sleeper

hiya Mark, Thanks for the kind compliment I'm really pleased with the way it's coming on, I just hope I don't do anything to mess it up. The paint job is sort of ok but it could have been so much better if I'd taken more trouble and built up more paint layers. I'm finding that cardboard doesn't take paint like plastic, with plastic card the surface is almost dead flat, not so card, it has a grain and that can still be seen now. It'll have a coat of matt varnish when it's finished so hopefully that'll cover it. I've just redone the headcode and it's been successful, phew! It will have the number 50016 which was named Barham so it might get name plates if all turns out well.with the finish

I had a choice of three BR blue liveries all blue of course but they vary in the yellow panels. One type is with a small yellow end panel only, one has full yellow ends wrapping right round to include the cab door, but with black round the windscreens and thirdly the one I chose full yellow ends wrapping round but with a blue panel beneath the side windows and yellow round the front windows too. I was a little concerned that if the doors were yellow and had to be rubbed down it would be near impossible as the doors were recessed slightly. It wasn't till I got into the masking off that I realised I'd picked the most difficult to mask, there is a little curve in the top of the blue side panel which involved cutting the masking tape round a piece of 3mm plastic tube with the craft knife, all good fun! This first photo is a really cruel close up of the paint job, it looks better 'in the flesh' probably only because you can choose to ignore the bad bits, whereas in the photo they smack you in the eye. I've started detailing it, you can just see some of the grab rails (4) fitted to the front. I'm also working on the headcode boxes. I'm not happy with these. I had made them shallow thinking that I could add a deeper front, which I did, but having done so I now realise the boxes should have been deeper from the very start. This has shown up now at this late stage, with the Shawplan 4mm round etched horn grilles I'm going to fit, being a knats too large for the depth of the face of the box. I'll have to solder them to a piece of brass wire and mount them in the mini drill to take them down slightly. A real pain but less work than altering the headcode boxes. in this picture are some masks, masking tape cut on the silhouette cutter, this will be stuck to the face of the headcode box to form a guide for painting the domino spots on the face of the box. Will it work? Yes it will, I know because I've already done it once. Unfortunately the dots looked too close together, so the one on the right in the photo is the mk2 version. I drew the box's face in Inkscape, using a head-on photo as a guide to getting the right layout. I first tried cutting them from a sticky labels sheet but it didn't seem to want to work, the cutter just tore up the label. Next I cut the design on a sheet of copy paper attached to the cutting mat. I carefully noted just where the mat lay in relation to the rollers on the cutter, released the mat and stuck masking tape exactly over the images that were cut into the paper. You can see the black outlines where I highlighted the outer edges with a pen. I then very carefully lined up the rollers with the sheet again and re-cut the images. My luck was in, the cutter cut right bang on target, in fact there was only half a mil of tape left on each side. These were carefully teased off the mat with a scalpel and applied to the face of the headcode box. I painted the dominos with white acrylic paint and the places where the horn grilles would go in grey so if they showed through the grill it wouldn't show up. What a pity the dots were wrongly spaced because I now have to go all through the procedure again. I wonder if I will have the same luck again? We'll see! cheers for now Roly

Another beautiful job Pete, the mention of the black tinted varnish is interesting. Do you buy it tinted or do it yourself with black paint? If so what proportion roughly?

http://www.silhouett...lhouette-studio note the comments about printer alignment, particularly the HP printer, mine has an alignment check whereas the Epsons I've had in the past didn't. If the print alignment is out would it affect anything on the cutter?

Jason I too have experienced the problem you have had with grouped components line thickness showing as 0.000. Thanks for the heads up on the newest update, I hadn't realised there was one, where does one obtain this info and would I have to go to the Silhouette website to download it? On the question of blade angles, would it be that the 60° cutting edge is longer than the 45° but that the two blades are equal length overall, has anyone measured this? It's my suspicion that this is the case hence the marginal difference in cutting ability. I haven't bought a new blade yet, do they come ready fitted in the carrier or separate? Why I ask is, on looking down the carrier I can see what looks like a brass collet of some sort. If this is so and it sits in a groove in the blade, I wonder if it would be possible to have the groove modified by someone with a lathe so the blade sits lower in the carrier by say 20 thou thereby increasing the cut depth, just a thought.

