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Post by Jean B. on Oct 22, 2023 5:22:44 GMT -5
Time to start a new thread, don't you think? I've just begun studying a book for iPhone photography, and so it will take a while until I can supply some more photos for my recent topic, but I guess it's not necessary to stand-by the new project for that reason
I continue with my Horch line, and the difficulties increase from model to model, that was the plan when I begun. Some time ago I bought a virgin kit of the Walldorf Horch - incredible! It was packed absolutely original, never opened before, even the corners of the carton were undamaged. I'm sure "grandpa" bought this forty years ago and never made it to build the kit, and finally his heirs found it and put in on ebay...
I always love the vintage paperwork! Written with typewriter, and charmingly old-fashioned! Two full-written pages explaining that the company is unable to deliver small parts for free or without postage and that the customers are kindly requested to order for a certain value. Nothing changed since then, as it seems...
All bags were firmly tacked to the cardboard, but I've already opened the bags to examine the parts.
Everythin is - of course - complete and undamaged. Walldorf made quite nice kits. Difficult to build because they always made the bodies from three or four single panels instead moulding a complete one. On the other hand, measurement etc. is almost exactly 1/43. Walldorf seems to had no very good production equipment, as all white-metal parts are extremely thick and heavy! The complete model seems to weigh a pound!
Crazy: The trunk is made with a separate lid, but there's hardly a chance to make it movable...? However, I won't keep this detail, anyway...
And Walldorf obviously had no possibility to create everything in-house, so the wheels are the very same as the ones from our good old, beloved Matchbox "Models of Yesteryear"
[/url][/div] Here we can see the general construction.
But what am I going to make out of this vintage gem? - Well, Walldorf suggested the works-design of the Horch 853 A Standard Cabriolet. A massive, huge luxury car, next to Maybach the high-end of German cars of the late 1930s. Never forget: Horch was the most successful brand for 8-cylinder cars in Germany, far ahead Mercedes, who made the complete range of small cars (130, 150, 170V, 170H, 230 etc.) and were pushed to the German top-marque by AH & Co. Maybach was the German equivalent to Rolls-Royce, built in very few numbers, equipped with 12 cylinders (while Horch abandoned the multi-cylinder range by around 1930) and being designed incredibly strong, massive and modern - cars for eternity! Horch - from this point of view - was a kind of "German Bentley", if you know what I mean.
Now I want to continue - and complete - my range of Horch's with Erdmann & Rossi design. There is one certain design, which I find very attractive, well-documented and suitable for the Walldorf kit:
The car was built on the standard wheelbase of 3450mm (136"), shared the bonnet and fenders with the standard convertible, but had the characteristic "dip-down" beltline and rear spares ("continental") instead of the common side spares.
The car was built for the head of the construction company "Polensky & Zöllner", who were founded already around 1900, but were pushed to gigantic impact by the Nazis as they received many orders for public buildings and projects, especially the famous-until-today "Reichs-Autobahn". By the 1930s, the second generation was involved in the company, and so the car seems to had been ordered by the son of the founder of P & Z. You know, such luxury cars could not simply be ordered in Germany at that time, but Reichs-Propaganda-Minister Josef Goebbles had to prove who was allowed to receive such a car, and of course Polensky & Zöllner were highly regarded by the Nazis. The fate of this car remains unclear. Perhaps it was destroyed in WWII, but it also seems likely that it was brought to the USSR, like many Berlin cars of that era. The Russians - of course - loved to crash such cars vodka-drunken to the next tree, and so we may be sure that nothing remains from this car - one more reason to have it revived as a tiny model!
Lesson 1 - where to start : First a kind of "fix-point" has to be determined to which all further steps are to be referred. This is best to make with the longitude center line of the body, so the medium point at the front and the rear end is marked with a thin slot, made with a disc saw.
With this center-line, the body can be adjusted at any time exactly on my Lego "adjusting board", and so the axles are glued to the base-plate.
