Gorby's wondrously weird whatsit – The Fowler Steeplechaser
1March 9, 2024This is what I'm aiming for.
2March 9, 2024
3March 9, 2024With all my scratch-builds I start with the item I think will be the most difficult to make. I've always found wheels to be a bit of a pain to build because the process is so long winded. A bit like my writing style really.
4March 9, 2024Wrapped the first part of the strip around once. When it was dry the rest was glued on.
5March 9, 2024Then I had to add a rim to the inner edge.
6March 9, 2024If you look at the photos of the real machine you'll see the inside the wheel rim there is a toothed gear running all the way around. Gulp. Inkscape is perfect for drawing not so pretty pictures to help with the build.
7March 9, 2024Stick some plastic on using PVA and used the marks to get the teeth evenly spaced.
8March 9, 2024This bit was a little tiny bit booooooring as there are 140 teeth per wheel….and it's on both wheels so 280 teeth to shape. 😮
9March 9, 2024My homemade mini mitre cutter came in useful to cut the hub and you wouldn't believe the trouble I had making those little disks. I had to make eleven before I got four usable ones I was happy with.
10March 9, 2024This is the reason for the other Inkscape circles. They are different colours because some go to the back of the hub and some go to the front, although they all attach to the front of the outer rim due to the gearing on the rear.
11March 9, 2024Firstly I attached all the spokes which attach to the rear of the hub then when they were dry I stuck the hub on using this method to make sure the hub is straight.
12March 9, 2024Then the front spokes were attached one at a time.
13March 9, 2024There's plenty more work to do on it to tart it up but that's the basic structure done. Then I had another one to do.
14March 9, 2024Then I had to do something similar for the front wheels.
15March 9, 2024The main part of the wheels are now done, although there's plenty more detailing and a foundry full of rivets to add later. Perhaps I should have done it wheels up. 🤔
16March 12, 2024After some head scratching deciding how to build the boiler, I went down this route. I’ve since thought of a better way, but that’ll have to wait for the next traction engine build (no bloody way that’s happening 😄 ).
17March 12, 2024Then wrap 0.5mm plastic sheet around it (not fully sanded in this pic).
18March 12, 2024The easiest way to add rivets is to roll them into the back of 0.25mm plasticard and stick that onto the surface. I was surprised/disappointed how few rivets were on the boiler. This Galaxy Tools riveter is excellent.
19March 12, 2024Now the boiler has a firebox. More rivets on the firebox – that’s more like it. 🙂
20March 12, 2024Front wheelie bit added (it's turned a little bit) and the cab area starting to go on. This is exactly the sort of job I needed a tiny square for.
21March 12, 2024When I decided to build this thing I was relieved to see the top of the funnel was a straight tube. Odd I thought as all the other Fowler engines had an inverted cone funnel...then I looked more carefully at the photos and this time took measurements. Drat, it was an inverted cone.
Sooooo, how to build, how to build….. This is my solution.
22March 12, 2024First wedge applied, narrow side to the right/bottom of the funnel.
23March 12, 2024This is after all the wedges glued on, a lot of Plasto smothered on, and a lot of sanding the outside and shaping the inside.
24March 12, 2024That took about two hours work for just the top part. No wonder it's taking me so sodding long. In a kit you’d just need to glue two parts together and it would be done.
25March 31, 2024It was one of those “Drat! Drat! And double drat!” moments, I’d seriously underestimated the length of the boiler…. Added 12mm to the front of the boiler after removing front wheel assembly and a few other bits. Two steps back..... 🙁
26March 31, 2024The idea was to wrap the new front part with a short rivetty bit of 0.25mm plasticard but the original wrapping was getting too thin due to all the sanding...
27March 31, 2024So I added a full new outer layer to the whole boiler.
28March 31, 2024Scratching traction engines means making gears, lots of them. This is how I went about making them. I used Inkscape as a guide to plot the spacing of the teeth which made it easy to mark the initial cuts onto the disk.
