sleeper

Personally I let the software do that for me rather than end up with varying lengths of overcut let alone the extra work it makes overdrawing the lines. On a completely different subject I think it worth mentioning something that happened this morning. I drew up some panels for the louvres on my D16/2. These were different sized rectangles created by duplicating the cutouts in the sides I'd produced previously. I drew a series of horizontal score lines spaced at 1.5mm to fill them. The rectangles in red, the horizontal lines in blue ( red for cutting blue for scoring) and saved them, together with a bunch of 1.7mm strips for the louvres, as a DXF file. I opened the file in Silhouette, scored the blue lines first then cut the red ones second. Problem! the score lines and cut lines didn't line up correctly. I went back to the DXF, everything lined up, on checked the Silhouette file more closely using the magnifying tool, bingo, the two were out. When I import DXF files they always despite altering the preferences, 'as is, etc, load off of the page and have to be dragged into the page for cutting. This is where the problem occurred. On some previous occasions the images have been imported ungrouped despite being grouped in Inkscape and have had to be grouped in Silhouette in order to move them. Lately this hasn't happened and so I've not bothered grouping them.In this case though, despite being 'grouped' on import they separated, when, I suspect, I set up the (coloured) cut settings and somehow moved slightly . The moral is, 1 make sure they're grouped when first imported and 2 magnify the page and check everything's tickety boo before cutting, lesson learnt.

Hi Rob, Yes I can see your dilemma, like many things in life there's no going back! Thanks very much for the info on the louvres. I assumed rightly or wrongly that the diagram you have shown is a front elevation not a plan, that the square rod is horizontal front to back of the louvre panel with its face end 'cropped' at say 60° with the strips glued across the face. This is the best I can describe what I mean, hope you interpret it correctly. I used the term 'cropped' as I noted in one of you other posts that you possess one of these excellent devices, there is a certain very skilled modeller in another Forum who uses one of these to spectacular effect. louvres.pdf This may explain what I have visualised. Roly

Mike, I did note that the trims' depths looked slightly 'heavy' but didn't like to criticise a clever idea, the later ones do look much finer. The one thing that stood out to me with the original version was the sheer depth of the moulded plastic trim plus the Fablon 'frame', no doubt exaggerated by the light. It made me think that, maybe either the moulded plastic trims could be excluded in favour of the Fablon ones on their own or that another layer of panels could be inserted between the trims to reduce their depth. Due to distortion problems caused by laminating plastic card though, I would favour the former over the latter. I like your nice neatly placed items on the Fablon sheet by the way.

Hi Rob, I'm sorry you're having problems with the silhouette software, unfortunately I've had no experience with the designer version, I'm sure there will be some advice forthcoming from some of the other more experienced members soon. Personally I don't really see it's an advantage to be able to import SVG files directly from the CAD program, being as it's very easy to create a file, save it as an SVG and then save it as a DXF file as well, which silhouette opens with virtually no problems. There has been some discussion recently about different coloured lines for scoring/cutting, see post numbers 1083 onward for import settings and post number 1094 onwards for cut settings. I've found it is easier to go back and edit the original DXF file rather than try it in silhouette studio. I close the silhouette page, open the DXF, modify it, save it, then re-open it with silhouette. I might be doing it all wrong but up 'til now it has worked for me, maybe someone can set me right with this. I've recently been working through your rolling stock workbench and am finding it very interesting and admire your skills. I'm intrigued by the van shown above. Presumably this is cut from plastic card. The louvres are of particular interest as I'm just about to create some in card for my D16/2 project. Did you cut these yourself or are they etched brass stuck on? Roly