The newest model is called the Curio. Apparently they are going to bring out a deeper cutting blade to fit the earlier models. If the Curio cuts 2mm deep that will be great, no more warped laminations

yeah got your meaning now, yes, the roof does have a pronounced 'hump' along it's length. Looking square on mine has that too but not so pronounced. Because of the unfortunate loss of two of the layers when I reduced the height of the roof it's maybe not so evident as on the Hornby or Lima ones. I've been working from rather inaccurate drawings and corner view photos and having never seen a RTR version I don't know how much 'out' my roof is compared to the prototype. The profile I made for shaping it was taken from the drawing I had and apart from the lack of depth it has followed the contour fairly accurately. My camera isn't the best at close ups so I doubt a close up, side on, shot would be clear enough to show the roof"s profile. The body's in the paint shop at the moment but when it's done I'll see if I can get a good image.

hope this helps Roly

yes you're right, the headcode box should be deeper, there are still a couple of layers to be added to the face so that the box face ends slightly in front of the roof front edge, this will make it look deeper.too. I haven't got the roof quite right, it too should be slightly deeper, although from all the photos I've studied it is pretty straight along it's length, with no 'hump' in the middle. When I was sanding it to shape I stuck two halves of a lolly stick type wooden spatula on to the face of a length of batten to butt the side of the roof blank to, the idea being that I then couldn't get carried away and take too much material off the width because the sanding block was running along the edge of the batten. Eventually though this also proved to be too wide, I had glued hand cut spacers across the inside the body to brace the structure, I'd made these too wide, forcing the sides out slightly, so after removing them the roof was 2mm wider than the sides, it also looked too high so I cut a couple of layers away from the base of the roof, but unfortunately about four came away in the levelling up process and so the result is as you now see it. The roof will be left as it is, it's too late to change it now, but thanks for the observations, they serve to make you sit up and think, regrettably there have been too few comments throughout this blog

don't know about ramblings from the balcony, more like pot of varnish from the balcony!

well you got there in the end Pete, well done, it looks terrific. This one has been a bvmmer all the way through with more problems to solve than the rest put together,but, you cracked it. Great stuff mate.

great job Neil, I'm absolutely enjoying this thread. The images really do justice to your work, what camera do you use?

I've fitted the Shawplan etched brass window frames, these are a replacement for the ones on the Lima version which I gather are a little on the thick side, Some of you may have encountered this at some time! Surprisingly these fitted almost exactly into the space between the corner stanchions, I guess the drawing I worked from must have been replicated from a Lima model because the chassis I've used is a Lima one and that fitted, or rather the sides cut from the drawing fitted the Lima chassis too. So I've spent some time fettling various bits, one mistake I made right at the start but which didn't become obvious until now is that one end was attached to the sides lower down than the other end, by some 1.5mm, the resultant gap under the windscreen frames has had to be built up with strips of card and then reshaped. It wasn't possible to remove a corresponding amount of material from the bottom of the panel as that would have made the lights too low, so it has had to remain, it's not like anyone would view it from both ends, it's just that I know it's there. I have attached the roof to the body, after careful consideration to make sure I wasn't restricting my access anywhere. I used a contact adhesive for this to make sure it was firmly bonded because the joint between has to be filled as the sides and roof on this loco are all in one and I didn't want any cracks appearing in the future. Some way back in this post there was some discussion as to what treatment to give the card to firm it up, well I was somewhat concerned that the Halfords red primer I intended to use might act on the various glues I'd used and soften them to the point where the whole thing fell apart. I used one of the sides I'd previously stuck together and painted to test for reactions. The layers separated! I'd used a pritt stick type of glue to bond these and consequently it broke down when in contact with the Halfords paint, which I suspect might be water bound as there's no real solvent fumes when sprayed. So I coated the painted side of the test piece with a hair lacquer spray, no reaction, then I sprayed it with primer, no reaction, bingo! that's the way to go. A few coats of hair lacquer and a good coat of primer, produced this. I'm now filling and rubbing down ready for the top coat. Sorry this post has been all gabble and few photos but this stage is a lot of labour with little to show for it. More soon Roly

