Shite in Miniature II

[FakeConcern]

My Norev 17 is blue, but the 15 is orange...

I also have a few Renner 12s and really like them so if there are any bits from your scrap one you don't want @danthecapriman save them for me please!

[danthecapriman]

6 minutes ago, FakeConcern said:

My Norev 17 is blue, but the 15 is orange...

I also have a few Renner 12s and really like them so if there are any bits from your scrap one you don't want @danthecapriman save them for me please!

Will do.

The one I robbed the wheels from is an estate which I’ll be fitting some different wheels onto, which will be coming off a saloon donor car! I’ll see what’s left and let you know.

The Mercedes truck cab is available too if you fancy it? I know you were doing a cab swap for a French/euro truck. Being a Mercedes LP it’s exactly the sort of bigger truck that’d be an artic.

Its this style cab.

 

[FakeConcern]

Thanks for the offer on the truck, but I most likely would never get around to using that. Yes please to any R12 bits though!

[danthecapriman]

I meant to ask earlier, does anyone know why the vents in the rear pillars of the Renault 17 seem different colours? 
They all seem either white or black but I can’t see any rhyme or reason why some cars have one and an identical car has the other.

[RoadworkUK]

Spent a week in Glastonbury to celebrate my 10th anniversary, and almost managed to come home without any diecast.

And when we stopped in Cheddar and I found a 50p rummage tub in Prickles Hedgehog Rescue, I showed phenomenal self-restraint by only coming away with a single item.

I chose this:

AEC (Ergomatic cab) eight-wheel tipper, by Lesney of England. Number 51, with Superfast wheels which I believe date it to 1971.

Yeah, it's not in terrific nick; there's plenty of paint loss and a stress crack in the jauntily tinted glazing. And, inevitably, the paper stickers have lost much of their meaning over the past 55-odd years. However, the axles are all straight. 

And:

The tipper mechanism is  A1. It feels genuinely lovely in use, with the tailgate flopping around with virtually no mechanical resistance, as if precision-made.

And, you know, condition be damned. I'm pleased to be its new long-term custodian. Opening a new chapter in its lengthy existence. Who wants a 2025 Hot Wheels anyway?

[bunglebus]

I've got a not too terrible one of those

Most have had a hard life transporting dirt around the garden, or possibly doing duty at a paint factory, looking at this one

 

[Split_Pin]

4 hours ago, danthecapriman said:

Here’s a real AEC Mustang.

 

That belongs to my pal's dad although that's not Alec at the wheel. He has a big collection of trucks, all restored to better than new condition,  but I didn't know he had that one! Nice work on it Dan.

[danthecapriman]

44 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

That belongs to my pal's dad although that's not Alec at the wheel. He has a big collection of trucks, all restored to better than new condition,  but I didn't know he had that one! Nice work on it Dan.

Small world!

When you next see him, demand to see the Mustang! He actually sounds like he should be on here.

[flat4alfa]

Take a look at my Polfi
She's the only one I got

Not much of a Polfi
I never seem to get a lot

[bunglebus]

Ooh, a yellow one!

 

[flat4alfa]

Take a look at this Guisval
It's been around a banger track

Not much of a Guisval
It's condition is pretty cack

It took a boat ride
Across the water

Ending in a boot sale

[ETCHY]

9 hours ago, RoadworkUK said:

Spent a week in Glastonbury to celebrate my 10th anniversary, and almost managed to come home without any diecast.

And when we stopped in Cheddar and I found a 50p rummage tub in Prickles Hedgehog Rescue, I showed phenomenal self-restraint by only coming away with a single item.

I chose this:

AEC (Ergomatic cab) eight-wheel tipper, by Lesney of England. Number 51, with Superfast wheels which I believe date it to 1971.

Yeah, it's not in terrific nick; there's plenty of paint loss and a stress crack in the jauntily tinted glazing. And, inevitably, the paper stickers have lost much of their meaning over the past 55-odd years. However, the axles are all straight. 

And:

The tipper mechanism is  A1. It feels genuinely lovely in use, with the tailgate flopping around with virtually no mechanical resistance, as if precision-made.

And, you know, condition be damned. I'm pleased to be its new long-term custodian. Opening a new chapter in its lengthy existence. Who wants a 2025 Hot Wheels anyway?

I think the Ergomatic cab is probably my favourite Lesney / Matchbox casting. It's just a lovely thing & really captures the look of the real thing. For a kids toy it's brilliant.

[bunglebus]

 

[bunglebus]

Blue seems to be popular 

 

[sierraman]

17 hours ago, bunglebus said:

I think those retro ones are a new casting, apparently in the humid climate of Malaysia etc the moulds degrade over time ( I'm sure they could be stored better but hey).