Aided by this device, I can place the axles exactly rectangled to the body and with the exact wheelbase, while the body is perfectly located in X/Y/Z axles.
I mostly use 1.5mm brass tubes for taking the 1.0mm steel axles.
Now we have a good base for all future working steps.
I always recommend this procedure for bigger conversions...
...just if you want to give it a try!
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Post by Tom on Oct 22, 2023 6:16:40 GMT -5
Walldorf are well-known for their high-quality kits indeed. I built one for somebody decades ago and it went together rather well compared to other makers. Nice project, beautiful car. Will follow as usual.
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Post by oldirish33 on Oct 22, 2023 7:43:40 GMT -5
It will be fascinating to watch you move through the steps on this build Jean. I am sure you will create a gem the kit maker only dreamed of. I had not heard of Waldorf before, at least that I recall. Interesting!
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Post by DeadCanDanceR on Oct 22, 2023 10:06:20 GMT -5
This is going to be a major surgery, Jean! I’m sure it’s going to be a real treat watching this new thread!
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Post by Jean B. on Nov 4, 2023 12:50:59 GMT -5
Walldorf are well-known for their high-quality kits indeed. I built one for somebody decades ago and it went together rather well compared to other makers. Nice project, beautiful car. Will follow as usual. Welcome on board! Yes, the Walldorf kits were great, although this one seems to be a little weird... Well, I'll make anything new, anyway... Impressing is the weight of the kit and the almost exact wheelbase! You remember, the recent Horch's I've made had to be extended to reach the correct wheelbase. But I fear this won't make this kit less demanding...
It will be fascinating to watch you move through the steps on this build Jean. I am sure you will create a gem the kit maker only dreamed of. I had not heard of Waldorf before, at least that I recall. Interesting! Great that you're following! Let's see how this one will turn out. I love the silhouette of the car, it's quite dramatic. And there are enough pictures to create most of the details of this lost gem. There's one recreation of the original car, but I am sure that they did not use a 853 chassis. The replica is made with very high effort and excellent details, but to me it looks much too short compared to the original photos.
This is going to be a major surgery, Jean! I’m sure it’s going to be a real treat watching this new thread! ...major surgery? You can bet! It's already started, and I'm walking in blood up to my knees But you know, it's my fate, can't help it...
Simply don't know where to start... I'll try it with adjusting the upper body...
For transferring kit parts to my graphic programme, I sometimes use normal adhesive tape, painted with a marker and the cut with a surgery knife.
This cutout sticked onto a sheet of paper and then scanned, then making a matching sketch in the graphic programme, and so you have the original measurements put onto your screen.
To get a simple impression of the dimensions of the car, I glue the upper body parts together. This is almost impossible in this case, different to other Walldorf kits the parts don't fit in any way, and there are hardly any points to join the parts, quite a mess!
By now I have not the slightest idea if I will keep the upper body, anyway, but hey, I have to start at a certain point...
The combination of the bonnet and the windshield frame is hilarious!
Finally I found the biggest mistake: Thinking that the shape of the fenders meets the standard cabriolet 853, I overlooked that the fenders of the Polensky car go much deeper, so I have to create a completely new fender line, from front end to the tail...
This is the sideline taken from the original photo: You can see that the top point of the front wing is on correct height, but the running boards have to go much deeper than at the kit.
So I first have to give some stuff below the running boards.
Then I have to mill down the top sides of the fenders a little bit.
The new fender lines.
Slots were cut into the fenders, the photo-etched new lines were glued into the slots.
Then polyester putty is spread over the fenders, going along the p/e parts to get a basis for shaping the new lines.
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Post by Tom on Nov 4, 2023 13:58:56 GMT -5
That is some radical surgery! I'm waiting for the moment when you decide to buy a kit simply for the metal, melt it down and cast your own accurate shape. The centreline of the bonnet and windscreen is a joke.
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Post by oldirish33 on Nov 4, 2023 17:05:03 GMT -5
Wow! What an amazing attention to detail on replicating the lines of the original car! Very interesting steps to achieve the desired results.