The roof has been shaped now, the next stage was to make the box section at either end which I believe contains the horns and headlights. My original plan was to construct these as a box from flat card, that was just a fantasy, it didn't work well due to difficulties in shaping it to the profile of the roof, in 7mm? yes probably, but in 4mm just too fiddly? After some thought I decided to make a solid box and let it into the roof. This meant carving a chunk out of either end, so out with the scalpel and get to it. It went much better than i'd thought it would, here's how it looked when done. The darker part is where I had to extend the length of the roof which for some strange reason had come out 3mm too short. I made up some filler by mixing card dust from the sanding with PVA adhesive, it proved very tough to cut through. Next I cut the rectangular pieces for the box and laminated them together until I had a slab 4.5mm thick, this I inserted into the slot and secured with glue. I then filed the chamfers on the corners. i had drawn up the various access panels, fan housing, exhaust ports etc, I cut these from some scrap card and working from the drawing attached them all to the roof. This next picture shows the results of that and the box sections on the ends of the roof. The body in that photo had been given several brush coats of acrylic paint to fill in the grain of the cardboard, I used different colours for different coats so when I rubbed down I could determine where the high and low spots were, here it's carrying the colour it will be when finished. I've taken delivery of the etched brass detailing parts, from Peter's Spares, they carry a full range of shawplan's extreme etchings parts, seen here. Once the roof panelling was dry I gave the whole thing a coat of Tamya light grey matt acrylic, I departed slightly from my original spec and used some plastic strip for the hinges on the panels because the ones I cut from card just weren't rigid enough to stay straight.The etched fan proved tricky, I merely soldered it on to a short length of brass wire, pushed that through a hole drilled in the roof and then bent it over underneath. I cut the round duct the fan sits in by hand, having forgotten it in the original drawing, here's the result. That brings us up to date, I'm working on fitting the windscreens at present, I'll post that part up later. more later. Roly

Hi Henrik, I own a silhouette portrait, which although it has a smaller cutting width suits what I use it for as I model in 00 gauge. From what I've read in this thread a lot of people think the same way. The only drawback in the past has been that the maximum thickness that these machines will handle, is very thin, which means cutting several layers and then laminating them together and that can bring problems. The solvents available on the market are very strong and can set up stresses in the layers which makes the sheets warp. I have had personal experience of this happening. The one good thing about the new Curio when it becomes available will be the increased thickness of material it can handle and so the need for laminations might not be necessary, I understand they are to produce deeper cutting blades to fit both the Cameo and Portrait models, which will be a good thing. I buy my plastic sheets in A4 size when I'm over in the UK and I use the Humbrol plastic weld solvent. These items are readily available on the British market, there are some advertised on this Forum, Eileen's Emporium is one and they post worldwide at a reasonable cost too. Look back over this thread from the start, you will learn a lot from it about using the Silhouette cutters.

just save the SVG file as a DXF file and Silhouette will open that ok. Sometimes when I open files in Silhouette they're way over to one side. I Zoom out a couple of times and then I can see it? don't know why this happens with some files, just thought I'd mention it in case you think it's not loaded.

I've glued all the roof layers together now and started shaping the roof. I made up a new concave template as the previous convex one would have been quite useless. here's the new one I started cutting the roof with a craft knife and the card cut almost like soft wood quite surprisingly, part of me was saying it was cardboard yet physically it was like carving wood, a strange feeling somehow. The process of shaping the roof was a bit messy, producing a lot of dust and shavings. I thought the dust might come in handy for making a filler by combining it with PVA (shown previously) in this next photo you can also see where I marked up the roof with centre lines, lines where the end curves started and two lines 7mm each side of the centre line as a control to stop me sanding too much from the top of the roof I hadn't made the top section small enough it could have done with one more layer because ro get the curve to meet at the top would have meant sanding off another millimetre and as I'd been sanding away for a couple of hours, that sounds nuts as it's only card but it's surprising how tough it can be when bonded into a large chunk. I have now added another layer which when the glue has dried thoroughly will be sanded to complete the profile. I might add at this stage that I want to try to keep it as a card model with as little other materials as possible. The only other materials will be in the etched brass detailing. Oh yes! I've enough confidence in the model now to splash out a few quid on extras. Here's a pic of the roof to date with the added layer The little 'flags' beside it are the louvred panels which after some catastrophic attempts by hand I drew up in Inkscape I copied one of each size of panel and pasted into a new page. I created a 'block' 1mm thick (just a short line really) and used that to space horizontal lines within the panel, these were ina different colour (green) to the outline the panels (red) these were then grouped. I then made an oblong about 200mm long by 2mm wide and duplicated it several times and coloured this different again (blue). When I came to cut the parts in the Silhouette I just ticked the green box in the cut control menu and scored these lines then ticked the red box and cut all these, finally ticking the blue box and cutting these only. That way I can produce only the parts I need. I used the score lines as a guide to stick the 2mm strips overlapping each other by 1mm to make the louvres, a very intricate fiddly job I might add. That's what the little flags are, half completed louvres. I've made a start on fitting the doors these were cut in two widths one fits inside the opening and one larger one behind to stick to the inside. Successive layers were then applied to bring the face of the door to somewhere near the face of the side. So there you have it up to date, on with the sanding and louvre making more soon

