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Scratchbuilt 1/8th scale "Exercising Cart", or given it's popular name, a "Spider".

radish

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Brisbane, Australiar
First Name
Graham
Location
Brisbane, Australia
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Thread owner
Here is a 1/8th scale “Exercising Cart", or, you can use its popular name that it goes by today, a ’Spider’, for very obvious reasons.

The full sized vehicle was owned by Mrs Val Perkins, from a small town called Coonewarre, which is in Victoria, Australia.
It had been ‘rejuvenated’ by a Mr Neil Wilson, from Sydney, back in 2005 before Val bought it.

No drawings were available for this type of vehicle, so I had to take heaps of measurements and lots of photos of the ’original vehicle’, to use as reference material for the required drawings.
Back home and started to do the drawings for it on the computer, when they looked correct, I started to build it, this took about 4 months from start to the finish of making it.

Every square nut and ALL the Coachbolts are hand made, I use square brass rod for making the square brass nuts and Tobin Bronze rods, for making the coach bolts, the only screws that were store bought for this model are the ‘massively oversized’ - 1.2mm X 6mm long countersunk screws, that hold the brass channel onto the two piece wooden fellies, everything else is hand made.

The paint is just enamel house paint and the decals are home made on an ALPS MD 5500 printer, using CorelDraw on an old ‘windows’ computer loaded with XP.

The tyres are store bought ' hydraulic O rings', the rubber tyres should be of a squarish section, could not get the appropriate shaped size, so had to settle for round "O" rings instead.

The axle is a chunk of keysteel of the appropriate size and given a bit of reworking to get it to look correct, turned down each end and threaded each end as well, to hold each wheel to the axle with a hand made nut.

The first two photos are of the original vehicle, then the drawing I had to make before I could even start on it.
A series of photo’s then show the progression of the model and then the finished item.
I made two of these model vehicles at the same time, one I painted and the other I left unfinished, that way everybody could actually see what went into making these models, as they sit end for end in my cupboard.

Have a look at the following photos and if anybody has any questions, then please ask ——————

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The only store bought screws used, are those holding the brass channel to the laminated fellies, those screws are - 1.2mm X 6mm long countersunk screws used for eye glasses frames, with a 2mm square brass nut .


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Please note in the photo below, that the screws holding the two flat bent bits of brass, onto the laminated right hand side shaft, are 12BA screws and are 10mm long.
The square nuts are 2mm square brass rod cut to length, drilled and tapped to 12BA.

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Thread owner
Now for the finished item ---------------------

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Both in the glass cabinet for an instant comparison from one model to the other -------------

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Any questions, then please ask -----------------
 
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