The chequered flag for the Williams FW 14B

I have spent a couple of hours today applying the tyre decals. I soaked some kitchen paper to wet the back of the decals. after a few minutes I coated the tyre with decal adhesive and placed the decal on the tyre. I pressed down on the decal and carefully removed the backing from one end while keeping pressure on the remaining decal in contact with the tyre. This worked well and the decals went on easily.. I waited about half an hour between doing the other side and kept the tyre clean by doing this side on a sheet of clean paper. The wheels fitted on in seconds  and basically Bob's your uncle.

Well there isn't much to add here, all I need to do is to put up a display shelf for this creation.So adiós amigo's.

All you need is wheels

I have completed the car now, the tyres have been sanded, all I need to do now is fix on the tyre decals and from past experience they are problematic, as the rubber surface of the tyre does not lend itself easily to sliding the decal into the best alignment.
I suppose I'm reluctant to let go and finish the whole thing now. Anyway I'm sitting here listening to Barclay James Harvest, a birthday present, and remembering the last time I saw them, back in  1978 and the ticket price was £ 2.80. I still have most of my tickets from gigs going back to 1977. I still have an Ozzy ticket signed by the man himself and Randy Rhodes the guitarist who I met in a record shop in Newcastle. As I remember it Ozzy was totally gone, nowt unusual there though for the time. Tinkity tonk for now.

Life is for living and living is free, as they say back in the good old 70's.

Countdown for the Williams FW14B

I have been cracking on with the decals and haven;t much left to do. I nearly forgot to add the top coach line to the rear cowl. I did check that it would line up with the air intake once assembled, give or take a whisker. I started the main bodywork with the coach lines. the only problem I had was with the long line running to the front of the nose cone I split this into two parts to make it more manageable, which also overcame the fact that it was too long. The joint with the upper suspension bulge was tricky and it seems I have sprayed the wrong line separating the blue and yellow at this point, Oh bother ! or words to that effect. I shall rectify this by hand painting in the offending part. The instructions or box art do not help. Apart from that everything was tickety boo.

Cheerio again.

Williams FW14B decals

I have started to apply the decals and have completed most of the rear cowling. I tried trimming off the blue decal on the coach lines but found that if I trimmed them too close to the white line the decals split, so I trimmed them about 2 to 3mm in from the white line. I don't know if my scalpel is too blunt but it seems fine on other things. I used decal coat to help adhesion and found this also helped. I have also applied the Canon decals to the rear wing. Here inoticed the the logo on the top wing needed to fit around the central support, but the decal had needed to be trimmed to fit by cutting out the central split . On the lower wing I split the logo into two parts, again with success. I have not taken any pictures yet but will do so when I have made more progress.
I also received an invitation for an interview for a job, a rare and welcome surprise. I  have applied for hundreds of jobs since being made redundant and so far have only had one months work in a part time job since September 2010. It would be great to get back to work and earn some money. I have worked nearly all of my life, starting with paper rounds when I was about 12  . I then worked weekends in a supermarket, a very new fangled innovation at the time and a world away from what we know today. I was last unemployed for a few months after qualifying as a teacher back in 1992. I never expected to spend this amount of time being unemployed and am sick to death of being classified by the media as some kind of dirt on the shoe of society, so I hope I get a job out of this interview and have some money to spend in my pocket.
Cheerio for now.

WILLIAMS FW 14B Problems and solutions

The exhaust fit, front wing and electrics.

