Stabliofarmer

Looking good Dave, shouldn't have trailers waiting around with all that power covering the pit

Looking smart in the sun Martin, always manage to come up with an interesting and enjoyable build!

Those birds are an excellent touch! Stunning photos

2 hours ago, jmd said:

nice county book in there james

Got to get my D series research in John!

Thank you for the recommendations John and Paddy, I've just ordered both off eBay

Thought I'd share my collection that comes with me from uni house to uni house, most for their reference photos than their literary excellence. Often the books provide more in-depth, or even not at all seen information than internet pages.

David Wrights books are a bible for model making buildings, and his scenery work is very good too, the books give good step by step guides, and have a great focus on achieving realism, discussions on how materials and methods of building change throughout the country, and how the positioning of a building will lead to different weathering effects over time.

Hill Shepherd is the best book I own, quoted by Amanda Owen the Author as 'what got her into farming' it is packed with real life farming photos, nothing censored, nothing staged, just straight up farming, and perfect reference material for making a model sheep farm. The Herdwick Shepherd is a similar book, all be it 25 years newer. Created by the 'twitter shepherd' it feels like a more rounded copy of Hill Shepherd. The photos often feel more staged, they are often poor quality phone images, and the printing is poorer, on matt paper rather than a nice glossy print, still hidden away it contains so very natural photos and proves useful now and then. If anyone knows of any similar books please let me know!

The Art of The Toy Soldier is a huge book, focused more at the Toy Soldier anorak, but it does contain the odd snippet on Britains Farm Figures, and on their production methods. I'm on the look out for Peter Coles History of Herald and Britains Plastic Figures, which sounds like it contains much more info, I'm just not quite ready to pay £90 for it just yet, especially after spending that much on a History of McLaren steam engines book recently.

Not thick John, just learning like we all do, resin casting isn't exactly classed as a general knowledge topic! You place your silicone in the chamber, and then draw the vacuum, this pulls the air bubbles out of the silicone before you pour it, which is the same thing as when you pour the silicone in a thin stream from a height to break up the air bubbles. It's less common to degas resin or casting rubber as they have much shorter pot lives so by the time you've faffed about degassing the stuffs set solid. For resin it is common to pour the resin into the mould then place the mould in a pressure pot chamber and allow it to cure under pressure, which compresses the air bubbles so that they are too small to notice.

2 hours ago, catkom3 said:

Any milking equipement on the farm John,if so you could rig up a vacuum chamber to remove the air bubbles,?? Or one of these,never seen this video before,might be handy for anyone casting small parts,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Uc_xWgl1ZI

Regards

Joe.

Very handy little video there Joe, Ive found a few of my moulds recently have failed after fewer casts than they should, and it has been due to micro air bubbles in the silicone. This looks like a very cheap method to degas it, cheers!

As everyone else has said John, fantastic work! Your speed is impressive, even working full time on models I don't think I could keep up with your output!

That looks very tasty Ted, is it a set of Bburago wheels that you've put under her?

Like Ted says, no need for knots.

Double wrap the string like when you start tying your laces, pull tight, and dab a little bit of cheap superglue over it, that'll work the same as a knot, and still leave a little knotted bundle when you trim the excess thread.

The over lapping of material, letting it burst out of the edges is a tricky one. With the large square bales I have a piece of plasticard the shape of the chamber but 1mm smaller all the way round. I lay out the threads, and then instead of pile straw in straight away, I lay the plasticard sheet over the thread. Push it into the chamber abit, and then load with straw. When the bales tide of push it out of the chamber just enough that the plastic shows through, then slide the plastic out, with the rest of the bale still held in place by the chamber. Then push the bale out. I was largely using it to stop the big bales going round at the end, but it also stopped the string slipping as the thread hooks onto the plastic and isn't pushed to the side.

Bit of a long winded post, sorry!

Looks great Will, nice work

Ah, looking forward to seeing it

The dutch barn is coming along lovely Sean

I have added a blog post on dying large quantities of chopped sisal, thought it might be of interest if you're looking at getting some layers of older brown bedding into the pig styes  https://modelfarming132.blogspot.com/2018/11/dying-sisal-on-grand-scale.html might particularly be useful for when you do a muck heap.

9 hours ago, tabmodels said:

This needs to happen now

Facelift grille is in the pipeline ready for them!

I was listening to something a while ago, a podcast I think, which told of why you get items that are ridiculous prices on sites like Amazon. Basically the price to begin with hasn't been input by a human, the price is displayed via an algorithm that reads the RRP and then compares itself to all other products for sale with the same barcode, ie anyone else selling the same item. It then alters itself accordingly to remain a competitive yet profitable price. This works well when there's a variety of sellers with the same item. It's when the number of sellers gets down to one or two that the algorithms get confused and start fighting each other, this drives the price up and up and up to what you see as some of the extortionate prices. Large capacity sellers obviously aren't checking all their items constantly so these prices are able to go unnoticed by the seller.

Thought it was very interesting to hear, I wonder what effect the algorithms can have on a models overall value? They allow a model to be advertised for an extortionate price without anyone having ever paid that much, next thing you know the prices are rising everywhere. Is this a result of the algorithm or simply coincidence as the algorithms are more likely to go rouge as a model gets rarer to acquire, and a rarer model will go for more regardless of the surrounding market.

I've poured out most of what I know here, although theres a few updates to make after 3 years. Resin wise I'm using a mix of MB's Axson F32 and F38 depending on what I'm casting most, F32 for rims and cabs etc, F38 for figures and animals, but both work fine for either application. Any questions just ask!

We we're out at Smallwood rally over the bank holiday weekend, an excellent show near Sandbach, Cheshire. It has a really good balance of a little bit of everything and has managed to get their health and safety balance spot on so as fun can be had, while the public remain out of danger.

We had one of our miniatures on the dyno, recorded 3HP and 60lb-ft of torque, but it was re calibrated later in the day so that, combined with the issues that arise from doing the maths with such a small flywheel etc, would suggest the real figure is alittle higher.

As you can see it generated considerable interest!

Looking the part now Sean

Weathering on the trailer is spot on. Rare to see classic kit weathered to how it would look after only a year or so's work.

Cheers guys!

Haha, now now Sean we're in Lancashire here, not Yorkshire... or Wales! The figure is a modified Britains driver, originally made to be a roofer on my old display, turns out its quite a versatile pose!

Haha, cheers John, got a little carried away with the red Sharpie 

Hahaha, I trick the system. I use cereal card, plasticard or sellotape to block out the majority of the window pane, and then just use a little bit of plasticine to seal the gaps around the edges, much quicker, and alot less faffing.

Looking good, so are they removable from the stalls?

Hand destroying work the sisal chopping isn't it. My solution is to use a cheap plastic guillotine, which allows me to use thicker string, think it's 15mm rope infact so each cut produces loads more material and the guillotine isn't as hard on the hands as scissors

For the cab the method you'll want is squish/squash casting, not sure of you've looked into much but this video sums it up,

Should be fine as long as the cab doesn't curve back in too much making it difficult to remove the solidified resin part from the mould. If it does its possible to make the core part of the mould 'the bit that you push in' flexible by putting a card box into the mould that can be removed allowing you to flex the mould out, hopefully photos speak better than words, this is a mould for a truck cab.

Ooooo very fancy John, proper production line on the go!