Gauges

[Super28]

How do you make realistic looking gauges/speedometers?

[Chariots of Fire]

There are a variety of ways.   Depends on how fancy you want to get and what type of gages you want to reproduce.

1.  Take a photo of the real gage and scale it down to where you could punch out the gage face.  I used to take photos with a 50mm lens and stand away about 15 feet when I took the photo.  Printing the photos out on a 4x6 sheet gave the size of the gage in 2/25 scale.

2.  Go to Model Car Garage and purchase gage faces and photoetch bezels for particular cars or get the variety pack.

3.  Make them on a cad program and print them out.  Make bezels out of aluminum tubing.

[StevenGuthmiller]

“Best Model Car Parts” makes a fairly large variety of very nice gauge face decals for many makes and models of vehicles, from modern kits to some obsolete vintage kits.

 

 

 

Steve

[vamach1]

6 minutes ago, StevenGuthmiller said:

“Best Model Car Parts” makes a fairly large variety of very nice gauge face decals for many makes and models of vehicles, from modern kits to some obsolete vintage kits.

 

 

 

Steve

 BMCP guages are to scale some of the accessory guages (oil, temp, etc.) sure are small once you cut them out with an exacto knife or scissors.  They are like a photo print in that you do not have to put them in water.  I cut them out and use a tiny amount of white glue and press them in with the end of a paint brush and then add a drop of clear glue or epoxy to replicate the “glass.” 

[Tom Geiger]

I find the correct images on the Internet. A good source is eBay Motors parts section for good head on photos of gauge clusters for sale.

I copy the images and reduce them to 1:25 scale.  I do my reductions in Word.  I get an idea of the appropriate size I need and create a sheet where I reduce multiple images by 5% each image. Then I print and compare to my kit dashboard. One of my images will be the size I need, or I try again.

Once I’ve got my image, I print multiple copies the right size on plain white paper, cut to size and glue in place with white glue. 
 

For instance.. here’s a 1953 Ford pickup unit I just found for my current project. 

Edited June 7, 2021 by Tom Geiger

[Super28]

Thank You gentlemen. All of you very helpful and I do appreciate it