So I’m looking at some of my 1/700 planes and huge globs of aluminum paint in various shades that disfigured them and I was thinking about stripping, spraying and trying to decal on the markings… and then I though, nah, that’ll take too long.

So I sanded off the old paint, and repainted using Polly Scale Bright Siver/Shiny Aluminum something like that- look it up and fix later. And it would have glopped like oatmeal too BUT I dipped the tip of my brish into the water I was using to apply decals and WAY diluted the paint- almost to a water-color wash, and flowed it all over and around the model… and it dried pretty nicely, no brush marks, no globs. A second coat was needed to cover, bring it on, I say. Multiple thin, coats are always best. Result looks pretty nice. I recomend it. I imagine the same would work for oil based, Tamiya, blah blah.

Try it, and if it doesn’t work, I’m sorry, let me know anyway. If you’re careful, it ought to work for you too. I’d say it was good for up to a square inch (2.5 X 2.5cm), maybe more if you use a big, soft, laquering brush.

Bill

Ah, well I’ve resisted (so far) the temptations of starting new projects and am hewing to my goal, getting stuff “in progress” *done* and off my list, and making the list shorter. Of the models I named:

The 1/144 MD-82 in AA markings, is done as far as assembling kit parts and applying decals. It needs antennae, maybe pitot tubes, paint touchup on wheels and tires, paint or decal touchup on the red and blue stripes near the port side of the nose. Detail decals wouldn’t hurt, but aren’t required as its not going to win anything.

The 1/400 A340 needs some decal clean-up, some touchup paint, the landing gear wheels and tires glued on. If it were to have blade antennae, they’d need to be added too. All the kit decals have been applied, some more than one time, and are more or less in the right places. It’ll make it.

The 1/700 FW-200 has its BOAC registration letters “G-AGAY” on wings, top and bottom, and aft fuselage, both sides. Red-white-blue stripes underline it on the sides and under, no white but still a blue and red stripe on the top, and the blue part of the starboard side needs a bit more work. UK fin flash is also applied, and I think that covers the decals for this one. Landing gear is already installed, all it needs are windows, four props and four ‘engines;’.

The 1/700 S-2 has paint, decals, cabin windows and wheels, painted. I’m fiddling with the red stripe between two white stripes on each prop blade- my thin red stripe, good for FW 200 registrations, couldn’t be put down on the blade tips. I may try painting by hand. The nosewheel gear door needs one or two touchup coats of tennis ball yellow.

The 1/700 TBM has paint, decals, windows, prop. Might need fuseage #s repeated on the wings?.

The 1/700 DC-3s are moving slowly, the Olive Drab & Gray “Northeast Airlines” has its paint done and if I can’t get my (^&()$^% $34 Rapidograph 6-0 pen to work, I’m putting on a “Northeast” decal that I found and calling it fair. The American one needs either to be finished slap-dash or sanded down and started over.. I’m still wrestling with it.

The 1/700 Ju-52, needs its markings chosen- BOAC post-war, MALEV pre-war, or whatever, and applied.

I’m pretty confident all the above will make the trip to the contest, and I’m content.

The 1/400 B777 had too rough a surface finish to start painting, so I wet-dry sanded it down to smooth and now the gray/whte demarkation is far from straight and obvious. I guess it needs some white added up to where it should stop, maybe after sanding off any gray in those areas, and when the white is dry, mask IT and apply the Boeing #707 gray. With a reasonably straight demarkation line, I can then put on kit decals, engine hot sections and other missing parts, etc.

The 1/700 Boeing 377 needs a filer/styrene stock pass around the nose, the tail glued on and rudder/fin extended to the correct size, then engines shaped from styrene rod, the kit nacelles shortened and the whole business assembled. Markings and paint are needed next, then props and landing gear.

The 1/700 Tu-114 Needs its nose finished, mounting for the horizontal and vertical tail made, horizontal and vertical tails made, maybe molds made at that point for copies, then widen the wing roots about 1-2mm, put it all together, paint, finagle some Aeroflot markings, put on the stock landing gear and lightly sanded props from the Skywave kit.

The Hasegawa 1/200 777, Minicraft and Revell 1/144 737s and the Minicraft L1049G are all unlikely to get done.

Were I to start something, a Cessna 172, 1/72 size, or a BOAC Mosquito, 1/72 or smaller, would be my choices. Or the 1/200 Boeing 2707 SST I started stripping the previous owner’s paint from… As if!

