The Flying Merkel, 1910

[AlanG]

Hello all, it's that motorcycle maniac back again. This time I have bought a kit to make a racing motorcycle from the early days - a 1910 Flying Merkel. The model was designed by Kurt Fehling, and published under his "KF Modell" imprint. It is rather expensive, but when I think of the time I will spend making it, it compares favourably with many other forms of entertainment.

The kit contains nine A4 sheets of parts, numbered from 1 to 64 but totalling 243 because of duplicates and subsidiary "a, b, c ..." pieces. Most of the pages are coloured card, roughly 160gsm, printed in black with part outlines only. Page 2 is printed in colour (though mostly shades of grey) on white card; page 9 is also on white card, containing three parts to make a jig for constructing the wheels. There is also a half-sheet of somewhat thinner red, unprinted, but I haven't yet worked out what that is for.



To complete things, there is a double sheet of assembly drawings with VERY brief written notes, a front cover bearing two photographs of the model, and a back cover with a short description and rather poor photograph of the original.

The scale is given as 1:10, so to have a model at my usual scale of 1:14, I shall have to scan all the sheets, and reprint at a little over 70%.

Alan

[B-Manic]

Nice - I am not familiar with the subject or designer but I am fascinated.

[Leif Ohlsson]

Oh, yummie - 1/14 spoked wheels coming up... - L.

[AlanG]

The next stage is to look at any photographs I can find of the prototype, to get a feel for how things go together. Not surprisingly, The Flying Merkel proved to be a useful source. It has a good number of old photographs, albeit of not very good quality, and some further information about the company and its products. A Google image search gives a good number of other pictures, mostly of restored, replica and "tribute" bikes.

These show up several interesting discrepancies between model and original, most of which I will mention later. The glaring one, though, is that all the modern restorations and descriptions of the originals agree that the paintwork was a characteristic bright ORANGE, not red. In fact, even the description (in German) in the model kit uses the term "leuchtend orange-rote Lackierung" (bright orange-red paint). In addition the "-rote" appears in a slightly different typeface from the rest, so looks as though it has been added later. Was this when the manufacturer failed to find a suitably-coloured card and decided to use a red one instead?

I was about to print my reduced-scale copy, so had the chance to change the colour to something more suitable first.



Just the first two pages so far, shown together with the originals, but this will be enough to be getting started.

Alan

[AlanG]

Hello, guys, thank you for your comments.

B-Manic, you have hit it in one - that's the beastie, with the small exception that that photo is of the one-cylinder 500cc version, while the model I'm doing is the 1 litre V-twin. Apart from the engine, they seem to be identical though.

Leif, I think that there will be quite a few problems to solve before I get to the delights of the wheels! They will be problematical enough, as they are much narrower than those on modern motorcycles and will be hard to keep from warping. The front hub is very small, too, so I can see I shall have to adapt my usual methods. Watch this space, and eventually I might get there.

Alan

[B-Manic]

Does the V-twin also have the pedals and chain?

[cdavenport]

How do you plan to do the spoked wheels?

[whulsey]

This is going to be fun to watch!!

[AlanG]

Originally Posted by B-Manic

Does the V-twin also have the pedals and chain?

Yes, all the models seem to have had the bicycle pedals, apparently as a starting mechanism. Presumably the rider pedalled furiously along the road for a bit to build up enough momentum to bump-start the engine. Interestingly, the attempt to avoid this by fitting a spring-powered self-starter on 1914 models may have contributed to the demise of the company three years later. It seems to have been unreliable, and had the dual effect of increasing costs, due to the need to repair or replace the defective units, and harming the company's reputation. The economic effects of the war and increasing competition from motor cars then killed it off.

The chain arrangement is quite interesting. The pedals drive a chainwheel on the right-hand side of the vehicle, connected to a cycle-style free wheel. On the left-hand side, there is a separate two-stage chain drive from the engine, with the intermediate sprockets turning freely on the pedal shaft. Not all Merkels had the main chain drive - it seems to have come in on the racing versions first, and later was an option on road bikes. The alternative was a single-stage leather "toothed" belt driving a large pulley on the rear wheel. Now that really does look old-fashioned.



Alan

[AlanG]

Charles

My usual method for wire wheels is to use silver thread drawn through holes in the hub flange and the wheel rim. I have shown the method briefly in Yamaha HX90 from Kozin and Kawasaki Z400 - Kozin. As I mentioned to Leif above, I think there will need to be some adaptation of the technique in this case, especially for the front wheel. I think it will end up more as shown by mirco in Another spoked wheels tutorial, but time will tell.

Alan