Wonder what happened to all the old ones like an MB56 Cortina etc? I know it went to China, probably used then dumped. 

[bunglebus]

Bulgaria and Hungary, they made a bazillion different colours

Various old moulds went there and were used for years

[sierraman]

Probably under a tarpaulin in Bulgaria the mould sits! 

[danthecapriman]

They do wear out eventually. You can usually see on long lived castings where early ones have good details and a nice crisp shape, but the later ones start to lose that. Rounded corners and shallow detail etc. 

When I worked at SSE I had a job at a place that made tooling and moulds for various other companies and got chatting to one of the guys there helping us. He said a lot of their tooling was for car makers for all sorts of stuff like door handles, mirrors etc etc. it goes to the oem manufacturer then once the car it’s for changes or goes out of production they sell the tooling to aftermarket manufacturers or just scrap it. Obviously once it gets so worn the quality isn’t good enough so it can’t be used. 
Im sure there are old moulds & tools for diecast cars piled up somewhere but the chances are the value in scrap metal outweighs the floor space they take up.

[bunglebus]

Yeah I've seen very worn out examples of the Porsche 911 and Model A

 

[Split_Pin]

54 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

They do wear out eventually. You can usually see on long lived castings where early ones have good details and a nice crisp shape, but the later ones start to lose that. Rounded corners and shallow detail etc. 

When I worked at SSE I had a job at a place that made tooling and moulds for various other companies and got chatting to one of the guys there helping us. He said a lot of their tooling was for car makers for all sorts of stuff like door handles, mirrors etc etc. it goes to the oem manufacturer then once the car it’s for changes or goes out of production they sell the tooling to aftermarket manufacturers or just scrap it. Obviously once it gets so worn the quality isn’t good enough so it can’t be used. 
Im sure there are old moulds & tools for diecast cars piled up somewhere but the chances are the value in scrap metal outweighs the floor space they take up.

Won't the moulds be rubber? My mums pal used to make diecast warships for a board game he invented and all the moulds were rubber discs in 2 parts. The molten metal was poured in, 2 discs joined and secured and then inserted into this huge machine where it was spun around (probably other stuff happened as part of that process but I don't remember). Really interesting!

[RoadworkUK]

5 hours ago, ETCHY said:

I think the Ergomatic cab is probably my favourite Lesney / Matchbox casting. It's just a lovely thing & really captures the look of the real thing. For a kids toy it's brilliant.

I've got the horsebox variant knocking around somewhere. It'll be nice to have them side by side as if in some kind of AEC "look how diverse our products are" brochure.

[danthecapriman]

1 hour ago, Split_Pin said:

Won't the moulds be rubber? My mums pal used to make diecast warships for a board game he invented and all the moulds were rubber discs in 2 parts. The molten metal was poured in, 2 discs joined and secured and then inserted into this huge machine where it was spun around (probably other stuff happened as part of that process but I don't remember). Really interesting!

Possible, although for mass production I’d imagine rubber would just degrade and distort very quick if you were punching out hundreds or even thousands of identical castings year on year. Most of them are metal, aluminium or steel. 
The ones that company I mentioned had were steel. They were two part moulds that were much bigger than the part that was cast inside them, they were tightened together insanely tight then the molten metal forced in. Once it was solid the two halves were undone and the part pulled out. Any defects like air bubbles etc and they went straight into the recycling rejects bin. Or if your Matchbox, just paint it anyway and put it in a box to sell!😆

[MiniMinorMk3]

Solido variations.

 

 

[Split_Pin]

Many thanks to @bunglebus for posting this 1/25 Polistil and another red example on the miniature ebay tat thread and for @FakeConcern for tagging me. I don't look at that thread and for a very good reason however they were a lovely bargain.

Both ended at a fiver each, plus the same for postage (was only £3.90 though but I won't grumble).

It's absolutely marvellous and a world away from the one-door R5 further up the thread (I can't wait for that to arrive either) Lovely opening features and great engine detail.

The red one is on its way!

 

[Bren]

This just arrived 

Corgi juniors ford Thunderbird. Those the wrong side of 45 will probably remember the TV series Vegas starring the late Robert Urich. I actually had this in junior school but swapped it for something else.

It has the rarer 5 spoke wheels. I also had the matchbox superfast offering - for a change the corgi is a much nicer casting - the chrome air cleaner is a nice touch.

I have quite a few juniors and whizzwheels from 1970 - 73 - they are nice especially with their metal baseplates. Sadly from about 1975 they became somewhat cheap - plastic baseplates became the norm and they weren't as nice as matchbox or majorette - but this little thunderbird bucks the trend.

[Datsuncog]

5 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

Won't the moulds be rubber? My mums pal used to make diecast warships for a board game he invented and all the moulds were rubber discs in 2 parts. The molten metal was poured in, 2 discs joined and secured and then inserted into this huge machine where it was spun around (probably other stuff happened as part of that process but I don't remember). Really interesting!