Pray for us sinners….

So here we are, about a month before Airliners International 2008, at DFW, which I will attend with my beloved brother and pals Ken and Rick and Alan (I THINK Alan is going). I’m trying to focus now on what I’m going to finish among my models in progress that are appropriate for the Airliners model contest, clearly the 1/400 A340 and B777, the 1/700 FW-200, S-2 and TBM air-tankers for fighting wild fires, the DC-3 and Ju-52, also 1/700, my 1/144 MD-82 in AA markings, the Hasegawa 1/200 777, Minicraft and Revell 1/144 737s and the Minicraft L1049G. A lot of work and I doubt I’ll get it all done in the next month, but I know where I should concentrate.

So what do I do after constructing and prioritizing my list? Immediately I’m all excited to start a NEW model, before any of the above are done. I won’t do it, but its sure interesting how more interesting starting a new project seems than completing the existing projects. Not very mature, that.

I’ll be posting some pix with the FSM Classic Kit group build of recent work, and post a connection to here.

Bill

I goofed up my second coat of Future on the clear windows part of a Heller/Airfix 1/43 Mitsubishi WRC racer… So I popped it into a deli half-pint container with warm water and a little dish soap and a week later the formerly clear Future (Johnson’s “Kleer” in some places) had turned a milky white but was still firmly attached. I poured out the water onto the front lawn (we’re rationing water now…) and poured some Windex brand glass cleaner with ammonia into the deli dish… by the time I had finished putting the cap on the Windex bottle, the milky stuff was completely gone and the clear part looked new. A quick rinse in luke-warm water and a polish with a soft dish towel and I oculd try again. I put down one coat of straight Future using my 1/2″ (13mm) laquer brush and 5 minutes later it looked great.

With luck I can paint the black surrounds on it tonight and then glue the body, clear parts and chassis all together.

The really, really, neat thing about using Future on clear parts of plastic models is that it forms an innert barrier to any and all kinds of glue. You have to sand through it to use plastic glule to attach the clear part to something else. But glue fumes and ‘wicking’ aren’t an issue- you can glue the clear part in place using liquid or tube non-toxic glue, I’d expect the orange-red package toxic version of Testor’s glue would work just fine too.

I read two articles
Is Apple going back to Power PC? (http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=315)
Here’s some better analysis of reasoning (http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/24/why-did-apple-buy-pa-semi/)

about this aquisition. The second article scans better, IMHO. And it wasn’t Intel who foisted the 640K limit on the Winderz world, it was Mr. Gates himself, who famously said, “640K, who could use more than that?”. Considering Vista needs about 1 gig to boot and 2 gig to get out of its own way… it IS true the 8086 had a segmented memory architecture, not so nice.
The 68000 had a better architecture than the 8086 and Intel put their best effort into what they modestly called “Operation Crush” to sieze the market with a known-to-be-second-best product. Sound familiar? No wonder they get along with Microsoft so well. But from the personal computer builder’s perspective, Intel was there with software, support, chipsets, etc, when Moto had an engineer’s dream architecture and not much for developers. If you’re in business to make a profit, you could be excused for thinking Intel’s processor might have legs on the Moto item, particularly since Intel was used to supplying the CPU market and Moto’s 68xx were nice but aimed as much at “hobbists” (according to their own literature) as commercial applications. Moto also had process problems at first, so you couldn’t buy a chip, because the chips didn’t meet their advertized electrical interface specs- board level products were available, with the 68000 surrounded by bi-directional buffers :^). Or you could buy from Hitachi (!) I’ve been told that the first 68000s in silicon valley said “Motorola” on the package but “Hitachi” on the die…
The 68000 and powerPC are great designs, and the n86 started as a kludge and has only improved with experience BUT there is a tsunami of cash pushing the PC market place and while the PowerPC is theoretically better, that cash, competition from AMD, blah blah blah, have made the Intel cpus the most powerful. Not pretty, but great big meathooks you can hang massive computing tasks on. Hell, they’re so good, they make Windows look like a going proposition! Every unix-box vendor choose the 68000 to start with, and people looked down on the BSD-86 efforts as unclean. Well, surprise, you CAN polish a turd, and Linux running on generic PCs is the proof of it. Macs build around Intel processors work just great, and so do water-cooled Porsches and VWs. Lets not make technical appeal in the past into a hair-shirt of virtue that somehow offsets lower prices and higher perforance. All this will pass anyway, and you can’t take it with you.

