Umm ... I kind of finished and now realise I didn't take any more photos. I'll take some more now and go back over the processes.


Winch cable.

I replaced the moulded kit winch cable with some braided fishing line from K-Mart. I've got enough now to do several hundred tow trucks. The ends were looped over and glued together with CA. Once that was set, I cut a strip of aluminium sheet from a Milo tin seal and glued one end to the join. Once that was set, I wrapped the balance of the strip around the join in the cable to secure it and make it look like a ferule.

I then fed that cable back through the beam and attached it to the winch drum with more CA. A wash of burnt umber gave it a nice metallic colur.




Antennae and lights.

The kit parts for the rotating beacons are supplied in clear plastic. I gave these a couple of coats of Tamiya clear yellow tint them appropriately. The antennae are accupuncture needles with both ends trimmed off. They come with nice brass windings around the handle end that look convincingly like springs. Be careful with these, they are designed to pierce the skin!

The indicators were, again, supplied as clear, so they got the same two coats of clear yellow. In order to give the indicators some level of reflectivity, I glued small rectangles of chrome mylar to the back of each. This gives them a nice glow effect.






Cab interior.

The cab interior went together with a bit of fettling. I had to trim off some of the edges of the interior bucket to get everything to settle in place nicely. I think there was some interference with the top of the cab interior and the strngthening I added earlier. Anyway, I got it all together in such a way that none of the joints are stressed. Ther's not much much I dislike more than having a seam pop at the end of a build.

Glazing went in without a hitch. I did have to add the steering wheel through the side window after everything else was in place as it fouled the dash when I slid the interior into place.







Tail-end

The rear indicator/brake light lenses were clear, too, so they were hit with transluent yellow and red and then glued to the chrome bases with PVA.




Summary

This was a thoroughly enjoyable, relaxing build. I think mainly because I just tackled one small job at a time and considered each a model in itself. That way I didn't have half-finished tasks hanging around that nagged at me until I would come back and rush just to get them out of the way. It was also very satisfying to try new techniques. As a result of this build I have now added about ten trucks and trailers to my stash and I'm also almost encouraged enough to restart my stalled Diamond Reo project!



Hhere are a few pics of the final result: