HST. Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 These landed today, courtesy of Jeff (cteno4), made by his own hands....Superb! 1 Link to comment
KenS Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 Those are beautiful. And they add a nice splash of color to the scene. Link to comment
Bernard Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 Beautiful work! Do you have photos showing a wider shot of the cranes in the layout? Link to comment
cteno4 Posted March 9, 2011 Share Posted March 9, 2011 Dave, happy they made their over the pond migration in one piece! for n scale birds that was about a 600,000 mile journey! their little wings must be tired! they look great on the layout! glad they found a happy home! probably should have muted the red heads some! oh well they were the experimental batch. going to try a second round for a few for the jrm layout and curts layout. enjoy! cheers jeff Link to comment
traindork Posted March 11, 2011 Share Posted March 11, 2011 Wow! Those look really good! Link to comment
rankodd Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 Dave, happy they made their over the pond migration in one piece! for n scale birds that was about a 600,000 mile journey! their little wings must be tired! they look great on the layout! glad they found a happy home! probably should have muted the red heads some! oh well they were the experimental batch. going to try a second round for a few for the jrm layout and curts layout. enjoy! cheers jeff Beautiful work - I'm quite curious about how one goes about making n-scale figures with that kind of detail at home! Link to comment
cteno4 Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 Beautiful work - I'm quite curious about how one goes about making n-scale figures with that kind of detail at home! Rankodd, actually not as hard as it looks, just a little patience and fiddling. i did all these in one evening of playing from scratch. i also probably have the largest hands on the forum to boot! i just bent pins to make the bill (pin point), neck and body. then glued a V of fine wire thru the body for legs, then filled in the body with spackle to flesh it out, then just file it down to shape. wings are just paper cut with small scissors and glued on. then painted. of course it helps the dudes stand nearly 5' tall! i have been playing with bending up wire for sea gull sized birds at 18"-24" scale and its not too hard. wings will be more of a challenge to cut out, but i think possible. not sure if i will ever get scott's house wren done though or if i do they will probably be lost in the packing when sent to him! i was tempted to send him an envelope of fine sand as a whole flock of house wrens for being a smart ass! just need some very fine pliers. good to have a pair of tweezer nose ones (heres a good inexpensive one) http://www.widgetsupply.com/page/WS/PROD/pliers-needle-nose-plain/BCU49 and a pair of fine round nosed pliers with the tip as fine as you can find. http://www.widgetsupply.com/page/WS/PROD/pliers-round-nose/BEO07 check out the beading tools at your local craft store, ours, AC MOORE has 40-50% off coupons weekly and they have some nice fine tools. every month or so they have all beading tools 40% off. im going to make a second batch and some sea gulls for my and curt's dock scenes soon and ill take some pictures of the progress. want to make a nice how to page on this for the jrm site. play around, you might surprise yourself with what you can do! cheers jeff 2 Link to comment
HST. Posted March 24, 2011 Author Share Posted March 24, 2011 Everyone that visits us gets to see the Cranes (it's compulsary....LOL), and everyone is in agreement that they are superb, which considering none of my friends and family are into trains, is quite something ! If i get time this weekend, i will try and show a wider shot of them in the layout. There is no doubt in my mind that Jeff is a very talented modeller, imagine what he could probably do in "O" Gauge !!! Dave. Link to comment
cteno4 Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 ahh, hmm, blush... really humbly its not that im a great modeler its more that i like to fiddle and not scared to just mess around. mainly practice. first few times you try something like this it may be a mess, but then it get a lot easier. thats why i keep encouraging folks to just fiddle some! here is my dorky first bird attempt (i spent all of like 30 minutes on this one) at a heron the night before i tried the cranes. he came out looking like a duck mated with a heron! didnt come out as i wanted and falls apart at about 2' distance viewing, but doing it i learned the basics so the first attempt at the cranes was a lot better. its also the important lesson to figure the first crack at something new may not be so hot so do practice runs if you can to sus things out before doing the real one! big lesson i learned in grad school with lab science, some experiments could take weeks and weeks of work and thousands of dollars in supplies. it was worth spending a few days trying a mini/light version to work out the kinks and get some preliminary results to see if they would have the signal i would need to measure properly, etc, before i did the full on experiment. cheers jeff 1 Link to comment