So I brought two wrapped presents within the cost and content guidelines to my local (www.svsm.com) IPMS chapter, the Silicon Valley Scale Modelers, for the Christmas Gift Exchange. When all the shouting and after-game trading were done, I went home with a Tamiya 1994 Ford Mustang GT Convertible able and the Minicraft boxing of the Hasegawa 1/72 Grumman F11F-1 Tiger. Nice. My son Benjamin encouraged me on the Mustang, and I might not have chosen a curb-side Mustang kit, but one car and one airplane was just about right. I also had a challenge- at the end of the exchange someone proposed a “90 day wonder” contest for the kits acquired that day, at the March meeting. 90 days to build ‘em, or not. Put up or shut up. Sounded good to me.

Seems to me that there are at least two kinds of model builders- those who dig the thing and want something the right shape, but aren’t as much into into making replicas of a particular, real, item at a particular point in time, and those who want to make a replica of a particular example of the general item, perhaps down to an exact date and time of day. Very often the obsessive particularist will get the whole story on the item they are modeling- where the real one was made, how it got where it went to, who used it and what happened to them. Photographs and memoirs are poured over to identify fiddly bits which might be one way or might be another. People building replicas of things they or their friends owned, used or served on or with are usually in this camp, but not always.

Whereas, the item-but-not-a-specific-replica modeler might immerse themselves in the whys and wherefores and the whole story (Dearborn and San Jose both build Mustangs in the 1960s, and each used their own series of-/family of- colors for body primers…) but instead of building the image of <whatever> at 10:30am, the second Monday in July, 1971, they build the one they want, (a metallic purple Mustang with a green interior) or something generally representative, “this is yellow because I found a can of yellow paint under the sink…”

As a gross (!) generalization, ship and airplane modelers tend to build replicas of specific, real, prototypes (as do many model railroaders, from whom we get the adjective, “Prototypical”), captured at a specific place and time. Many ship modelers can tell you not only how the specific ship in the class they modeled differs from others, but also which re-fits the model is between or after (This is how the Cutty Sark appeared on her fifth voyage, returning from Asia, after rounding Cape Horn… this is how the Tyrrell P-34 six wheeler appeared at Monaco in 1976… this is how the 617 squadron Lancasters appeared in March, 1944… etc.)

Car, military figure and vehicle fans and flying model airplane builders tend to build precise and accurate models in terms of shape but are somewhat more expressive in how they present them- custom paint jobs, their own version of camouflage schemes, a vehicle from the years x-y but painted and marked as if it were from another era. A model hot rod will faithfully replicate a Ford flat head with Holly carburetors and aftermarket heads, and the firewall of the model will be enhanced to look just like the real thing, with a pearlescent blue lacquer finash that represents the builder’s idea of the perfect color… or a flying A-10A Warthog (used in both US-Iraq wars) will fly in a green and tan over light-blue scheme somewhat akin to USAAF and RAF western desert markings from 1942, or a BMW coupe will be converted into a pickup-style two seater, like an El Camino or a Subaru Brat.

Both approaches are scholarly, both require the same craft and skill, but the points are different. Kinda like fiction and non-fiction writing: The products are different even though each can look like the other and both are more similar than different.

So in this case, I came down firmly in both camps. My F11F-1 (long nose) was build in the form the Blue Angels flew them, and my Mustang was build using the colors the factory used for body and interior, but I put saddle brown front and back seats and center console into an otherwise black interior, and used the rest-of-world side-marker lights behind the front wheels AND amber colored turn signals in back, instead of red.

I reproduced the color of the baked epoxy primer on the underside of the Mustang, but I also painted the brake calipers a bright blue to match the more-oir-less correct factory-ish metalis blue I panted on the body.

By contrast, the Tiger wound up with blue wheels and main gear legs. and blue landing gear doors, inside and out, but white in the gear wells because that’s my best reading of the available photos, and a new source, my third F11F book and (sixth reference for this project) agrees. Unfortunately, it also shows that that Martin Baker Mk 5 rocket ejection seat I put together seems never to have been deployed foir any F11… All that lovely detailing and  aren’t applicable. I’m not sure if I’m going to leave it or make another seat for it.

Another post that ought to be a page- with more research. Lets start like this and improve then.