29March 31, 2024Then I opened the first cut up to become a small groove.
30March 31, 2024Finally used a rat tailed file to shape the teeth more. Boring, time consuming but it works well enough.
31March 31, 2024Some of the gear wheels have spokes, which eats even more time.
32March 31, 2024Some of the gear wheels have spokes, which eats even more time.
33March 31, 2024One of the gear wheel assemblies.
34March 31, 2024There are two tiny 4mm diameter gear wheels which I made using a different method due to the difficulty holding a small part whilst trying to shape it. Fortunately they don’t have to be perfect as they will be mostly hidden behind the main wheels.
35March 31, 2024These are the tools I used.
36March 31, 2024Cylinder block.
37March 31, 2024The ash box fits underneath the firebox. Initially I was going to have it shut, then I changed my mind because choosing the easy route isn’t in line with my masochistic modelling nature.
38March 31, 2024In place – I’ll fit the door later. Also showing part of the steering mechanism.
39March 31, 2024Front wheel assembly back in place.
40March 31, 2024Making the flywheel.
41March 31, 2024Flywheel. In fact it’s the second flywheel because I wasn’t happy with the first one. The detail is the same on the back as well, so this is nearly two hours work.
42April 13, 2024The problem with designing a traction engine with huge wheels is that you have to put the axle somewhere silly. The axle for the Steeplechasers were so high up it couldn't take the weight of the machine. They came up with an ingenious solution of having a wheel running on a track within a wheel.
43April 13, 2024Parts required.
44April 13, 2024Still not sure if I’m happy with these. I might remake them although at the moment I’m more in the mood to put up with them and get this build completed.
45April 13, 2024There was a tube down the side of the boiler. Sprue & candle worked perfectly. You’ll be expecting to see it in place in the next photo. Nope. This is where my low winter mood kicked in and photos became a bit intermittent. You’ll see the tube at some later time.
46April 13, 2024What follows is a work of fiction….or is it? If you know differently, I’ll only accept photographic proof. 🙂
47April 13, 2024The other side....although I suspect you may have guessed that.
48April 13, 2024Adding the reversing gubbins. Look! There’s the pipe I made earlier.
49April 13, 2024Checking the gear wheels all join up where they should.
50April 21, 2024Spending time with my best furry friend Ella.
She died five weeks after this photo was taken.
51April 21, 2024The side parts of the suspension are slotted into two ‘C’ channels so the suspension actually works!
52April 21, 2024Fitting the steering chain. The method of turning most traction engines was ingeniously simple.
53April 21, 2024The brass bars are (from the top) reverse gear link, steering column (without steering wheel), ash box opener. The worm gear on the steering was left over from my Robey Steamer build. I made it by cutting plastic tube as a spiral, inserting a plastic rod, glue one end of the spiral, when dry pull the spiral to form a thread and glue the other end.
54April 21, 2024Although it isn’t shown in the photos, it’s almost certain it would have had a governor to regulate the speed of the engine. To build it I’ll need to get some balls 😮 . After a failed experiment I found this in my spares box - from a Flyhawk FT-17 tank. I call them ‘sprue overflow stubs’, no idea what they are really called. Fortunately these are spherical.
55April 21, 2024Completed governor – as good as I can manage at this scale.
56April 21, 2024Fitted in place.
57April 21, 2024Then it was on to detailing the cab area – which I have absolutely nothing to go one other than photos of other traction engines. First the door for the coal bunker.
58April 21, 2024Then the door for the boiler. Many manufacturers ended up using similar boiler doors to those used on trains. The early type was generally hinged.
59April 21, 2024I also needed some valve handwheels. This is plan ‘C’. A thin slice of plastic tube, rounded off both sides, and a tiny disk, cut as a cross fits inside.
60April 21, 2024This was a disaster. I used a candle to try and bend some rod but the rod was too thin and the bends were too close together for it to be controllable, so….
61April 21, 2024Plan ‘B’….
62April 21, 2024Part way though assembling, with one bend rounded off.
