Postby DaveJfr0 » Tue Sep 05, 2017 10:17 pm
Re: Chooch/RU kits:
Chooch hasn't produced kits in year. None of RU's kits are those terrible early chooch kits. (The newer chooch kits were just fine, I built several. Some were even one-piece bodies.) RU's newer sides/bodies are produced by one of several of Ted's casters. Not sure who did the patterns for the ARA. Ted doesn't really share that business knowledge.
The newer RU kit's bodies come as flat or assembled for extra money. Considering the time it takes to square up car sides, if Ted ever produces a pattern I want again, I will gladly pay the extra money to make sure it comes assembled. $30 is well worth a few hours of time and headache.
Older RU bodies such as the ribside cars come as one-piece. I have built 3 or 4 of those kits. I have one or two other of his kits in various stages of completion. They are really good castings, little to no bubbles in anything I've received from him, as it should be.
Re: your kit questions:
But yea, in any flat kit I've ever built from any kit maker, I typically assemble the body, then worry about the details - sides, then ends, then roof, then underframe. Looking at your vent detail, it is probably easier to cut the hole for that first before assembling the body, but it really doesn't matter.
Chooch's engineering plastic detail parts are fantastic, but that material is harder to work with. Ladders and Stirrups are usually an item I do last. Avoid Goo unless your application technique is amazing. I use primarily loctite CA Gel on any multi-material build I do. Handle with care.
I use any detail parts from any company as necessary, I don't care who makes them as long as they're accurate and what I need. Some need serious flash cleanup/filing. PSC, DPH, P&D, etc. I am not proto48, so Tichy grab irons and rivets are fine with me. Archer rivet and louver decals are handy for certain builds that require tons of rivets in a straight line. Use a ruler to line up. You should be able to google all of those companies for more info. Throw in Oscale or parts or some other keyword and it should get you there.
Some stirrups I build by hand from flat brass (I forget what width) and drill #76 holes with a pinvise for soldering .02 wire to stick into the car body/stirrup-rivet detail. This is a trick I learned from building kits from Southern Car and Foundry. Their kits are museum quality. Wish they made more things I was interested in. You should be able to buy all of that on ebay or amazon.
Any mistakes/holes, I patch the holes with styrene and/or loctite gel and/or bondo spot putty from auto store. Repeatedly apply bondo/sand/lightly airbrush until you can't tell there was ever a hole. Yup, this takes time, be patient.
Duplicolor white or gray primer from autozone is good primer for any kit after you wash the bare bodies down with soap. Goes on super light. Rarely do I wet-sand the primer. Then airbrush on your favorite brand of color and use your preferred decal method. Don't have a preferred method? Buy microscale stuff and follow their instructions. Some people are happy with spray cans, but IMHO application is too heavy and much less controlled. I only use them for glosscote and dullcote and am soon transitioning that over to airbrush too.
If you need to see someone's step by step process, go google up Gene Deimling's blog on how he builds his proto 48 cars. That should give you an idea of how to build cars in general, albeit his are from usually from scratch. His blog also has a lot of phenomenal weathering pictures courtesy of expert modeler Lee Turner. Proto48.org is a good general reference for stuff. Might have a link to Gene's blog too.
Also go google up images of the underframe of freight cars so you know how brake rigging works and how it should all be connected in general. Note its not the same for every car. Ted might provide photos of the bottom of his cars on his website, but depending on the car, his pictures might show K brakes, but a later modeling era may have changed that over to AB brakes. (Your car in the picture has AB brakes; you can see the triple valve, brake cylinder and AB reservoir locations.)
In general, if it matters to you, do your research, buy diagram and picture books (lots of good photos are only in books), etc to find what you need to know. Sometimes only ex-RR employees know, but I save that for a last resort if my personal library fails me and unfortunately life makes us old and that resource will dry up within the next 1-3 decades or so. Sometimes I spend as much time researching the prototype as I do building the kit. It happens. Rarely does it not result in a decent finished model.
Above is how I do it. YMMV.
You sure that you did not get an older Chooch kit? Either way, check for warping and variations in thickness if it's really a flat kit.
