Building season is back! 1904 De Dion Bouton

[Harry P.]

Today I dragged out all of my tools and supplies and set up my "workbench" (my dining room table )... It's building time again!

This time a 1904 De Dion Bouton. For those of you who follow such things, I posted a WIP of a 1901 De Dion Bouton I built a few months back... this was that model:

This time I'm dealing with a 1904 model De Dion. This is one of those kits that has been released under various brand names over the years... the one I have happens to be the "Union" version. It's 1/16 scale:

As you can see, there's a big old water stain on the box, but I don't care! I'm a builder, not a collector. After the model is built, the box goes in the trash! The important thing (to me) is that the kit is complete and unbuilt. In fact, the parts trees' plastic bags had never been opened after all these years.

The instructions are in Japanese (with broken English translation), but no big deal. The kit is pretty straightforward... you could build it just by looking at the illustrations in the instruction booklet, regardless of the language.

[Ramfins59]

Good to see you back in model building mode again Harry. I guess you successfully (?) completed all of your fair weather, summer chores. We look forward to more of your great building and detailing.

[Harry P.]

BTW... here's a shot of a real one. As you can see, they are pretty small...

[Harry P.]

I guess you successfully (?) completed all of your fair weather, summer chores.

More or less.

Actually I did good... managed to accomplish about 98% of my "to do" list.

[bobthehobbyguy]

Looking forward to following this.

[cobraman]

I will be watching. Almost time for a new Mustang isn't it ? Turbo 4 or V6 or 8 ?

[High octane]

Building season? I try to build all year round.

[jasoncamaro]

You build interesting subjects that I would not choose to do myself but im always interested in your clean builds and always learn something from you can't wait see what you do with this one

[ChrisR]

Can't wait to see what you are going to do with this one.

I still have mine that I did over forty years ago.

[Nacho Z]

You build interesting subjects that I would not choose to do myself but im always interested in your clean builds and always learn something from you can't wait see what you do with this one

Jason said what I was thinking. This genre is not at the top of my list but I sure do enjoy seeing the WIP photos, tips and techniques. Looking forward to this one.

[Harry P.]

I will be watching. Almost time for a new Mustang isn't it ? Turbo 4 or V6 or 8 ?

It'll be a Turbo 4. As soon as they hit the showrooms (about a month).

[Harry P.]

Ok... back to the model.

I was going to title this thread "Debbie Does DeDion ," but then I would have to keep the same avatar the whole way through.

This is going to be just a nicely detailed shelf model. I'm not going to do any sort of super-detail thing. I'll correct a few problems, add a few details, but nothing crazy or over the top.

First thing to do (after a Google image search, of course!) is basic cleanup and parts prep. That means removing flash, cleaning up any mold seams lines or ejector pin marks... the usual stuff you always have to do with any kit.

This kit is kind of weird in that in most cases where parts are made up of two halves (like the engine block, transaxle, muffler, etc.) the parts have no molded-in alignment pins and sockets. You have to align the parts yourself. So what I do is run each part's mating surface back and forth over some 400 grit sandpaper to get the mating surfaces perfectly flat, even, and smooth. Then I clamp the two parts together, make sure they are perfectly aligned, and flow liquid cement along the joint.

The beauty of liquid cement (vs. tube glue) is that with liquid cement, you never get any "squeezeout" along the joint, and there are none of those annoying "strings" to deal with. Liquid cement is very thin (it's just like water), so it flows by capillary action into the joint, and fuses the parts together. You get a perfect joint every time. I went ahead and assembled all the major "two piece" parts this way.

Here you can see that after the transaxle halves have dried, I then sanded the front mating surface smooth, along with the mating surface on the front cover...

Then I clamped the front cover in place and flowed liquid cement along the joint:

[Harry P.]

The fenders on the real car are bolted in place onto the fender braces, and the bolt heads are clearly visible on the fender surfaces. The kit's fenders are smooth (no molded-in bolt heads), so I drilled out all the places where a bolt would go. Later I'll use sewing pins to simulate the bolt heads. It's hard to see in the photo, but I also drilled out the holes where the fender braces are supposed to bolt onto the frame rails. Sewing pins will also represent bolt heads in those locations:

If I was going to go all "Gerald Wingrove" on this kit I would have cut off the fender braces and made better ones of brass rod... but since they are very hard to see once the model is finished, and will be painted black on top of it, I left them as is.

[Harry P.]

Here you can see that there is a "thickness" to the chassis plate (the area between the frame rails and the lower edge of the hood...

The kit's chassis plate is too thin, so I added some thickness with lengths of square styrene rod:

[Harry P.]

More basic preliminary/prep work.

I don't know why this is so common, but like many kits of brass era cars, there are ejector pin marks on the visible side of a part instead of the back side. Poor engineering, IMO. This is the seat base. You can clearly see the two ejector pin marks on the side, which will have to be filled:

Photos of this car that I found during my research show it with both a steel or a wooden firewall/dash. I like the look of wood, so mine will be that way. I used the kit's firewall as a template to make a new one of basswood sheet. I clamped the kit piece and my wooden piece together and used the holes in the kit piece as the guide to drilling corresponding holes in the wood:

[Harry P.]

I removed the toe board by scribing it away with the back side of my knife blade, and used the removed piece as the template to create the replacement from basswood.

[Ramfins59]

Nice start Harry.

[cobraman]

Yes, looking good.

[Harry P.]

Tip: Long ago I bought a bag of bamboo shish-kabob skewers at the grocery store. They are 10" long, 100 in the bag. I don't remember what they cost, but they were dirt cheap... maybe like 89¢ or something like that, and they have 1,001 uses! As you can see, they make great "handles" to hold certain types of parts for spray painting... they can be used to apply glue... stir paint... whatever. And did I mention they are dirt cheap?

[sjordan2]

Man, you're fast. You just got this kit a few days ago. I don't ever see anyone being so good, so quickly

[Harry P.]

It just so happens there's a lull in my "real work" at the moment... the kit came...autumn came... the stars aligned. No better time to start than now!

[Kennyboy]

Welcome back to the table Harry!

Looking forward to seeing some progress on this...your vintage builds are always fun to watch.

[Harry P.]

Finally a little progress. Here's how I detailed the wheels to get them to look like wood.

The raw kit piece glued to a length of scrap sprue "handle"...

First step is to brush on two coats of acrylic "Ocher"...

Next, the wheels are literally dipped into a can of Varathane "Golden Mahogany" wood stain. The stain sort of soaks into the acrylic paint and doesn't just bead up and run off (I use oil-based stain for this, not water-based). I let the excess stain drip off for a few seconds, wick any more excess away with the corners of a paper towel, and because the stain is oil based and would take forever to air dry, I put the dipped wheels into the dehydrator. Once dry, I snap off the sprue handles...

To paint the black "steel" rims, each wheel is chucked into a variable-speed drill. I hold the drill steady with one hand, running it at a low speed, and with the other hand I touch the brush loaded with paint against the spinning wheel to get a perfect, clean, sharp edge where the rim meets the wheel. Of course, once I do one side, I flip the wheels and paint the rim on the other side...

Finally, I painted the valve stems, and slipped the tires onto the wheels.

Later on, the black wheel centers will be added, and finally the small brass center caps

[Jim B]

Nice looking wood wheels.

[cobraman]

Wheels look great !