A lovely on-line reference is
“http://www.cybermodeler.com/resource6.shtml”

1) US Navy and US Marines and US Air Force - Today - Tactical fighters and fighter-bombers and electronic warfare planes tend to appear in multiple gray colors- it used to be the Navy was all about Light Gull Gray, 36440 (flat) or 26440 (semi gloss), and the USAF about Ghost Gray Light and Dark, but its bit more mixed up now. The transport planes like C-5, C-17, KC-10, KC-135, C-130, etc, tend to be one or two grays, 36118 Gunship Gray (a darker tone) being very popular for transports. Generally muted national markings, some bright tail or nose art. Some examples:

FA-18E & F, F-15 Air Superiority, (FS595b)

36320 Dark Ghost Gray, - MM Acryl 4761, Polly Scale 505374, Gunze H053, Revell 36374, Humbroil 128, Vallejo 047

36375 Light Ghost Gray, - MM Acryl 4762, Polly Scale 505376, Gunze …., Revell ….Humbroil 127, Vallejo 050, 990

F-15 <darker colors- air-ground low altitude?> FS595b:

36176 Dark Gray, - MM Acryl 4754, Polly Scale 505232, Gunze …., Revell …., Humbroil …., Vallejo ….

36375 Medium Gray, - MM Acryl …., Polly Scale 505330, Gunze …., Revell …., Humbroil …., Vallejo ….

F-16 Three tone, mix of semi-gloss and glossy:

36118 Dark Sea Gray, Flat, - MM Acryl 4752, Polly Scale 414182; 505382, Gunze … Humbroil …., Revell, Tamiya XF24, Vallejo 053, 868

26118 Dark Sea Gray, Satin, - MM Acryl …., Polly Scale …., Gunze … Humbroil 125, Revell, Tamiya …., Vallejo ….

36270 Neutral Gray, Flat, - MM Acryl 4757, Polly Scale 505384, Gunze … Humbroil …., Revell, Tamiya XF24, Vallejo 048, 870

26270 Neutral Gray, Satin, - MM Acryl …., Polly Scale 505258 Gunze … Humbroil 126, Revell, Tamiya …., Vallejo ….

36375 Light Ghost Gray, - MM Acryl 4762, Polly Scale 505376, Gunze …., Revell ….Humbroil 127, Vallejo 050, 990

2) US Navy, 1970s, 36440 Light Gull Gray overall (F-14s, F4s, RF-8s) or on top side with glossy white on the bottom. muted black or gray national markings.

3) US Navy, 1960s, late 1950s. 26440 semi-gloss Light Gull Gray or 16440 glossy Light Gull Gray on topside, glossy white on bottom. Bright color national markings, squadron markings

4) US Navy, Mid 1950s, Korean War, late 1940s. Glossy Sea Blue overall. Grumman airplanes often omitted the Insignia Blue disc and outline on their national markings and just featured white stars and bars against the Sea Blue.

5) US Navy, late-war to VJ day: fighters: F4U, F6F, F4F, F7F (deployed but never in action) overall glossy sea blue OR dark (gull?) gray over white (some shiny white, some flat white) under and sides for anti-submarine patrol.

6) US Navy, 1943-1945, “Three tone” for all combat types, flat sea blue over intermediate blue over non-specular white. Undersides of folding wings which would face up when folded were intermediate blue. Intermediate blue was a lot like the blue-gray which had been the top-side color early in the war… Generally this was the scheme for the Pacific and Operaiton Torch, landings in Italy, etc.

OR anti-submarine patrol colors (Generally meaning Atlantic deep water patrols) dark Gull Gray over whites.

7) US Navy, 1941 to 1943: Blue gray (similar to Intermediate blue from later years) over light gray (similar to 36440 light gull gray). From early 1941 to mid 1942 the national markings included red and white striped rudders, and red spots on the middle of the white stars. The red was eliminated in the Pacific by June, 1942, to prevent confusion with Japanese markings. US Navy, 1940?-1941: Overall light gray- 36440 Light Gull Gray or ANA-6** Light Gray.

9) US Navy Pre-war: Aluminum laquer fuselage, chrome yellow wings.

National markings and squadron markings are more convoluted and its best to follow what your references show. Operation Torch markings included a yellow surrounding ring on the star marking. This was after the red dots were removed/overpainted in the middle of the stars. Red was used briefly as an outline for the star-and-bar when the bars were first added, but was replaced by insignia blue surrounding.