Just a short blog to keep you up to date. I mentioned before how it was more difficult to attach the ends onto the end of the sides as opposed to between them due to clamping a long length. This has proved to be true. I made up a jig to hold the two parts with clamps, and got the two sides attached to the two ends. However one corner wasn't quite to my liking and also when I saw the photo it became obvious the completely flat ends weren't correct The next photo shows quite clearly there is a definite bevel to the face So with this in mind I decided to remove both ends and modify them. I did this by cutting out a section 6mm wide with a razor saw, through the support bar and halfway through the layers of the end panel. Then using a steel rule for support I carefully bent each side of the end panel inwards to create the bevel on each side seen here from above I didn't get away scot free however because all the bending caused the outside layers to be stretched which in turn separated the layers which needed re-gluing. I'm currently putting a slight bevel on the ends of the side panels to accommodate the bevelled end panels and re-gluing the ends on. The jig used previously was no longer suitable so a new method has had to be devised. Problems, problems, problems! more info later Roly

As stated above a Mk1 carriage window. This is, judging by the size of the wood grain in the background, a cruel close up, and I suspect the bars are only around 1mm wide, if that, particularly the verticals between the upper windows. It can be seen that some distortion has occurred, although I doubt this shows when not viewed in close up. I seem to remember way back in this thread some discussion about this particular problem. If I recall correctly, one option was to create the rectangles not with the rectangle tool but as a series of 4 separate lines. This way the blade lifts, turns and plunges for the next cut as opposed to turning while still plunged into the material and therefore creating distortion. The silhouette cutter has a mind of its own when it comes to cutting order, diving from one place to the other, so personally I think I would either separate the parts into layers, or use 3 different sets of coloured cut lines which can be turned on and off in the (advanced) cut menu, first cutting the four small openings in one colour, thereby ensuring plenty of material as support, surrounding the cuts . Next a different colour for the large opening below them and finally another colour for the extreme outside cut. If the final cut produced some distortion it might be easier to rectify or might even be lost if the frame was sitting inside an opening.

Nice work there Mark, nice clean job. A little bit of a problem with the roof on 47045, or is it a banana van?

I've now more or less completed the drawing up of the various parts, although some may yet need alteration as I go along, as has been the case so far. On the class 50 that I've just completed I made the ends to fit between the sides, on this one I've done the opposite. There isn't much to choose between the two really. The reason I changed was 1 on the other one I had to ease the sides out to slide over the lugs on the chassis frame and it caused very minute cracks to open up in the paint, I'm hoping that doing it differently will avoid that. 2 I'm hoping the increased width of the end will make for a smoother face because it's the bit that gets the most attention. I wasn't too happy with the ends of the '50'. I felt that some support inside the end panels would be of benefit and hoped for a nice chunky block sat between the sides would be strong. Unfortunately this wasn't possible because the plastic chassis frame protruded up inside the body by 6mm, I needed a 1mm space below the front windows for the glazing, so my chunky block came down to only 5mm deep. Gluing the end panels to the sides will be more problematic. When I fixed the ends internally on the 50 I just clamped the sides with the end panel in between using a small screw-vice, that won't be possible gluing the ends to the sides. I will have to think up a clamp that's as long as the sides, plus the side panels will need support in between to prevent them buckling. I've drawn up some fillets to be inserted behind the window corner pillars. These are merely rectangles with a vertical score line, so when bent to a right angle make a fillet 2.5mm x 3mm x 8mm long. On this model I want to improve on the glazing inside the cab which was not possible on the 50. I've drawn one layer of the end panels with a large cut-out to allow the insertion of some clear plastic to be sandwiched between layers and I've adopted this method with all the glazing throughout, so far it's worked well with the ends. The only problem is that the windows will need to be masked off when I paint the body. I plan either to use the blanks cut-out from the openings reinserted over the perspex or get some maskol when I go back to the UK. Above is a picture of all the parts cut to date. The red ringed ones show the glazing method on the ends, the orange blue and green ringed are the various side/door windows, the plastic cut outs are just visible 5th from the left. I've taken some pics of the glazing fitted (next three) but thse are not too clear. The difference between the black sides and the white is the black ones are outside panels, the white ones are inner panels, I just did that to save on Black card which is more expensive, no other reason. When I've completed the next phase I'll post the details. Regards Roly

I agree with Burhar, to look more realistic though, maybe you could open the angle of the tabs slightly and then, in a vice, put a bend across the width of the plate parallel with the front edge of the tender but nearer the engine, so leaving enough clearance for the tender to pivot, leaving the fall plate resting flat on the floor of the tender. In short the tabs would be vertical, the end part of the plate horizontal and the 'corner' cut off at an angle. Sorry this is the best I can describe it.

