren't the only places hinges are present so it's important to get this working right. I haven't got the rivets though, but I'm going to live with that. Working with a hot glue gun and tweezers will test anyone's patience to the max.

Lot's done here. I've completed the cabin assembly, can you see the hinged bonnet? That has another 12 hinges to sort out! Also the gun assembly is almost finished. This has options for 2 different type of gun (with carrying handle or without).

I must tell you something else at this point, I didn't bother using all the metal etch parts. Some were just not worth the hassle. There are lots of boxes with adequate looking hinges moulded onto them, I didn't want to scrape them off just to put metal ones on, to me that was asking for trouble. Large areas of metal against plastic I now used hot glue. Strange, but metal against plastic with super glue is just not as good a bond as plastic against plastic.

Last picture for now. It's on the table ready for spraying. The plan is to spray it all silver first as a metal undercoat, then the top coat and allow the paint to be chipped to see the metal underneath. I might use some latex on big areas, we'll see what happens.