If you're reading this with the intention of making your own scratch built horseshoes, my advice to you is this: Don't try and minimise waste. Get yourself an extra sheet of 3mm HIPS. I don't want to blog too far ahead of myself here, but I found I wasted loads of time trying to be as efficient as I could be when it came to the amount of styrene I used. The time it took to cut far outweighed the savings. Having blogged that, I can now start blogging in my blog the ins and outs of scratch building horseshoes.
Using Dave Everett's styrene plans, I printed out full scale copies of each part onto sticky labels. These were cut out and placed on the styrene sheet in the most efficient way possible to reduce wasting styrene. In case you've already forgotten what I said about that earlier, don't do this unless time is of no importance to you. Fast forward a lot of cutting later and I have some rectangular shapes with horseshoe labels stuck to them.
To get the correct radii on the inner and outer edges, I made a routing table out of some mdf and some saw horses. Once I had all of the pieces cut out and cleaned up, I started putting it all together.
The first parts to go on are the enclosures for the shoulder buttons and hydraulics. I used MEK to join all of the pieces together and made sure I had plenty of ventilation and a respirator on because there's a lot of gluing to do. The inner edges were then added and soon enough, the horseshoe became three dimensional.
The inner rings went on next. These are two different sizes to get the staggered look required. Thin strips of styrene were added to the inner edges to continue the staggered look down the straight length. These will be sanded down flush later. The last piece to go on is the back plate.
This left the outer edges needing some skinning. The flat edges were straight forward - just apply the glue, add an oversized strip of 1mm styrene, place down on a flat surface and let science take its course. The curved surfaces needed a little more help. I started by cutting a 1mm strip of styrene to the exact length required, but cut it wider so it could be sanded later. This strip was then bent into a curve by hand so that it wouldn't be as hard to stick down. Sticking it down was done in small stages. I'd put one or two inches of MEK down and then hold it in place by hand for a minute or two before repeating this all the way around until it was all down.
By now, the horseshoe was looking pretty good and the hard work was paying off. The extra skin was cut away and sanded back. Any holes were filled with putty and let to dry, then sanded, puttied and sanded some more before applying a coat of sandable primer. Then guess what... more sanding.
These will get another coat of primer and some more sanding. They wont get painted white until the end of the build when the final white coat goes on all of the parts.
Using Dave Everett's styrene plans, I printed out full scale copies of each part onto sticky labels. These were cut out and placed on the styrene sheet in the most efficient way possible to reduce wasting styrene. In case you've already forgotten what I said about that earlier, don't do this unless time is of no importance to you. Fast forward a lot of cutting later and I have some rectangular shapes with horseshoe labels stuck to them.
To get the correct radii on the inner and outer edges, I made a routing table out of some mdf and some saw horses. Once I had all of the pieces cut out and cleaned up, I started putting it all together.
The first parts to go on are the enclosures for the shoulder buttons and hydraulics. I used MEK to join all of the pieces together and made sure I had plenty of ventilation and a respirator on because there's a lot of gluing to do. The inner edges were then added and soon enough, the horseshoe became three dimensional.
The inner rings went on next. These are two different sizes to get the staggered look required. Thin strips of styrene were added to the inner edges to continue the staggered look down the straight length. These will be sanded down flush later. The last piece to go on is the back plate.
This left the outer edges needing some skinning. The flat edges were straight forward - just apply the glue, add an oversized strip of 1mm styrene, place down on a flat surface and let science take its course. The curved surfaces needed a little more help. I started by cutting a 1mm strip of styrene to the exact length required, but cut it wider so it could be sanded later. This strip was then bent into a curve by hand so that it wouldn't be as hard to stick down. Sticking it down was done in small stages. I'd put one or two inches of MEK down and then hold it in place by hand for a minute or two before repeating this all the way around until it was all down.
By now, the horseshoe was looking pretty good and the hard work was paying off. The extra skin was cut away and sanded back. Any holes were filled with putty and let to dry, then sanded, puttied and sanded some more before applying a coat of sandable primer. Then guess what... more sanding.
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| After the first coat of primer and a light sanding |
These will get another coat of primer and some more sanding. They wont get painted white until the end of the build when the final white coat goes on all of the parts.
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