Renumbering the Hattons/DJM 14XX
I decided to re-number my Hattons/DJM 14XX today.
Much has been said about the 'sunken' number plates adopted by DJ Models for GW prototypes (14XX, 1363) and I have to say that I have yet to meet anyone who likes them.
Some folk have decided that they're happy to live with the 'sunken' plates, which is fine.
Those who need to re-number their model, however, have a choice - either remove the existing 'sunken' plates or simply stick new ones over the top of them.
It's been said by some that the 'sunken' plates are effectively level with the rest of the body work, thus making the gluing of a replacement plate on top a simple job. I'm not so convinced that no part of the 'sunken' plate rose above the level of the body work and when looking at examples of replacement plates glued on top of the old ones, I felt that a small gap could be discerned.
I decided, therefore, to remove the old plates and fit a small sliver of 5 thou plasticard in the resulting 'hole', to bring it up to the level of the rest of the body work.
For me, the clean removal of the old plate, without damaging the surrounding paint finish, was paramount, so not knowing how solidly they were fixed in place, I didn't want to risk trying to prise them out from the side with a small screwdriver or scalpel blade.
This is the original plate in situ:
To effect a 'clean' removal of the DJM plates, I decided that they would become 'sacrificial', so I drilled into them with a 0.7mm drill:
They actually came off pretty easily:
This is the resulting 'hole' after the residual glue had been carefully removed with a No.15 curved scalpel blade:
Two 'blanking pieces' from black 5 thou plasticard were then made up, about 3.8mm x 7.8mm:
These were then glued in place by applying small amounts of MekPak to the loco body and the 5 thou plasticard:
This pretty much brought the number plate 'hole' up to the level of the surrounding bodywork. I then glued the replacement plates for 1458 by 247 Developments in place:
I'm not a huge fan of etched smokebox door number plates and I normally prefer to use transfers. As the Hattons/DJM model came as 1450, I had hoped to merely replace the 0 with an 8, from a sheet of waterslide smokebox door numbers, but unfortunately the replacement 8 wasn't quite big enough, so I had to gently scrape the rest of the number off with a curved scalpel blade and start from scratch:
I have a sheet of ModelMaster ex-GWR smokebox door numbers, but not one for 1458, so 1437 and 5810 were used to provide the right combination of numbers:
I shall seal the transfers in with some matt varnish next and then continue with the last few jobs on the body, before painting and weathering both chassis and loco body.
- 17
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