Guest Closed Account 1 Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Can I some Pigeons and a Falcon for the Shinkansen Viaduct Stations? Link to comment
cteno4 Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Can I some Pigeons and a Falcon for the Shinkansen Viaduct Stations? and the splattered guts? i believe it was the chrysler building that they when they stocked it with peregrine falcons they ended up with a lot of pigeon guts on the windows. the falcons went into such fast dives when they would hit the pigeons they would sometimes explode and the rain of pigeon guts would hit the windows and sidewalk below! pigeons are not built all that strong! pigeons are at the size that would probably need to be cast to make any amount. they would be just under 2mm long! cheers jeff Link to comment
Guest Closed Account 1 Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 That's correct! Right around the death star area. LOL. Link to comment
brill27mcb Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 When New Jersey Transit upgraded the Morris and Essex line from 3,000V DC to 25,000 V AC, there were a number of unexpected power failures on the catenary. The cause was ultimately determined to be pigeons not used to the new distance needed to other objects when they landed on the wire. They caused an arc around the insulators or to a nearby bridge etc. and literally exploded, leaving nothing but a shower of feathers. There was also a squirrel that got into a power substation and fatally learned the same lesson. Rich K. Link to comment
rankodd Posted March 26, 2011 Share Posted March 26, 2011 Beautiful work - I'm quite curious about how one goes about making n-scale figures with that kind of detail at home! ... just need some very fine pliers. good to have a pair of tweezer nose ones (heres a good inexpensive one) http://www.widgetsupply.com/page/WS/PROD/pliers-needle-nose-plain/BCU49 and a pair of fine round nosed pliers with the tip as fine as you can find. http://www.widgetsupply.com/page/WS/PROD/pliers-round-nose/BEO07 ... Do you have any idea how much money I just spent at that link? Gah! Thanks for the tips, though. Like I posted in the other thread - very inspiring work. I'm now going to have to scour the forum for your posts to see what other hints of micro-nized construction wisdom you've imparted :) Link to comment
cteno4 Posted March 26, 2011 Share Posted March 26, 2011 Do you have any idea how much money I just spent at that link? Gah! Thanks for the tips, though. Like I posted in the other thread - very inspiring work. I'm now going to have to scour the forum for your posts to see what other hints of micro-nized construction wisdom you've imparted :) LOL, i have been called a tech enabler in the past! i just got my first order from widget last week so thats why i had posted those two as i have them and they were of decent quality and fantastic price. widget seems to get surplus or cosmetic rejects i think along with just some of the no name cheaper tools. some of the cheap things appear to be good enough for a little light work. got a set of tiny fine files for like $3 that are fine for light work in odd places, would not hold up to a lot of heavy filing, but fine for those few times you need a small certain shaped file. the tweezer point files are identical to the beadalon pair i have that are like $12. just no laser etched brand name and looks like it might be a slight cosmetic reject, but the casts are identical. got a few reverse action tweezers for holding stuff while painting and very decent for less than $2 ea. also lots of forcepts that were good quality for $1-2. good deal this month is the little hobby knife set for $2. basically a knock off of the standard 3 handle xacto set in a plastic box and a dozen different blades. they are aluminum handles and collets. basically $1 ea for extra knife handles and a few odd blades for odd work for free! cant beat that for extra xacto handles! best thing i did pick up there was some little clear plastic jars bout 1" h x 0.75" round with clear screw lids. i have lots of little jars like this but usually the lid is opaque which means if you have a bunch in a box you have to pick them all up to see whats inside! at $1.50 for 10, a good deal! http://www.widgetsupply.com/page/WS/PROD/storage-plastic-container/SHJ4-87448BB cheers jeff Link to comment
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