I just got done with one of my latest scratch builds.Painting is still one of my problems,just can’t seem to paint that well.
This overhead crane will be placed inside the BOF building as soon as its built. Can’t build the BOF yet because its a structure thats about three feet long and two feet high…no where to put it right now.
Right now on my work bench,I’m working on a small steel converter. I need a much larger converter for the scrap box in the picture above.
400 tons is a heck of a crane. Admittedly that’s a short span, but that is still a heck of a crane. It doesn’t look as big as a 100 tonner we had in one plant where I worked. In a real tornado, you want to take shelter in the Southwest corner of that crane bay, if the bottom 6 feet or so of the walls are concrete like most of them are.
And just think, some railroad Schnable cars handled 700 Ton transformers.
Looks great. Don’t worry about the paint, hot metal cranes are generally filthy, and graphite encrusted. Our 400 tonners are P&H. at our BOP shop. One note, in addition to the 400 ton main hoist, all of ours are equiped with a 150 ton auxillary hoist, on the same trolley. The purpose of the aux. hoist is to grab the hook ring at the bottom of our hot metal ladles, and hoist, so the ladle rotates on the main hoist hooks and pours the molten iron into the vessel. Yours looks great.
Your model looks great and I hope you eventually get some space for your mill. I know the furnaces and mill buildings take up a lot of room. Think about placing your buildings at an angle toward the backdrop and making them “shorter”. They will still look massive as long as you are viewing from near shoulder level or higher.
Are you painting with an air brush? If so, try thinning the paint a little.
Thanks to all who took the time to reply,this project was on my “to do list” for quite some time. I also scratch built the running girders for the crane out of styrene. I couldn’t find girders large enough,so had to make them. Dean Freytags morgan crane is an awesome sight to say the least,wish mine would have turned out like his.
Now all thats left to do is build the BOF building to house the beast. Still waiting on the money to build a 12X16 shed to house the steel mill layout. All I can do for now is build everything that goes with the mill.
I also have plans for an iron ductile plant for making pipe.Not really plans ,but a drawing of the building,pretty neat.
Y’know, when you say “scratchbuilding” to most people, they think of putting together a small clapboard house out of Evergreen siding, or maybe an odd-shaped building from Cornerstone Modulars. But you’re showing another whole side of it. When I see models like this crane, I realize that doom-and-gloom crowd who say that RTR is ruining the hobby are wrong. There are still plenty of craftsmen out there. Thanks for sharing this journey with all of us.
You knew this would get my attention! For some reason I thought you had already built your train shed. You’re following the same path I did - build all the megastructures first, then when you get the benchwork built and track laid, just stick 'em on!
Thank you for the kind words. I hope theres still scratch builders ,from what I’ve seen on this forum and others ,that holds true. It would be cool if the RTR crowd, gave scratch building a chance. Shoot…start small and go from there. Thats how I got started,my first scratch build was one of the worst things,the world has ever seen.
Yup thats how the cookie seems to crumbale,just have to wait a bit longer. Its killing me to have to wait ARHHHHHHHH. I can’t build any of the structures…no where to put them once built. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. LOL.