I've finished cutting all the sides, side 2 was very easy, I brought up the file for side 1, copied and pasted one of the sides into a new document and then just deleted the openings that aren't on that side and added the extra 'window'. Then it was just a matter of duplicating it four times then saving it as a DXF file ready for the cutter. The sides and ends, after cutting out, were then glued up, I cut two spacers by hand and stuck those in so the inside was now three compartments roughly equal in size. When it was all dry the next day the whole thing had really stiffened up and is quite sturdy. At this stage I was itching to start shaping the body but not knowing how the card I'd used would react to sanding as this is the first time I used this type of card. I resisted the urge and mixed up some PVA with water and a smidgen of acrylic paint just so I would know which bits had been primed. The added benefit is that I can see just how much has been taken off by sanding, which is difficult to see when it's all white. The thing with this particular project is that it's all purely experimental, I'm learning as I go along. It could have been that applying water to it could have separated the laminations, I'd experienced that with the first side I made, but for these sides I'd used UHU which seemed quite rubbery, like the old puncture repair kits used to contain, and sure enough everything was ok the next morning Next day I couldn't resist it and started sanding one end with the emery boards and luckily it seems as if it will sand quite well. Here's a pic of the body, The left arrow points to the join which will need filling, the right arrow points to the start of forming the tumblehome Next I turned my attention to the construction of the roof. I thought this might be formed as I'd seen previously, in other posts, by layers. The alternative would have been by cutting cross sectional slices and stick those together. The roof is 9mm deep but 37mm wide and as the card I'm using is only 0.5mm thick, it was a no brainer to choose horizontal layers. The sections I drew and cut are shown below at the top is the first five layers, with a void in the middle to give extra headroom for the Lima pancake motor, the second one down is the first of the solid layers. This is 1mm smaller all round than the voided layers, the layers reduce progressively by approximately 1mm each time. The third one down is the uppermost layer, (top of the roof), below that are the two templates that I will use to shape the roof to the correct profile. I used templates to shape the roof in Balsa for my Metro Vick, seen in a previous blog. The roof layers have all been laminated now, but are still in the press, so I'll show you those in the next instalment. cheers Roly

So that's the faffing around all done now down to making the model. Despite a long lay off from Inkscape I managed to produce a workable drawing and cut the first sides which were entirely wrong but proved I could produce something here's the result I hadn't got the scale right it was too high and too short but eventualy it came back to me and I got the hang of altering the measurements and cut the first sides, 5 in total. I stuck these together to form a side 2.5mm thick together with the complete end panels including windscreens. Then the brain begun to engage and I started thinking about the chassis. I had a rummage through my bits and pieces and came up with a Lima chassis complete with motor bogie for a class 50, how clever is that? Not that clever because I had had visions of etched bogies with a nice little machima motor, dream on sunshine! Anyhow I compared the side I'd fabricated with the chassis and it was surprisingly compatible it just needed about 1.5mm removing from the middle so out with the razor saw and with a square for guidance hacked it in half. I chose to cut it just aft of the box thingy underneath. There is a 1mm gap between that and another box thingy beside it, if anyone knows what these two boxes are for sing out I'd like to know. here's where I cut it After filing out approximately 1.5mm the two halves were re-united but it was still too long! too late it was stuck together, so my thoughts turned to the alternative, lengthen the body but that would be out of scale, what to do? I measured the chassis and then realised that the side I'd produced was a mite too short anyway. So back to the drawing on the computer and resized it by 2mm and re-cut the sides. When I laminated them together I clamped the layers together thus The Lima body is held to the chassis by small slots that coincide with the step below the doors slotting over small nibs cast into the plastic chassis, these lined up perfectly with my sides and so, a possible method of holding the two parts together So I took this shot to give you an idea of how it might look like I then made up some new ends deleting the windscreens, these will be added later, possibly from etched brass as the laminated card ones were too thick, these next shots show work to date More later Roly