I completed the exhausts with some difficulty, it was like trying to reassemble a segmented orange back to its original state and then fit it back into the skin. I tried to align all the pipes in line as shown on the diagram, using a ruler, but gave up and gave it my best shot. When dry I gave them a dry fit and the seemed ok so I glued them in place and used the alignment part supplied, however when the body assembly was fitted to the undertray the left exhaust was still out of line. I fixed this by using a toothpick to align it and fixed it in place with some good old superglue. I fitted the bottom radiator connections with no problem and moved on to fixing the ready painted engine intake. I had painted the blue square onto the yellow base paint using the measurements of the blue decal and the result was fine. I am still constructing the rear wing and will apply the wing decals before fitting as it would seem easier to fit these without being hampered by the bodywork. Working with large decals is difficult enough, as I found out with the front wing decal. Construction of the front wing was simple enough,but the white decal became a real problem. I fitted the decal in place, allowed it to semi dry and fitted it to the body. Big problem, as soon as I fitted it it began to tear wherever I touched it and the fit with the nose tore it even more. Fortunately I had bought an extra set of decals, as I could foresee problems with fitting the coach line detail, particularly on the front body between the front suspension arms. I cut out the new decal and decided to cut out the section under the nose before applying. I also used humbrol decal cote to fix it and trimmed the ends as the decal was slightly oversized. This worked much better and I am now waiting for it to dry completely before giving it a coat of clear paint, so that the white finish matches the rest of the gloss bodywork white. I then decided to add the extra cable detail to the right radiator duct. I raided one of my bits boxes and lets face it we all have them. I made the cable connector from two 1:35 tank periscopes and drilled out the holes for the cable, using the thin black cable supplied with the kit, the only cable with any spare. I used some thick black cable for the other connector and passed through some fine black cable from my bits box for the other cables. I know it is not as good as others I have seen, but it serves the purpose. I have decided to write this blog as a distraction from my current task of cleaning off the mould lines from the tyres. I have spent about two hours on this so far as I have to do it by hand using the good old sandpaper. I hope the result gives the impression of new tyres as I have tyre decals to fit on at the end. I can now see the end of construction in sight and am kind of looking forward to the end result, but as I have mentioned I can see problems with fitting the decals. One other thing I should mention is that I am leaving the fitting of the mirrors, aerial and windshield until after the decal fit as the coach lines will be easier to fit. I suppose some of the decals could have been fitted earlier, but then they would not have withstood much handling. A bit of a case of a glass half full rather than half empty, what ho! That's all for now toodle pip for now and as I have said in the past a bit of feedback, good or bad would be greatly appreciated. Cheerio.

The end of the beginning for my Williams FW14B

RADIATOR DUCTS, RADIATORS AND ENGINE FIX.

Things have moved on relatively quickly since my last post, so I thought it might be a good idea to bring you up to date. After fixing the front brakes, which was very straight forward I moved onto the radiator ducts. The instructions are very clear and the parts easy to fix.  Attaching the ducts to the body was OK. I found it a little difficult to get the electric cable into the hole on the left side and was glad that I had tried a dry run before using adhesive. It might also have been worthwhile leaving out the wire inserts, but the inserts make the cables mould better to the bodywork with the inserts. I also checked out the Paul Smith, Dan Parrat and modelersite photographs for extra cable detail. I found these both helpful and confusing at the same time. For some of this detail I concluded that I simply dont have the tools to construct some of the parts and the detail on the modelersite and Paul Smith sites is so brilliant that I have to admit my 52 year old eyes simply can't recreate no matter how strong my glasses are and my pockets are empty for buying more tools and parts, which I am sure could be found in some resin kit sites, hey ho such is life. I attached the ducts carefully to make sure the body work was not damaged. I used some super glue on the front left duct as the cable kept pushing the duct out of line. I then added some extra detail to the ducts and decided that I may come back to this detail at a later date when I have completed the majority of the build, as it is an easily accessible area to work on. I then measured up the metal foil part so that I could feed through the green cable before attaching it to the bodywork. I pushed the cable pegs through the foil and it would be advisable to make sure the foil is clear of the pegs as the cable will not fit on easily at the engine mount stage, some thing I neglected to do and cost me more time at that point. The next stage, fitting the radiators was quite easy, the only thing I did extra was give the radiators a wash with some matt black to highlight the detail. I may also add the red cable from the engine kill switch to the engine block. Here again I am confused as the box detail shows the cable ending before the engine block, but the other sites seem to show that this may not be the case, however the photographs are not clear, FRUSTRATION ! 

Fixing the engine was OK, but take care with the two top screws as I felt the screw holes should either be smaller or better designed, as the difference in size between the screw head and the hole is almost nil. I put a little super glue onto the top hose connection with the radiator to fill the tiny gap and painted it when dry. Tying of the green cable  was next on the list. Where to cut the cable as there was at least 4 or 5 cm spare. I gave myself about 2 cm to play with for tying off. I found this very fiddly as the peg to is only 1 or 2 mm long and I didn't want to be to forceful and end up snapping the peg off. I managed it after a few attempts and ended up putting a tiny drop of glue on the cable to secure it, I used the same technique when fixing the rigging to the Vosper MTB and the Schnellboot. Well that's as much as I have done.

 I feel that I have completed most of the build now which is a bit of a shame as I have really enjoyed this project and cannot afford to start another one. It is also a problem to find spaces to display the finished results and dusting them is a real pain in the. Anyway moving swiftly on I am sure there are more little problems to solve with this one. Here are some photographs of the kit as it is now and I hope they are of interest.

On this side I added cable detail to the small small radiator on the top of the duct and an extra cable and tie to the rear.

 

On this side I have only added one extra cable to the front and painted the top assembly slightly differently refering to the box art and other web sites. There are many other details that can be added here at a later date.

 I have not finished working on this area, the rivets need to be painted and the kill switch cable added.

 

What ho! that's all for now so it's cheerio and tinkity tonk from me.