10) The Royal Navy marked all its airplanes for Operation Torch with the correct yellow-surround-blue-circle-white-star USN markings- so Sea Hurricanes and Seafires, in otherwise standard Royal Navy Slate Gray/Sea Gray/Sky or Ocean Gray colors, would carry the US marking instead of UK red/white/blue roundels. The hope was the Vichy French might give US markings a pass but attack if they saw UK markings… it isn’t clear that this worked. Red/White/Blue tail flash on RN planes was retained with the “US” markings, as were squadron and individual aircraft numbers and letters.

A friend is coming in tonight for a week working in San Jose, and it occurs to me to make a list of “best”s in the bay area for Michael and any other visiting fire-persons whom might come out for business or pleasure. This is also prompted by the SF Chronicle’s annual top 100 restaurants list, some of which I’ve been to (and agree are terrific) and some I would have listed that aren’t on the Chron’s list.

Best places to go:

The Exploratorium. The world’s greatest hands-on science museum and (dis)organized meeting of art and science. Whether the awesome majesty of the three guysers, who’s periods are determined by the distance between the pool at the top and the heat source at the bottom, or sheer coolness of the string shooter and spinning discs on a spinning turntable, or the interactive the water vortex, the fog vortex, the giant pinboard or the magnetic properties of eddy currents in the giant bar of copper, never mind the tactile dome ( my advice: wear a swimming outfit under your street clothes…), the Exploratorium is better than words can possibly describe. For kids of all ages, and the cafe food is good enough to just go and eat if you get hungry. The original 11 on a 10 scale.

Muir Woods. Accurately described as a cathedral of trees. Its bigger than any of the European cathederals I’ve visited, and I enjoy it more, nice though they are. Less moral ambiguity, though not none (our park did used to be someone’s home and not so long ago…) There are lobster-shaped cray-fish (big claws) in the creek the runs through the middle, and spotting them and the fish in the creek from the many bridges is one of our family treats when we go. I’ve done the hike up from the Muir Woods creek bed to the top of Mount Tamalpias and its steep and exhilerating and you have your choice of how hard to make it, based on the paths you select and how fast you push it. Bring a gallon of water per person if you plan to go all the way up and all the way down. The trees of the Wood are huge, and yet dynamic- some fall in the wind, some expire of age, new ones grow where the old have departed. Besides fish and the predictable squirrels, we’ve seen deer, moms and babys, from pretty darn close, and it was pretty darn cool!

There are also the fire-hollowed trees on the trail on the ocean side of the creek, a bit above ‘floor’ level. Jean and I have several pictures of Benjamin at various ages in these icons, a small, friendly, forest creature, all our own. Its hard to NOT take a good holiday card picture of yourself and your family here. We probably ought to take the Dipsea trail some time. I strongly recomend going out on one of the two trails into the main “cathedral” canyon and coming back on the other- doesn’t matter which you go which way on. Take the map from the gate and plan to cross the creek at the furthest bridge. If you walk that far and back, it’ll make your day better.

Easy splashing/wading in the Pacific Ocean: Drake’s Beach, north-east of Pt. Reyes. A pretty place, a large beach, rotten rock in the cliffs so don’t stand under them, a public restroom at the parking lot and a gentle slope under the water- Drake’s Beach has it all and in abundance. Because the bay its in faces south, the waves aren’t as vigorious as those on west-facing beaches north or south, and the water seems a tad warmer.

Best hat store. The Hat Store on Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, just before it turns into a 1-way for the last blocks just south of UC Berkeley. We go here when we need to create a costume- buy an excellent hat and build the rest around it. Notable purchases have included a Jester hat, a soft Viking helmet, an Egyptian Pharoh head-dress and several less-formal choices. We always find something to like and take home, and they hold up well.

Best Aquarium store - Albany Aquarium. San Pablo Avenue, between Solano and Albany Bowl. This was where we wound up when UCB Open House day ran out of complementary goldfish… and $150 later we had a heated, filtered, glass, 10 galllon, aquarium with a bunch of attractive fish. Fairliy tough fish. We’ve always gotten good advice here, their fish, snails, plants and frogs are hale and hearty. They don’t over-sell or low-ball prices, but if you want a gold fish in a gold fish bowl (no heat, no filter…) they’ll help you with that too.