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Post by DeadCanDanceR on Nov 4, 2023 17:59:05 GMT -5
Amazing work, as usual!
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Post by Jean B. on Nov 12, 2023 12:40:37 GMT -5
That is some radical surgery! I'm waiting for the moment when you decide to buy a kit simply for the metal, melt it down and cast your own accurate shape. The centreline of the bonnet and windscreen is a joke. ...well, always the same: I guess I'm the director rather than the writer of a play , so I prefer converting or transferring an idea instead of creating something fully new, if you know what I mean. However, exactly for this I still need a sort of basis, even if this will be entirely modified, and so even a crooked centerline is a point of reference for anything new I make...
Wow! What an amazing attention to detail on replicating the lines of the original car! Very interesting steps to achieve the desired results. For me it's the simplest way to do that, and mostly I get quite close to the original. In this case, the Walldorf kit is rather rough, but features almost exact "marking points", I mean that all important points like wheelbase, length of passenger cabin, length of hood and so on, are very exact and serve as reliable reference points even for my conversion.
Amazing work, as usual! Thanks! Let's hope that the final model will meet our expectations!
Proceeding with the next large p/e parts, the relieved outside parts for the fender skirtings.
To avoid too much waste of the rather expensive etching metal, I divided the parts in two halves, to be joined with a sort of buckle.
Hope this will work...
But first these parts serve determining the areas which must be rounded resp. shaped before attaching the relieves.
The template (center) helps aligning the parts.
Simple, but it works!
Done!
I've made up my mind a long time to find out which solution would work best for making this feature, and now I'm quite satisfied.
Making the two body halves fit together. Lot of work and not yet completed, but slowly I get a solid base construction.
For shaping the front fenders almost 90% of the polyester putty is milled and grinded down to achieve a symmetric and flowing shape.
Getting proper curves.
The trunk has to be shaped fully new, so I simply put tons of putty onto the original kit, let's see how it'll turn out...
The design of the side walls is taken exactly from the vintage pictures, 1:1 resp. 1:1 in 1:43.
This will help preparing the next steps. Stay tuned
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Post by Tom on Nov 12, 2023 13:29:51 GMT -5
Very promising. Your usual clever solutions for every problem, the advantage of experience.
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Post by DeadCanDanceR on Nov 12, 2023 17:22:04 GMT -5
Unbelievable! I envy your skill and patience! 😬
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Post by alex on Nov 12, 2023 18:33:23 GMT -5
Nice JB!
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Post by Jean B. on Nov 26, 2023 12:30:17 GMT -5
Very promising. Your usual clever solutions for every problem, the advantage of experience. ...nice to say that You won't believe how many clumsy mistakes I hide away from you... > Unbelievable! I envy your skill and patience! 😬 Well, as long as they keep me in the dungeon, I have to kill time... Thanx Going ahead with the radiator grille: Those parts are best to fit in using fresh putty. The grille should exactly fit into the body, but I need some space for the coming painting layers, so I cover the grille with some adhesive tape to simulate the paint. Here to be seen from below. After removing the upper body. Meanwhile the rear part of the upper body got its rough shape. And after hours of grinding, the front end slowly comes to its final shape. Almost symmetrical. And also from this angle the wings look nice. Don't know if the rear end is still too high, but this can be milled down again later. Always checking if all the proportions are getting right. And a new etching sheet. What a mess: I checked this trimline so many times with paper printouts, but finally the part goes much too deep! > It doesn't help, I have to change measurements and etch again...
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Post by Tom on Nov 26, 2023 15:37:50 GMT -5
Wow, you've actually managed to find a car-shaped model under all that filler! Very impressive, I've tried that once (wrong filler also, probably) and all I ended up with was a lump.
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LM24HRS
Member
Paul - "Collecting Motorsport in Miniature; for the passion and its history".
Posts: 457
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Post by LM24HRS on Dec 13, 2023 2:24:52 GMT -5
Truely facinating read and view of pics. Your work is on another level. Love it so far Jean.
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