63April 21, 2024Completed.
64April 21, 2024I also needed some sort of water level gauge. This is the first bit to be painted because it would be impossible to do when it’s fitted. Notice the black & white backing. It’s painted in straight lines not a ‘V’ shape. The clear tube is reversing the direction of the stripe, which is how the gauge works. The density of the water will do the same thing in the real gauge.
65April 21, 2024I think there are 29 parts in the water level gauge. It is quite a bit bigger than it should be and I’m toying with the idea of tying to make it smaller.
66April 21, 2024Next I made a pressure gauge. Well, two – made using two different methods. They are both cut from 3mm plastic rod. The one on the left had 0.25mm strip wrapped around which sticks out at the front to act as a bezel. The one on right, the bezel was cut from 0.35mm sheet and stuck on.
67April 21, 2024This is effect I’m going for. The water gauge isn’t fixed yet. I basically wanted it to look ‘busy’ rather than ‘accurate’.
68April 21, 2024Towing linkage. I was amazed at how few photos of traction engines bums are on the internet. Most are from the front or sides, so it wasn’t easy finding out what the towing linkage should be. It took longer to research than make.
69April 25, 2024Not much time for modelling so far this week but I managed to remake the water level gauge. It’s now 10mm long and I managed to do six of the parts from the first one as just two parts this time, which makes the part count 25. It also makes the previous one look huge.
It wasn’t until I was painting it I realised the top handle is turned on, oh dear, the boiler’s going to flood.
70April 25, 2024The first gauge fitted onto my thumbnail and my goal was to get it to fit on my index fingernail. I managed to get it small enough to fit on my little fingernail.
71April 28, 2024On to detailing the wheels. First the treads on the back wheels. Quite a lot of them, in fact there are exactly….lots. Do you really think I’m demented enough to count them? I very nearly did so you aren’t far off. Before fitting them I used my tiny square to draw lines at intervals around the wheels to make sure the treads aren’t skew-wiff (crooked). They are a tiny bit wider than the wheels so they can all be sanded down when dry.
72April 28, 2024To cut them I used my new cheapy mitre cutter from Green Stuff World, which I can whole heartedly recommend….not to buy – unless you can’t afford the expensive ones (which I can’t). I made some tweaks which makes it usable, such as the 0.8mm shims (shown by the red arrows) because the blade isn’t flat to the surface. It only cost about £13 so for that price it’s good enough.
73April 28, 2024Another purchase from GSW was well worth the cost – a set of moulds for producing rivets, bolt heads, cylindrical screw heads and some weird pyramid shaped thing in five different sizes. It isn’t easy massaging the Milliput into the tiny holes which probably accounts for the significant number which aren’t usable, but I’m not sure how I would have added the detail to this build without it.
74April 28, 2024The moulds from Green Stuff World.
greenstuffworld.com/..ne-molds-rivets.html
75April 28, 2024There also some smaller bolt heads I used which I cut from 0.8mm hexagonal rod, using my home made jig to cut them 0.5mm thick.
76April 28, 2024There are 296 bolts and rivet heads on both back wheels. I was quicker to do than I expected… a tiny dab of super glue gel applied with a cocktail stick and attach the bolt or rivet with a wax pick-up pencil (also from GSW). After they dry I gave them all a coat of super glue liquid, which hardens the surface of the Milliput, ensures they are completely stuck to the surface and makes them take paint better.
77April 28, 2024120 rivet heads on the front wheels.
78April 28, 2024Then I needed to assemble all the bits to see if there were any problems. Yes, there is one annoying problem which is all the more annoying as it didn’t happen when I checked it a couple of months ago. I’m not going to point it out as it’s only a minor thing which would require major work to fix. That definitely isn’t happening.
79April 28, 2024
80April 28, 2024
81April 28, 2024
82May 4, 2024Firstly I gave everything a coat of black primer (damn, it does look quite good in black). This Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 black primer is excellent. Much better than Mig one-shot primer.