Jason, going back a bit you thought 3M spray mount could be used to replace the 'tack' on the cutting mat. How did this work out in practice? Which 3M spray mount did you use? Regards Roly .

Henrik that's beginning to look like a good model, I like the way you have planned the score lines to act as a guide for the hinges etc. On a different vein, my cutting mat has lost its sticky, I remember back earlier in this thread someone used a spray of some sort to re-proof their mat but can't remember what it was, has anyone any ideas? Would the stuff you use to mount photos be any good? Roly

in the early postings of 'a guide to the silhouette cutter' by JCL it was reported that the mat was extremely sticky to start off, but with repeated use it gradually became less so. Despite keeping the cover sheet over it, mine has now lost all its sticky properties. I can't remember off hand what product has been used by others to restore the sticky. From what I've read elsewhere there isn't any spray on 'tacky' adhesive that doesn't set. Saying that I did hear of an American product that lasts but I have my doubts about whether it is permitted in the post, being as it's in aerosol form. If anyone knows of such a product please post it up on here.

It was as I suspected, the superglue had bonded to the poly glue and pulled it away from the plastic of the chassis. I cleaned up the surfaces with a scalpel and then filed them flat with a needle file and re-applied the superglue and they bonded . Just to make certain I stuck a square of 2mm thick plastic card across the join to reinforce the join. (1st photo) I did a trial cut of one of the design pages using 0.5mm white card (2nd photo) mainly to check it fitted against the modified chassis, this looked to be in order. In this photo you will see one roof layer on the right and the two roof templates that I will use to check the profile when I sand the roof to shape later in the build. One of the apprehensions I had with the class 50 model was the not so fine finish. Although the enamel paint had provided a fairly tough coat on the cardboard, it left a lot to be desired in my opinion. I was chatting with a French friend who's a designer and he suggested I sprayed it with acrylic ink, he thought this might result in a finer finish. I agree with what he says but have reservations as to the strength of the body once complete, some more experimentation is on the cards. As the livery carried on the southern prototypes was British Railways black I thought it might be prudent to use black card. (3rd photo) Here in France it is possible to buy card in various colours as well as weights and I just happened to have a couple of sheets in stock. ( in stock meaning the pile of junk in the corner of my bedroom). I cut this into A4 sheets and used one to cut some more parts, which was successful, I had feared the card would be too tough to cut through, because I'd already experienced this before when I first used the Silhouette. Unfortunately the cutting mat has now lost all it's sticky so the second sheet shed some of its parts and jammed the cutter enough to shift the mat slightly. This resulted in the parts being cut all wrong, so now I have to buy another cutting mat or find some genuinly re-positionable adhesive before I can carry on. In the design I drew all the lines to be cut in red and all the lines to be scribed in blue. There's tick boxes for each colour. I ran the first cut with the blade set at Number 1 and scribed the blue lines, then did three more passes, one at setting 3, one at 6 and finally one at 7. This provided a clean cut through, at 6 some places don't quite cut right through. The scribing can just be seen in photo 4, the lines scribed were 1/ two parallel horizontal lines as guide for silver stripe halfway up 2/ various panel positions 3/ positions of doors In the two outer layers I have arranged for the doorways to be cut out, on the next subsequent layers the doors are filled in, just the door windows are cut out. I did this to alleviate the faffing around I had with the class 50 doors, where I cut all the doorways out and then had to trim and stick back all the door blanks to fill the holes, dohh. Hopefully this will result in cleaner doorways on this model. Here's the pics- When I get a new mat I'll continue with the next installment. Regards Roly

Hi Mark, Thanks, just having a spot of bother gluing the two halves together at the moment. I think it's due to me not cleaning the plastic solvent off first and so the superglue stuck just the residues together and they've broken away from the bare plastic. At least that's what I hope it is. If this plastic won't stick it wil have to be a mechanical joint with a plate and screws, hope not. Roly