Two bits of wisdom I picked up from them/with them:

A) Fish aren’t like hamsters- you don’t have to put them all in a pickle jar and scrub out the tank once a month… Get a cleaner/vaccuum/syphon, learn to use it (There is a non-return valve, you have to ‘pump’ the big tube full and then it’ll syphon, without you having to suck on it) Use a 2-5 gallon bucket or trash-can to collect the wastewater and stuff from in between the rocks.. (Pour it out on the fruit tree in the back yard…)

B) pH balancing is VERY important, and if you can’t master it quickly, invest in a buffer solution that will AUTOMATICALLY balance pH to the right-ish area, follow the directions and sleep easy/. At least for the tetras, guppies, etc, this is just fine. Incoming water after I ‘vaccuum’ is treated with a chlorine/chloramine treatment product so the fish aren’t poisoned, and the pH balance stuff. Works every time.

Best Bowling Alley: Albany Bowl. On San Pablo, between Solano and the strip-mall/bart-station about a mile north. Games are reasonably priced, you can get shoes that fit, pool tables are $10/hr, they have bumpers to block the gutters and do kids birthdays. In short, they do it all. Nice people, nice place to bowl, great family ‘go out’ spot. We usually bowl a couple of games, or more, and then take a pool table for an hour. WAY fun! Someday I’ll get to the black-light miniature golf in the South Bay and I can compare the two.

Child-friendly restraunts:

Chef Chu’s (Los Altos/Palo Alto/Mountian View)

Armadillo Willie’s (all)

Venezia Cafe (University Ave, Berkeley)

Cliff House, Ocean Beach, SF

Caesar - Piedmont Ave, Oakland

Little Shin Shin, Piedmont Ave. Oakland

Becky’s Chinese Food, College Ave, Oakland,

Barney’s (Hamburgers, salads) College Avenue, Piedmont Avenue

Christopher’s Hamburgers

Both Japanese places on the last block of Shatuck, northbound, before University

Sam’s Log Cabin, San Pablo, Albany

Montclair Egg Shop, Medau Place, Oakland

Pizza Pastino’s Park Blvd, Glenview,

Buttercup coffee shop- just south of the Cotton Mill, now home of West Marine and Numi Tea, on the bay side of 880.

Jolie’s Coffee and Gifts- at the street side of the lighthouse anchorage in the Oakland Estuary, near Livingston and also the bridge to Coast Guard Island.

Bowser’s Pizza, Park Avenue, Alameda

<Restaurant in the Lighthouse>, Oakland Estuary, near Livingston and the bridge to Coast Guard Island…

More later,

Bill

So I now have some data to back-up my speculations.

1) Aristo-craft pack a line of Mabuchi or Mabuchi-like electric motors, sizes 130, 140, 260 and 280, which have a retail price for $2.85 to $3.95, depending on size and whom you buy it from. They’re a great deal because they each come with a little stamped steel mount that holds the motor and which you can use to attach it to your project. Better than rubber bands or hot-melt-glue. You can take them off and use rubber bands or hot melt glue if you want.

They also come with 3 plastic gears to fit on the common 0.079″ (2mm) motor shaft, making it easier to connect the motor to something. Other gears, or push a sewing machine bobbin over the gear or hot-melt-glue something (K’nex, Lego) to the gear… They’re in a little clamshell blister-box with a yellow sheet of paper giving the model number on the front and the specifications for the whole range on the back. The packs are about 3″ X 3″ (aka 75mm square).

All four sizes, the small ones for 1.5V typically, the larger ones for 3V, typically, are available at Hobbies Unlimited in San Lorenzo and J & M Hobby House in San Carlos. I’ll report on what other stores stock them as I know it. $2.85 or $3.35 for a 130 size motor with a mount and three gears is a pretty good deal, considering the purchasing power of $3. The 130 runs willingly on a single AAA cell

1a) There seems to be a Japanese-originated standard for small electric motors. I’ve seen 130s to 540s and many sizes in between. I’m not sure if its a measure of optimum energy output, length * diameter in mm or what.

2) There are larger motors in the same series, up at about $9 and then there’s another price point around $12. Dumas packs motors in the $9-12 range for battery powered model boats. After that you’re looking at the standard RC Car motors, from $15 to the sky’s the limit. MAJOR power, drawing on MAJOR batteries! If you want more, or more efficiency, look at the “Speed 400″ and “Speed 280″, which are based on standard electric motors from rechargable battery powered tools. A “Speed 280″ is about the same size as the 280 that Aristo Craft packs for $3.75-3.95 retail, but costs more, and can both draw and produce more power. Beyond that, you’re into the brushless motors used by electric model airplanes- much more efficient than DC brush motors, for the same battery power. But you’ll need a controller. Figure $25-50 for something that works, before you buy the battery. You’re paying for the low wieght and high efficiency.

