Dear all
So I have been doing the boots of the 1/4 model to try and get a better understanding how they go together. Hopefully this will make it understandable how to do scaling up to life-size.
So first up is the internal support structure
As stated in the instructions some parts (and in fact nearly all the parts of the boots) are backed onto 0.5 mm thick card. I am using cereal boxes as suggested in the instructions. All okay so make the second support for the other boot
Next up is to make the "cleats" for the sole and then attached the sole to the support structure. So this means gluing to both sides of a cereal box backing card. Because of the highly glossed "printed side" I decided to rough this side up to give the glue more to key onto. To do this I "came across" an emery nail board of my wife. Seemed to work okay (as shown below)
So now attached the cleated soles
I do like the look of these. But then things start to go down hill.
When trying to do the heal and toecap there are issues with the backed card. If I back it first, when rolling, the outer layer stretches noticeable and ruins the print face, whilst the inner card layer crumples as if the card is too thick. It is not satisfactory. So I try rolling the outer and inner layer separately then gluing together and then trimming. This is much better BUT I an not accurate enough with my cutting. Also I find it is not good using a knife (which is what I was using) since this requires the bonded part to be flattened and still spoils the print a bit.
I build up the blue toe cap etc using joining strips (which I found very fiddly and hard for me) but passable. Forget to take any photos. The comes the grey inner boot parts up to the ankle (which is attached to the top of the support structure. I found this a nightmare and no matter what I tried I could not get it to fit.
In the end I stopped and moved onto the ankle part of the boot (which is made separately and then attached to the lower part of the boot. This was more successful (as you can see)
But try as I might I could not make the bottom part of the boot. Here are just some of the parts after many attempts
Slightly desperate I try going from the top down (
not following the instructions).
More failures. Try going from the bottom up in a "semi-backed and non supported hybrid"
Again failure.
To be clear this must be because of something I am not doing properly. This is a wonderfully designed model and people have built fantastic models from it and posted them on this site.
So I am temporarily abandoning building the boots (so I can figure out what is going on) and instead an going to start on the legs. Still following the plan of 1/4 model first and then life-size.
Regards
Kevin