I've been researching a Southern Railway diesel electric locomotive from the years immediately prior to nationalisation in 1948 and the subsequent birth of British Railways. The loco was designated D16/2, the original design was by O V Bulleid and was built at the Ashford works in Kent. Only 3 were ever built, sadly they were all retired in the late 60s and cut up soon after, meaning none survived into preservation. My search for information hasn't brought much up but fortunately I found an illustration of the layout of this loco and will, I hope serve to produce a fair representation. This photo of a model once produced by Silver Fox was kindly taken by a fellow member of RMWeb. This is what, hopefully mine will resemble when finished. The build As you can see from the photos this loco has a 1-co-co-1 wheel configuration, that is two 6 wheel bogies with a set of pony wheels fore and aft of them. This configuration was later used on the class 40 and 45 loco's. The first task was to get hold of a cl 40/45 chassis, fortunately a Mainline model came my way cheaply, not the very best but good enough for my purposes. This is the bare chassis with bogies and weights removed.On measuring it I found that approximately 20mm had to be removed from the center along with the battery boxes, so this was measured and marked out. I removed the battery box with a razor saw and then using an engineers square as a guide, removed the 20mm section, thus. Here you can see the severed battery box which left a square hole in the base of the chassis that has almost disappeared now the excess length has been removed. I might use the 2 sections to reinforce the chassis where the cut is A quick line up to make sure the bogies didn't clash and then glue together, but when I tried gluing the 2 halves together with plastic solvent it wasn't affected by the solvent so I had to use cyano-acrylate. The chassis is now 234mm long in line with the scale length of the body. Now the chassis is modified it can be used to build up the body layers, which will be cut from card again with the Silhouette cutter. As there is a complete absence of etched brass parts for this one, grilles roof fan etc, I will have to make them myself as I did the louvres for the class 50 or use parts from other classes, More later, Roly

Mike, Thanks for the kind words they are a much valued compliment coming from you. I had to laugh at the 'rugged' look, 'ugly handsome' is another I've heard in the past, it looks extremely 'uggied' with its filthy face. My thoughts on the thick card are, with hindsight, different now. The idea of the thick card was, as I said in the blog, to give it rigidity, as well as having some 'meat' to carve in to when shaping the roof and tumblehome etc. As it's turned out the sides could hve been thinner, particularly around the windows, I will try to work differently with the next model I do with the same medium It's funny you should mention the etched bogies and Mashima motor because that's exactly what I had thought of when at the beginning, it started to look like a feasible project.

Well at last it's finished. After the paint had time to harden off I gave the transfer areas a coat of Kleer and then applied the transfers using HMRS sheet 15 BR blue for the inter-city arrows and the numbers too, then I applied a waterslide data panel from Replica Railways under each number and finally the overhead flash signs also waterslide, from Precision Decals, no connections etc. This was followed by a spray coat of Humbrol satin varnish. Once the varnish had hardened sufficiently I weathered it with acrylics using a very weak wash of white first to give the blue a faded look. When this had dried I applied Humbrol 'smoke' weathering powder and washed this in with a wet brush and then took off the surplus with a large dry flat brush, finaly forming puddles of water on the roof and allowing them to run down the sides,blotting with kitchen roll and rubbing in with the dry brush. When all this was complete and dried overnight I brushed a coat of matt varnish all over. I'd already weathered the chassis with acrylics using the same techniques. Finally body and chassis were re-united, here's the results. The last photo is a really harsh cruel close up which shows the model,'warts an' all'. I procrastinated for ages over the 4th photo, but decided that it left the viewer with no illusions as to what this model really is, you must be the judges. My personal impressions of this model now it's finished are that I could have taken more care over the preparation. I also think that fearing it would be flimsy I have made the sides too thick, especially around the windows. Lack of thought has resulted in the interior around the windows being unsuitable for fixing any glazing to. I have cut the glazing and dry fitted it but have my doubts that it will fit correctly leaving gaps here and there which would look ugly. Overall, considering this model was an experiment by someone who was still learning how to use Inkscape and the silhouette cutter, it hasn't turned out too bad on the whole, but that's just my opinion. Please do add your criticism, it would be most welcome, as that way we all learn. Regards Roly

