So here I am, renovating a quartet of 1966 toys to celebrate my 66th year!
So I'm intending to bring these cars back up showroom standard, but all with a few custom enhancements because these aren't museum pieces!
1) First up is getting rid of a half century of grime with some soapy water and a toothbrush. Make sure everything's dried up nicely.
2) These toys are riveted together, so I have to decide how to grind them down. I was torn between gouging them out with a sharp blade or using a moto-tool. I started with a 1.5mm twist drill, but decided to move up to a steel router. (Arnold Schwarzenegger impression "Bad Idea!..."
That skidding gouge across the back will need auto spot putty now!
3) This UNCLE car has rolled and has a badly dented roof. The glass is destroyed, so splitting it apart is the only way to fix it.
4) With only one rivet to worry about, the car pops apart easily. The wheels need to be removed. They are held in place with a spring steel torsion bar and are a little fiddly to get out. Luckily I've now learnt how to do it for the reassembly...
5) Interestingly, Napoleon and Ilya are actually siamese twins with an added steering wheel shoved between Mr Solo's knees. I've 3D scanned them just because I can, but they are in fine shape as is. I'm taking notes for Batman and Bond who will need some extra help to match the Men from DelFlorio's...
6) The roof metal is quite thin, so I'm using a piece of wooden dowel and a hammer to carefully knock it back into shape. The A pillars needed some additional attention to get the front-on look correct.
All this malarkey took as long as getting these photos and captions together and I'm afraid there's more to come!
Stay with me, Moonbasers!
Looey
Oz Base
Good luck. You are a brave man - I have never even attempted to disassemble a die-cast. Corgi certainly put a lot of effort in to painting their figures in the early days, standards would decline in later years, ending in unpainted plastic.
ReplyDeleteReally looking forward to seeing the finished result Looey.
ReplyDeleteWhen I've had a go at doing this; the best solution for removing the rivets in a die-cast seems to be a 1.5mm or 2mm drill bit, just to drill a pilot hole. Then a larger size bit to drill out the rivets. Having experimented with both replacement rivets and screw/bolts. Trying to rivet the base back in isn't ideal. The paint can get damaged the other side. So I opted for small self-tapping hex bolts.
But you may well have a better way of doing it, which I'm interested to see.
Keep watching, Bill! You maybe a bit surprised at my solution. Even I was thinking "Is that all it is?"
DeleteIntrepid work! I'd be terrified of disassembling a diecast!
ReplyDelete