83May 4, 2024Then Tamiya XF-69 NATO black in some areas.....followed by nearly two hours of masking. Wow this a bloody awkward thing to mask. I doubt a wind-tunnel had any involvement in the design of this monstrosity. The main body colour applied.
84May 4, 2024Another half hour masking for the Alclad brass band around the boiler. The rest of the brass details will have to be brush painted.
85May 4, 2024Pleased with that weekends work. 🙂
Although……..
The governor fell off when the X-4 went on, which wouldn’t have been a big deal if it wasn’t for me deciding to make a better one. I’ve never been happy with the original governor as it was a bit….crap. Because of the problems finding the original balls, my main priority was to remove them without loosing them.
Guess what?
I lost one.
Bugger.
86May 4, 2024After a while I gave up trying to find tiny balls around the house and reached for my wallet – always my last resort.
These resin bubble beads are intended to be glued onto fingernails and cost less than a fiver. Quite why you’d want to do that is completely beyond my powers of comprehension. Fortunately some people do, otherwise they would exist. The sizes are stated as between 0.4mm to 3mm and I need something near 1.5mm. Seems a bit excessive when I only want two, but at least I won’t want for tiny balls in the future…..which obviously means that I will never need any tiny balls for any future project, unless they are 3.5mm or larger of course.
87May 4, 2024Much happier with this one. 8mm tall with seventeen parts.
88May 4, 2024NLAWScametovisit reminded me I needed to make a shovel. When I built the Robey Steamer I made a two-part plunge mould for making a coal shovel. Boiling water is all you need to mould 0.2mm thick plastic sheet. I made a few and picked the best one.
89May 4, 2024Which ends up like this.
90May 10, 2024The high tech instrument panel...which is an amalgamation of stuff I found online. The dials are from my 1/48 aircraft decal spares which are probably saying the traction engine is at 8,000 feet, doing 200mph. The water gauge is a much better size compared to the first one (although still a bit big).
The steering wheel is the only thing on the model I haven’t scratched. It’s from my spares box and I don’t know what kit is came from. Bit of a mystery really. Very fortunate because it’s perfect and wouldn’t have been easy to make.
91May 10, 2024The gubbins (stop me if I’m getting too technical for you 😉 ). Just noticed the paint is a bit orange peely, although you can’t really see it unless it's on an enlarged photo like this. I’ve kept the weathering very minimal as it was a prototype (and I'm crap at weathering).
92May 10, 2024A coal bunker needs coal. The best way to make miniature coal is to use coal – who uses coal these days? I’m not going to buy half hundred weight to get one lump so I had to use something else. For my Robey Steamer I used tiny bits of cork, which worked quite well. Last year my daughter in law gave me some of her art materials including these charcoal sticks. I tried crushing it but it just produced un-coal like shards. Stabbing at the end with a knife worked much better. The usable bits have been sorted towards the bottom of the photo.
93May 10, 2024Flood the bottom of the bunker with PVA glue and pour the ‘coal’ in. Wait a couple of hours and repeat. I also added a small amount to the floor in front of the bunker and just under the boiler door.
94May 17, 2024A reclamation yard near Coventry sells oak boards which are rejects or off-cuts from a company which makes floor boards, which is why most of the woody things I make are made from the same boards.
Plotted a simple template in Inkscape and transferred to the board.
Used my palm router with a dovetail bit to cut some 10mm deep slots – the point of which will be explained later. The palm router is brilliant for this type of work. My main router is much too bulky so I rarely use it these days.
95May 17, 2024Then routed out the inner ellipse, free-hand, still using the dovetail bit.
The tool on the left is an NT sanding plate – which is excellent.
96May 17, 2024I think you can guess what’s happening here, although if anyone is hard-of-thinking, PM me and I’ll shake my head despondently. 😉
I do have a small bandsaw, but it’s so old it barely manages to cut pine these days. For some reason I don’t like the idea of discarding something because it’s old and knackered and well past it’s doing useful work. Probably because I identify with it. 😳
97May 17, 2024Then used an Ogee router bit for the outside edge.