Hi Mark, yeah I was pretty P'd off, particularly as I wasn't too happy with the quality of the work on the ends. Although I'd designed and cut the ends from a drawing, the marker lights seem as if they're slightly too close together. The space left for the EHT lead plugs and sockets, which I suspect I've made slightly over scale as well, isn't enough. As a result the sockets are too near the lights. My decision to use etched brass windscreen surrounds was the right one, I think, but I could have made a better job of the finishing around them. This, coupled with the repair work plus the poor preparation generally on the ends let the model down in my opinion. I've just given the body a coat of satin varnish this afternoon ready for an attempt at weathering it.

I've made some more progress on this model, one step forward and two steps back though. I had almost finished this model and had it trapped between my knees while working on it and somehow it slipped out and fell nose first onto the tiled floor. This didn't do it any good, the cardboard sprung back into shape ok but the paint layer was badly cracked (see in third photo). I made a fine file by gluing a strip of 400 grade wet and dry paper to a 5mm wide strip of plastic and filed down the damaged surface. I filled the damage with a couple of good applications of yellow acrylic paint, then rubbed those down with the file I'd made and finished with a coat of the same colour enamel I'd used originally. It now looks presentable. In the second photo you can see I've started the numbering, I had a little problem with a couple of the waterslide overhead electric decals curling up and peeling, despite sealing them with Kleer. They are on quite thick decal paper and I suspect they weren't quite dry despite leaving them for over an hour as recommended in the instructions. Personally I'm not a fan of this type of decal but it's all I could find. So now I've nearly finished detailing, next some varnish, so more to come. Roly

As a little aside, I received this email notification below, some very interesting points to be noted. Due to planned strike action by RMT members:

I've done a bit more of the detailing, my luck held with the headcode box alterations. I managed a second time to scribe the face and then remove it from the cutter, first marking the position of the cutting mat by sticking a bit of masking tape to the mat alongside one of the rollers, it was then just a matter of re-entering it using the tape as a guide, spot on! I've added some handrails, grab rails, buffer beam steps etc. I used 0.45mm brass wire for the rails, fixed with superglue into 0.6mm holes. One little problem I encountered with this was, unlike plastic the card raises up around the drill bit when you drill it, in other words it doesn't cut cleanly and so I have had to sand the mounds back with a minute piece of wet and dry, very annoying when the paint has been done. I'd considered fitting the rails before the paint job but decided against it as I didn't know just how many coats it would take to secure a decent finish, too many might have swallowed up the hand rails. In the second picture you can just make out the buffer beam steps, these were another Shawplan etch,they are very very delicate, not long in this world I think. With regard to the use of kleer to stiffen up the cardboard, as an experiment I thoroughly wetted a strip of 0.45mm card with it and let it dry, it didn't seem any stiffer than before. I also used kleer to stick two bits together, clamping them together overnight, again it was no good as an adhesive. Perhaps if it was soaked for longer it might absorb more liquid. more later Roly

It's a bit expensive at $399, that's around £265

A great job Neil, considering how prolific a modeller you are the paintwork on your models is absolutely first class, well done.

Hi Mark, As you probably know the traditional way was to use Shellac but I don't think it's available now, in it's natural form, certainly not here in France. There is probably a synthetic equivalent (knotting is an example). I sealed the body with several spray coats of hair lacquer prior to painting, maybe not enough though as I had to save some because I was going out that night. !! I agree, Kleer would be good Idea but as I've already found out, one of the things that should be avoided is wetting the card too much as that causes it to expand and separate the laminations. Some more experimentation is needed on that topic, ( homework guys). it's possible that Kleer might make a good laminating adhesive, but then again would further applications dissolve the Kleer already used as a glue? Roly

If you hadn't said what it was I'd never have guessed it was a buffer, looks more like a UFO. Beam it up!!