Quote from: Bigkev on November 11, 2015, 10:08:48 PM
Hi,

In touch with your feminine side again Zak?

Nice to see this one, a little different to all those heavy brutish machines.

Bigkev

Brutish me?

Before I start on a model I try to get a feel for what I am about to build and so I look through my books and trawl the internet for photographs and background information.
Only the briefest of information is provided in the kit.
Douglas Motorcycles were manufactured from 1907-1957 at Kingswood in Bristol. They are best remembered as producers of Flat horizontally opposed twins.
In 1882 two brothers William and Edwin Douglas formed a company and were mainly engaged as blacksmiths, but soon became iron founders.  Douglas made castings for Light Motors and took over the rights for the manufacture of motorcycles in 1907. It was the Fee brothers who first produced the flat twin in 1904; the name was later anglicized to Fairy.
In 1907 Douglas made the 350cc in line flat twin which had a final belt drive, it did undergo several modifications before 1914. Over 13,000 motorcycles were made during the First World War, they were of two types, the 2.75hp 350cc and the 4hp 544cc. This kit is the 350cc motorcycle.
The kit comprises 23 resin parts, transfers, photo-etch wheel spokes, wire and instructions.
It states that it is not suitable for children under the age of 12 – no comments thank you.

A little more research will be needed as no colours are given in the kit.
It does look as though they were in the livery supplied by the Douglas workshop from the artwork here.


The attachments show the kit instructions.

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Hi Zak,

Good luck with this one, you need a certain amount of ingenuity to deal with the instructions alone! I think your okay with suitable for 60+ ho,ho,ho.

Will you be enrolling the help of Mr Bill with the female figurine?

Look forward to seeing this develop.

Bigkev

Here are the parts all in their little plastic bags.

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Some assembly done, the engine and the wheels with their photo-etched spokes.


There are also a set of photographs on line at the Tommy's War website to help with construction.
This is not a kit for the faint hearted and it took a lot of courage to start on the model but start I did,
The resin parts are well cast but are very delicate and quite flimsy.
My overlarge fingers did not cope well and fine tweezers and other such devices were required. I used a fine razor saw to remove the parts from the casting blocks.
I did follow the on line procedure and manage to break I couple of parts, these I repaired and strengthened. Eventually it started to go together. I would say that better instructions would have helped a little.
You will have to judge for yourself how well construction went when you see the finished article.
The etched spokes for the wheel were nice and I got them to stick after much swearing and patience.
I did not manage to take many photographs during construction as the model was so delicate and I found it difficult to prop up.


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If I am allowed to say "buggering hell" on here without being moderated, I would very much like to do so.  That's a bit "Haddocky" is that!!!

The parts are small and very fragile but I have made some progress.
The instructions are confusing me and photos of the real thing look different from this model. I guess improvements were made or maybe they were individually built so had slight differences.

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Progress continues.
Here I have undercoated and done some initial touching up.
Photographs are quite cruel and show all those little problems.

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Very impressive.  You're right about the photographs - you can see in the most finite detail where things aren't quite as you would like them to be - but don't let that turn you into a rivet counter.  They still look very good to me!

Well, I keep adding details, like mudguard stays, cables, fuel pipes, spark plugs and leads, handle throttle, the list seems to be endless.
It always amazes me how many paints are needed, even for such a small model.

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Well here it is warts and all, just about finished, now the figure is to paint and I need to make a base.
I have included a ruler so you get some idea of the size.


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Just like you Zak,

Perfectly formed, with exquisite detail.

Bigkev

Wow Zak...and a coincidence that I am just starting on something similar. (check out "what am I building now" very soon) What scale is this model??

It is 1/32nd scale.

big model then!