Some time ago I purchased a Silhouette Portrait cutter, up until now I haven't used it much. I started learning how to use Inkscape but due to house renovations and protracted periods back in Blighty I stopped my studies. I'm now determined to get on with something and thought a Diesel might be a fairly uncomplicated project to begin with. I once did a cardboard model of a metro-vick, primarily to put into a small diorama for a competition so it was very basic as it was to create a replica of a photgraph, that was the brief of the competition. Since then I've had this urge to model something a little more complex but still from cardboard. when scratch building with plastic sheet it entails a bit of sculpture along with the other things like measuring and cutting etc. I'm convinced those skills can be put to use using cardboard instead of plastic sheet, so I'm going to have a go. I might fall flat on my face but at least I won't exit this world still wondering! I've been doing a little experimentation with regards to methods of construction. My Idea is to make the sides and ends quite thick something like 3mm so the corners can be profiled with fine sandpaper so to this end, using some nice grey cardboard that came as a stiffener with a shirt I bought. It seemed quite compact and sure enough once 6 - 4.45mm layers were stuck together it became quite stiff and responded well to being filed with an emery board to a nice smooth radius. I've given it several coats of acrylic paint (Rolls Royce style) and is beginning to develop a nice smooth surface I've taken a couple of photos to show what I've done so far I cut three strips, I folded one in half and used it as a gusset to attach the other two together, but leaving an overlap 3mm long which would have 5 other 0.5mm strips put in place to fill the overlap. On the other part I glued another 5 strips, but stepped them back each time by 0.5mm to create a sort of chamfer. This corner was surprisingly rigid once dry. Here's a photo with the various layers in different colours to give you a better idea, (hopefully). I mixed some filler using the dust from the sanding, mixed with PVA it proved quite good, but shrunk back a fair bit once dry. I glued a strip on top of the angled piece and sanded a radius on the edges and rounded the corner so it's sort of similar in shape to the front wing of a land rover, this was then painted with Railmatch acrylic paint. This has now been sanded and painted several times and is quite smooth So it's now on to designing the parts to cut out with the Silhouette. More later

I tried out bg john's instructions for forming the 'window' shape and it worked perfectly thanks for that John. As for the problem of uploading DXF files into Silhouette studio I changed the import preferences to 'central' to no avail. BUT I found that if I minimised the page with the minus button the uploaded file came into view and then I simply dragged it by the collar into the box, a bit of kerfuffle but it provides a remedy. Roly

I think a lot of the 'scale' drawings were done by hand and as such have 'human errors' built in so the accuracy of the computer exploits these errors, similarly images can be distorted by the camera lens which again the computer finds out.

Thanks guys for your replies, there is certainly a lot in them to be digested, it would seem I'm not alone in my experiences. One thing that is obvious to me is I need to gain a lot more experience in computer design than that which I have at present. For instance I can't seem to get my head around the term 'path', to me that word means something you walk along, but in computer speak it seems to indicate something different, quite what I'm not too sure of. I might just mention for the benefit of others reading through this now rather lengthy post that in BGJohn's rescaling formula above, I was at first confused by the * before the 7 until I worked it out with a calculator and realised it means x (multiply). I've had a long tiring day in the hot sun today at a motor racing event here in France so after a good nights sleep I expect the proffered advice above will make much more sense to me. thanks again guys Roly

To save confusion I've kept this query separate from the 3 above. In Inkscape how do I form an all in one rectangle with rounded corners but one end sloped? Like the shape of a side window on a car, or many diesel locos. Thanks Roly

I'm having quite a few problems at present with my Inkscape SVG files once converted to DXF, they are, 1/ any rectangles with rounded edges that were formed in the original and saved as an SVG file then saved as a DXF file, come out as square edged rectangles when opened with the Silhouette software 2/ When reopening DXF files for minor alterations and the component parts are de-grouped, and then zoomed it's apparent that some of the lines have increased or decreased in length, so leaving gaps or overlapping. The dimensions in the boxes are constantly altering despite being locked 3/ When opening a DXF file in Silhouette the image is massively overscale so much so that it is difficult to find. This problem seems worse in V3 than it did in V2, it was always outside the page but now it's rediculous. Any comments/advice would be gratefully received Roly