In my typical fashion, I got completely obsessed with the model today;
There are four windows in the howdah and the kit supplies little pictures for the inside of three of them. The fourth one is for the ABC logo. I decided to replace it with a quick drawing of my own.
The howdah went together much better than the elephant legs did. There was a little mismatch on the top of the dome, but nothing serious.
Headless elephant with howdah. Attaching the top of the elephant to the bottom was a real struggle and it took some serious manhandling of cardstock. Even so, on the other side, there was one seam I couldn't keep together no matter what I did.
The head was an interesting design and a bit of a challenge on its own. It's a number of odd bends and curves to get the form. Not how I would have designed and elephant head (if I could design anything!). I pulled my usual stunt of gluing pieces and leaving the room while they dried out of position. This is especially evident on the trunk;
This is the finished model and you can see clearly where the cylinder at the base of the trunk dried out of place. Like the legs, the trunk cylinders were not the best fit. But the mistake is entirely my fault and shouldn't have happened. Hopefully, I can go back and fix it later.
Here you can see the section of the forward backpiece that stretched open under the strain. It really was tough getting the piece in place. I reglued that section, but it just wouldn't hold. I think some paint is in order.
The action aspect of the model does work, but where I thought the head would rear back in a mighty jungle bellow, the head merely gives a little mechanical hiccup. It only takes pennies and smaller coins, though.
Anyway, so much for the easy part. This wound up being a bit more difficult than I expected, mainly because of the slight misfits. Now it's on to the hard part of the challenge...the Steam House. I have to say I am intimidated by the number of parts and this is the kind of modeling I'm least good at...lots and lots of straight lines, even folds and matching corners. I think I'll take a couple of days to go over the parts and plans in detail to make sure I understand what goes where before I start cutting!
Chris