From Amazon

Either laser or ink jet and a choice of clear or white background. Makes very acceptable decals on my Brother LED color printer.

Cool, I'll have to give that a try!

Scratch built some abandoned equipment from the horse farming days to park around the old combine shed. Horse-drawn manure spreader, hay loader and over in the weeds there's a hit-and-miss engine and the remnants of a pre-John Deere "Waterloo Boy" tractor. The tractor is another "cut and trash" project from a diecast toy.

Keep at it and your dioramas will be in the Smithsonian Americana Collection.

It's Diorama Season again! Pretty much the last of the real estate on the layout was taken up by this sawmill. Plenty of opportunity to add details around it.

I decided some time back that a derelict thresher would look good with the rest of the junk behind the combine shed. I've never seen one in person, so I had to ask around for some pictures and basic measurements. One of my long-time "imaginary friends" from Kansas was kind enough to hook me up with pictures and measurements of an Allis Chalmers unit. Nice, as it fits in with my AC combine.



I used his measurements and a scale rule to produce this "S" scale (1:64) drawing with several reference lines.



That was transferred to some plastic sheet and cut out with an Xacto knife.



Those parts were glued together with liquid Testors, using my 1-2-3 blocks and various magnets to hold things square and in position.





I have to use VERY thin sheet to get the curve in the rear housing so I glued some forms on the inside. At this point the whole thing is a hair over 3" long and about an inch wide.

I bent up the straw blower pipe by inserting some #12 copper inside a suitably sized plastic tube, heating it up with a blow dryer and bending it to shape. I have tubing in various sizes to do the blower housings, and square tubing for the elevators.

The spoked wheels are going to be interesting. Not sure how I'm going to do that yet. The various pulleys I can turn on my mini lathe.

The thresher was finished some time back but I never posted a picture of it.



As mentioned in my 3D printer thread, I'm now working on an Advance-Rumely steam engine to power the thresher.

Very nice job on the thresher! Steam engine is looking good, too. Do you have an updated shot of the whole diorama?

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
Very nice job on the thresher! Steam engine is looking good, too. Do you have an updated shot of the whole diorama?

I don't, but when the steamer is done and placed, I'll try to get an overall shot.

Hard to get without a lot of clutter in the background as it's sitting in a corner of my hobby/reloading space.

Wife has been making snarky comments about needing a bigger space/room/building. Might have to take her up on that...

I thought the steamer was finished, but looking at the pictures, I'm not at all happy with the paint. I tried using acrylics for the red and it just isn't working. Some sanding and repainting is on the schedule.







I am reasonably pleased with some overall shots of the diorama.