Friday 18 July 2014

Elephant legs...

My elephant needs three new legs!

Last week, Constructor Quarterly (No.106) dropped on to the mat a few days after we got back from Skegness. Although most people rave about the complex and sophisticated models, I tend to go for the unusual. In this issue Bernard PĂ©rier continues his series of simple plastic models with an interpretation of an African elephant.

My elephant has the wrong colour legs
The model uses a part from a Space Chaos Dark Pirates set as the head. Having been put off buying these sets at the very beginning partly by the high cost and lack of parts and also a complete lack of interest in the finished models, I have never looked any closer at the subsequent releases. Now they have been discontinued, they are relatively hard to fined. A trawl of the internet found a suppler selling this set at about a third of its original price - I bought his entire stock - Three! This set contains all sorts of bits and pieces including four hinges and a good selection of long bolts, pivot bolts and other useful parts. Now I have a dozen elephants heads, the rest should be easy. I have a box full of those double obtuse corner brackets but only one grey one.
  
Lots of fancy colours - only one in grey

The Future Master model
It turns out those brackets were, as far as I can see, only available in one set in my required colour. What's more there is only one in the set. To make it worse, it is one of the less common sets. It is also sought after for other unique parts. What is this set? Well, I have motioned it HERE before, It is the Future Master drilling machine. I have one of these made up so I only have one left to use on Nellie. Hopefully, I will be able to get hold of one or two grey legs tomorrow, at the NELMC meeting, but I might need some more, so if you have any spare ones kicking around, I am happy to buy/swap something for a couple more... 

The model was a bit fiddly to put together and I modified some of Bernard's instructions to make it a bit more solid. The Space Chaos part looks just like an Elphants head and will be forever known as such!

The finished elephant from the other side
 Now for the next little project, a challenge model for tomorrows meeting - Plenty of time!

Now updated HERE!

Ralph.

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