For that kind of money you could buy a rechargable tool AND battery and perhaps a spare battery and use it for motive power in your project. And you’d have the tool to remember it buy when you’re done. Almost any electric tool will have a robust reduction gear set along with an on/off switch, possibly variable speed, possibly reversing. In their last year, the Odessey Of The Mind team that I coached used two rechargable drills to power a one-person vehicle that drove around on patios, quiet streets, and high school gyms. 3/8″ steel axles were chucked to the drills and very small tires and wheels fastened to them as well. The wieght of the vehicle was carried on some kind of bearing the axle ran through on both sides of the wheel- copper tubing fitted snugly into a block of wood might have been the bearing- I didn’t invent it! The drills ‘floated’, other than being restrained from turning in reaction to the torque they applied to the wheels. They were mounted upside down and the tires and wheels used were a compromise between what would let the drill run at its optimum speed (about 1/4″) and what would allow the drill to clear the ground! (about 3/4″)

3) I’m pleased to report that Radio Shack also sell electric motors, with several available in the 1.5-3.0V range and for a $4 or a bit lower price. My local Radio Shack had a ‘260-like’ motor, 250mA, 3.0V, for $3-something, a smaller, higher voltage motor that came with a metal gear, and some larger motors at the higher price points.

4) Of course, you can also shop on the Internet, starting by searching for Mabuchi in titles AND descriptions of all items at eBay. You’ll find everything from 540 series motors used in stock RC cars by companies like Tamiya, to people selling the little tiny motors used for pager and cell phone vibrators. You can get the $1 motor this way, but you’ll pay shipping.

5) If you’re willing to pay shipping, Did You Know that K’nex has a catalog and will sell loose pieces? Like gears, wheels and tires. Wheels and tires are opportunities to scrounge and invent but gears are more hassle when you’re inventing. Its never bad to know where they can be bought. They’re made to turn on or lock to K’nex “sticks” and that can be readily attached to other things.

6) Radio Shack sells battery holders for 1, 2, 4 and 8 AA cells, 1 and 2 C or D cells, closed boxes with lids as well as open holders. Single-cell AA holder is $0.99, the simplist versions of the larger ones are $1.99 or less. Before you say “Battery holders are for wimps, I’ll just tape some telephone wire to the button and bottom of my battery cells”, consider how easy it will be to change to fresh cells, or swap rechargable cells, with a first-class regulation battery holder. You could even have someone else do it for you!

7) Just like with restaurants, its worth your time to find out what’s local where you live, or where you are, and patronize them. Hence my leading with Hobbys Unlimited and J & M Hobby House. Try the yellow pages for your ocal electronics parts and/or surplus place when looking for switches, battery holders, etc. Extra Credit: If you put an incandesant flashlight bulb in series between your battery and your motor (3V or more, with appropriate bulb…) it will light up in proportion to the current flowing through the motor- lots of current, lots of light. Little current, not much light. Spinning freely with no load, the motor won’t light the lamp very much. Put some drag on the motor and watch the light get brighter. Its brightest when you’ve completely stopped the motor. You can use this interesting behavior to show when your motor is being loaded and when its spinning freely… Can you apply that to your project?

I see kids and parents walking around some of my hangouts with folded papers in their hands looking for stuff to build science fair projects. Many times, electric motors, small wheeled vehicles and that sort of thing are being sought. Here’s a couple of quick words of advice and I’ll do more reesarch on what’s available where:

1) Electric motors for battery powered things: 1.5 to 6, 9 or 12V DC motors. Smallish unless otherwise indicated. The “Mabuchi” motors of my childhood, no doubt made in China now. The higher voltage ratings will work slower with smaller voltages from small numbers of batteries, but 1.5 or 3.0 V will make a 12V motor turn, possibly at more or less the speed actually needed.

Generally, electric motors are too fast for the wheels, propellers or other mechanisms that they propel things through. So some gear reduction is in order. If you salvage your motor from something, it may come with the reduction hardware- usually a small gear on the motor and a larger gear for whatever the motor is turning- wheel axle, propeller, treads, fans, etc. The secret is that the motor turns something small and that small thing turns something big- this reduces the speed and increases the torque by the ratio of the small thing to large- count the teeth if gears, measure the diameters if pullys.

