Zil 4906 [6]: Big car, big wheels.

Been a while. Sorry. Sometimes the spirit just isn't there. And there is more to life than just building paper models. 
But there is stuff to show and tell.
I find that, when doing a build, it is a good idea to sometimes vary in which part you concentrate on. I was working n the main body part of the vehicle but I wanted to have something else to do. So I started on one of the six wheels.

The truck itself now has its deck, engine cover and cabin glued together on the chassis.

I think it gives a good idea about how big the finished vehicle will be. It all is very precisely in fit and place. There still might be some torsion in the chassis, we'll see about that later when we'll add the side walls of the Zil. 
So, I wanted to do another part of the build and picked a wheel for a change. 

Below, we'll be continuing with the build of this wheel.


You start off with two flat parts, the sidewalls of the tyre. They already are nice and muddy. It is a very good rendition of a tyre with a thin layer of dried mud over its sides.

But tyres aren't flat surfaces, even when folded into these flat funnel shapes. They have a bulge. So I tried to manage this after glueing one side. It worked like a dream. Just using my fingers, I carefully curved the surface into a bulged shape. It stayed that way, so I also did the other half.

The two parts then were glued to sturdy cardboard rings. I just glued the insides, I left the outside untouched.

I then I curved and glued the treaded surface into a ring and carefully pushed the cardboard circles inside after applying glue to the inside of the ring. I pushed the circles further in so the unglued sidewall made contact with the treaded surface. I then glued these two together, bit by bit.

When it was drying, I used a knitting needle I cut short for making the edge more smooth and a bit curved. Apparently I made the tyre just as it was intended because it all fitted perfectly and I didn't cut off any bit to make it fit better. It now has a nice bulged wall and it already started looking like a tyre.

And then there were the treads themselves. A nice system, by cutting the individual treads, having them thickened by backing them with a piece of card, you actually can get a very nicely ribbed wheel. There are models with laser cut detail sets available where the individual blocks or knobs of these tyre profile ribs are even varying in thickness but these are absolutely very, vary nicely engineered. You just have to cut them out. One by one. And edge colour the whites. I used a Caran d'Ache "brownish beige" for this job. It was bang on.

I also used an embossing needle to give the ribs a little extra depth. I wonder if people will notice eventually but I know it's there.

Each individual rib was edge coloured, shaped and then glued into place on the wheel.

There. Still 27 to go.

Another two. 25 left.

 All in all it took me 4 hours.

And I like the result.

Five wheels to go. That's for later. Up next will be the walls of the vehicle.

Anyway, that was it for today. Thanks for stopping by and see you around soon.
--PK