That's really interesting stuff! What was the game called, out of interest?

Sounds like he was making a slush casting, probably using pot metal composed of zinc and other low-melting-point metals like copper and aluminium, formed in a rubber mould.

The centrifuge would have been to try to get any air bubbles forced out before the casting cooled, avoiding trapping the bubbles and weakening the casting. 

Most major diecast manufacturers used hardened steel moulds ('die blocks') which were quite an involved process to make, fitted to diecast injection machines which forced the molten Mazac alloy into the mould.

Jack Odell of Lesney designed and built the first high volume automatic die-casting machines in order to meet the growing demand for Matchbox toys, as commercially available automatic machines were scarce and hand-operated machines were too slow.

Lesney ended up with custom machines each capable of outputting up to 100,000 castings per week - and they had several hundred machines in operation daily across multiple foundries. They could knock out more tiny Rolls-Royces in a single afternoon than Rolls Royce had built 1:1 versions in their entire history.

There's a chapter all about the production process in the 1989 book 'Collecting Matchbox Diecast Toys - The First Forty Years' which is pretty interesting.

[Split_Pin]

14 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

That's really interesting stuff! What was the game called, out of interest?

Sounds like she was making a slush casting, probably using pot metal composed of zinc and other low-melting-point metals like copper and aluminium, formed in a rubber mould.

I'll ask my mum but I doubt she would remember. I'm not sure she was even aware of it all until we all went over to Millport in the mid 1990s to visit a huge perpetually unfinished house he had been building for the past 20 odd years. 

He was some chap, really interesting. The 'gang hut' as he called it had several levels and a huge basement, filled with all kinds of machines and lots of redundant equipment from school art classrooms (he was an art teacher). Part of this collection was a huge heavy machine that injected the metal into these rubber dies. Each one had about 8 small ships and was about the size of an LP. He also had dozens of resin casts upstairs for larger ships, mainly made from lego bricks. The cupboards upstairs were rammed full of the boards, boxes and instructions for these games, together with stacks and stacks of unbuilt model airplanes. 

His name was Bill and being as he was, the game like many other projects was a bit of a folly and I don't think any were ever issued.  

He sadly passed a few years ago now and I don't know what became of all his possessions, including his 1982 Toyota Celica.  My mums other art school friend Alan who was best friends with Bill may know but he isn't too well and his communications with my mum are sporadic to say the least.

On a happier note, Google Street View confirms that the Gang Hut was finally finished and is being enjoyed by a new owner.

I also still use the technique he showed me on how to make a model car aerial. His original example still adorns an Esci MK2 Escort rally car.

[bunglebus]

30 minutes ago, Bren said:

This just arrived 

Corgi juniors ford Thunderbird

Unusual find that. I've only got one, and it has the sliced pizza wheels

 

[Split_Pin]

27 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

That's really interesting stuff! What was the game called, out of interest?

Sounds like she was making a slush casting, probably using pot metal composed of zinc and other low-melting-point metals like copper and aluminium, formed in a rubber mould.

The centrifuge would have been to try to get any air bubbles forced out before the casting cooled, avoiding trapping the bubbles and weakening the casting. 

Most major diecast manufacturers used hardened steel moulds ('die blocks') which were quite an involved process to make, fitted to diecast injection machines which forced the molten Mazac alloy into the mould.

Jack Odell of Lesney designed and built the first high volume automatic die-casting machines in order to meet the growing demand for Matchbox toys, as commercially available automatic machines were scarce and hand-operated machines were too slow.

Lesney ended up with custom machines each capable of outputting up to 100,000 castings per week - and they had several hundred machines in operation daily across multiple foundries. They could knock out more tiny Rolls-Royces in a single afternoon than Rolls Royce had built 1:1 versions in their entire history.

There's a chapter all about the production process in the 1989 book 'Collecting Matchbox Diecast Toys - The First Forty Years' which is pretty interesting.

I remember now, he founded Clydeside Models, so not such a folly after all! The game was called 'FLOTILLA'. 

https://www.walkwithdestiny.com/bill-gilpin-memorial-fund

He only passed in 2020 and his family are still selling some of his models. This is exactly how I remember them:

https://ebay.us/m/anbhyt

You've sent me down a rabbit hole now!

[danthecapriman]

Got this today.

Damaged Schabak Ford Orion in 1:43. 
Tail light, windscreen and scuttle trim/wipers all missing but not bad otherwise. I should be able to cobble something together to fix the missing bits. 
These don’t seem too common over here and are a bit pricey when they do show up, so this one will satisfy my need for one to strip & repaint to look like my old H reg 1.4GLX one.