Wednesday 1 May 2013

My mini motorbike model


A couple of months ago, Ralph and I were looking at some photographs taken at an exhibition that somebody pointed us to on the Spanner II list. Amongst the models shown was a neat little motorbike that caught my eye so I thought I'd have a go at building it.

First thing to do was to find a nice clean 5½ x 2½ flanged plate. That is not as easy as it sounds. We have dozens of them but finding a nice looking one is a bit of a challenge. I ended up with a choice of three; a nice blue one a red one and a strange brown one that must have come from the Unicorn set. I decided to go with the red one - no surprise there then! After looking closely at the original picture, I gathered the rest of the parts together, as best I could, and started to build.  Rummaging around looking for parts seems to drive His Nibs mad - Tough, I like to have all the bits to hand before I build something.


I even found a good looking No.52 to display it on!
The build was quite fiddly and required another pair of hands in places - he comes in useful now and again! Getting to tighten the bolts and place some of the nuts required a few more tools than the spanner and screwdriver, the tools took up more space than the parts.

It made up into a very nice model when finished and looked the part. Ralph made me an oversized 'SUE 1' number plate, based on a 1 inch flat girder, to which I added some magnetic material to so it would stay in place without using a bolt.

I fitted it to its base and added one of my replica tin-plate flags to finish it off. Now for somthing a bit bigger...

Sue