A convenient “belt reduction” you can build from stuff found around the home can be made by putting a bobbin or some other small, flagned, pulley, on the motor shaft, and a thread spool or other large, flanged, pulley substitute, on the axle you want to drive. A big, fat, rubber band transmits the power. Thread spools can be sawn in half and the halves glued over an axle, with hot melt glue, if the axle is already installed. Obviously, one can cut down a spool width as easily as cut it in half. Using an idler axle between the motor and the load you can have a Two Stage reduction too.

Gear reductions and gear sets based on Lego gears, K’nex gears or various gears available to experiementers are also possible. For toy-sized projects, Lego gears are good choices, but not for something you want to ride on yourself!

Rubber bands can be shortened and sewn together. Rubber strip for flying model airplanes and lightwieght bungee cord are available if long loops are desired.

Various sizes of pre-made wooden wheels and spools are available, as well as the lovely but expensive RC Car tires and wheels, RC Airplane tires and wheels, etc. Scale model car tires and wheels are usually better to look at than use- the tires are too hard. Inexpensive wooden wheels with a rubberband stretched around the outside have much better traction. If you need cheap, consider tuna or cat-food cans with a rubber band or two stretched around them. Metal or plastic pipe caps make dandy wheels, as to slices of dowel. A slice of the dowels used for hangers in closets, with a length of bicyle inner tube over it, makes a very usable, very inexpensive, wheel.

Axles: Steel is good, especially with brass tubing for bearings. Brass or copper rod or tubing is ok, Wooden sticks, dowels, bamboo skewers and other round things are good. Use brass or plastic tubes for bearings. Even plastic rods or tubing. Plastic straws make all kinds of structual stuff, if light-wieght is a goal. Carbon fiber is fun if you know how to cut and shape it and don’t care that much about cost. VERY stiff.
Bearings: A hole drilled through the structure is always a good start. Brass tubing or copper tubing or plastic tubing can be oiled or greased, after its attached. Its generally a good idea to use the axle or a dummy axle to hold the alignment of sets of bearings when attaching them to a structure. Depending on what you’re doing, you might even allow a screw adjustment for alignment.

A hole through something hard, hardwood, a block of metal, a thread spool, can serve as a bearing. Aluminum is soft but works great for flying airplanes- steel shafts through aluminum brackets, with beads or small brass washers, for thrust bearings, are popular with rubber band airplane enthusiasts.

If your motor or bobbin or axle or thread spool doesn’t fit and there’s too much space, use nested brass or plastic tubing (or rubber tubing…) to fill the distance without loosing the ‘center’. The advantage of rubber band belts and rubber tubing to make sizes match is that it allows a little lee-way in alignment. If you build with gears, you have to get your holes in the right spots and aligned correctly. Gears are pretty unforgiving of misalignment.

Sources:

Radio Shack sometimes stocks 1.5-3 or 6V motors.
Target has some toy car product which has removable motors and is selling a pack of replacement motors right now.
This is right up Hobby Engineering’s aisle, give them a call. You can have dim sum at the nearby big, fancy, chinese restaurant..
Some hobby shops (D&J and Berkeley Ace Hardware for sure, likely Hobbytown) sell science-fair experiementers supplies, including motors.
Some (D&J again, and Fry’s Electronics) have Tamiya’s line of inventor stuff, including motors, gear boxes (fixed ratio and selectable), crawler treads and the like.

Most hobby shops and many hardware stores have brass tubing, and most successessive sizes of the small stuff (1/16 inch to about 1/4 inch) ‘nest’, like an old telescope. Plastic tubing that nests is also available, and because its made from oil, may cost more than brass! Use aluminum tubing if you need something really soft, but still stiff. Use steel tubing if you need something strong- stainless steel won’t rust, a convenient property. If you want to attach axles, gears, pulleys, etc, to an axle, consider simply drilling a hole through it and sewing a piece of wire through the hole. You can be fancy and use a cotter pin if you want. Filing one or more flat spots in the round axle is another good technique, if you can get something stiff up against them.

I’ll do some more research and post what’s available here. I still remember coaching a terrific Odessey Of The Mind team back in the 1990s, and I haven’t lost my enthusiasm for the subject.

A good $2 investment is a battery holder from Radio Shack, etc, that holds the cell(s) you want to use but allows you to replace them. Really slick stuff compared to using masking tape to hold a bit of telephone wire to the end of one or more cells…