98May 17, 2024I was going to varnish the wood but found out the only ancient tin of varnish I have had completely dried. I had to beeswax it instead – not ideal for this.
99May 17, 2024The idea is to fill the cut-out area with Milliput and emboss a cobblestone effect into the surface. This is why I used a dovetail bit so the Milliput is held in place by the overhang. The slots are so the centre is keyed in place as well. It was a mistake to cut the slots as deep as they are and one in the middle would probably have been fine. As it is I ran out of Milliput with only a tiny bit to go. Damnit!
I used a square section 3mm tube to emboss the cobbles. I wanted an uneven surface and it’s turned out a lot more uneven than I really wanted – it’ll do. The problem is the weather in Britland has become hot in the last week so I had to do the Milliput section at a time rather than all in one go as it takes quite a while to emboss the cobbles one at a time and I didn’t want end bit to harden before I got there.
100May 17, 2024SODDING POTHOLES!!!!
You can’t get away from them can you?
A couple of days after filling the final gap I noticed that some bits still looked wet...they were – not dried at all. My previous batch of Milliput super fine, the stick in the blue packet had a yellowish hue which made it easy to see when the two parts were correctly kneaded. Now both sticks are white, which probably caused me to not mix them together well enough.
I won’t be using this method again. I’ll revert to my previous method of embossing into insulation foam.
101May 17, 2024The following morning all was well…except a very small area I’d missed the day before. As it was only tiny I dowsed it in liquid super glue to harden the surface.
Then it all got a heavy coat of dilute PVA to prime the surface ready for painting.
102May 17, 2024Painting the base. First a generous coat of black primer followed buy Tamiya XF-82 sprayed at a shallow angle so the gaps still remain black.
103May 17, 2024Then splotches of XF-24, XF-25 and XF-54.
Dry-brush XF-20.
104May 17, 2024Finally a green wash – for moss.
Dry-brush Tamiya gloss.
105May 17, 2024Finally a couple more coats of beeswax on the wood (it had another coat after this photo was taken as well).
106May 17, 2024I’ve been meaning to add a dog to the base for a while. The original intention was to have a Dobermann type pooch in an aggressive pose to make it look like it’s growling at the metal monstrosity. Then Ella died and I decided to change my intended figure for the one which looks closest to her. There wasn’t an aggressive bone in her, so the composition had to change.
I have thousands of reference photos of her. The problem is my painting skills aren’t up to the job.
107May 17, 2024Her main identifying features (other than being the most beautiful dog in the universe of course) was her pink nose and three small white spots on the left side of her nose. At least I know it’s supposed to be her.
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28 April 2025, 19:40 -
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I've been itching to do some scratching for a while and as the pup has had her monthly flea medication it must be time to break out the plasticard….
The Steeplechaser was built by John Fowler & Co. in 1877. The 12 foot (3.66m) wheels were intended to reduce the ground pressure and give better propulsion in soft soil. Surprise surprise it proved to be too clumsy to be useful, but that didn't stop Fowlers from producing a similar machine two years later with 9 foot (2.7m) driving wheels - the usual maximum diameter was 7 foot.
One of the biggest problems I'm going to face with this build is that there are only two photos of this machine, although one of the advantages is that there are only two photos of this machine. Who's going to prove me wrong? 🙂
Added to that, only one dimension is recorded, the size of the back wheels. I could search out similar Fowler engines to cross check dimensions but where's the fun in that? That would be like taking it seriously and that just sounds wrong. Like the Robey Steamer I built a few years ago, I'm just going to make an educated estimate* of the other dimensions from the photos.
So far its turned out to be a lot more challenging to build than I thought it would. Not having a clue how traction engines work might possibly be a reason for that. 😳
Oh, I nearly forgot to say, it’ll be in 1/48 as attempting it in 1/72 is likely to make my brain melt. 😮
* I'm going to make it up as I go along.