Madill 071 Mobile Tower Yarder

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Yes, an engine driven spool would be much easier.

[Beekster]

May 14, 2021 7:54:19 GMT -6 dogfish7 (R.I.P.) said:

Yes, an engine driven spool would be much easier.

I should think so.  The manual says the powered guylines should be run through the blocks and pulled towards the drum, then the spar should be raised and the line attached and spooled using the cab winch controls.  This up-and-down has to be done for each line.  The three larger lines are supposedly best run with the spar up, too.  The manual tells you how to route them through the fairleads, but I can't imagine that is done with the spar up; you'd be working nearly fifty feet in the air.  I would guess that the lines would be threaded through the fairleads towards the drums, then secured so that they didn't go backwards when the spar goes up.  Then follow the instructions to connect them and spool them from the cab.  It does sound line replacing lines could take a few hours and several people to complete the task.

[reserve]

Nice and busy, a very good look.

Now it's time to ignore that little voice I'm pretty sure you're hearing that sez "Finish it, get it off the bench, taking too much time". A voice I hear all too often

Regards,
Mark

[Beekster]

Too much time? This one is over eight years in the making; I've never felt that itch to just get it done. Even now, I would rather get things just right than rush it. It will be done this year, I promise. If all I was doing was duplicating the build in transport mode, the next one would go much faster; this one would sit dormant for months at a time while I pondered how to solve some problem or other. Now I know the pitfalls and what to do about them, at least with the yarder bits themselves. Having set myself the challenge of (at least) building my own track pads if not full track system with chain drives, the next one will likely progress nearly as slowly.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

I'm amazed at your tenacity to take on a complicated project like this one and actually pull it off. I know I couldn't manage it.

[JED]

You're doing a great job Beekster but I have to agree with Mark and OZ

[Dukemaddog]

I second Bruce's comment. I have yet to take on something that complicated for so long. The closest I came to dealing with something this complicated and difficult was my Armaggeddon Panzer BP-44 armored train that took me 21 months to build and paint. I am certainly loathe to take on something that tough for so long again, even though the C-54 seems to be developing that way. I commend you on your patience, persistence and ability to stay focused for such a long time on something this complicated.

[Beekster]

May 15, 2021 8:11:23 GMT -6 dogfish7 (R.I.P.) said:

I'm amazed at your tenacity to take on a complicated project like this one and actually pull it off. I know I couldn't manage it.

Tenacity or insanity, I really don't know which!  Certainly very few modelers have attempted to build one of these machines; I've only seen photos of a couple and one thing that is apparent is that without actual measurements the proportions can get skewed really quickly.  I count myself fortunate that I had a near-derelict machine within easy driving distance for several years and could make repeated trips to photograph & measure it.

In terms of pulling off a complicated project, you might surprise yourself, Dogfish.  A key to accomplishing it, however long it takes when dealing with the inevitable problems that crop up, is to plan out subassemblies.  In this case, a couple are obvious:  Lower hull & suspension is one, the cab is another, and so is the spar.  Once could consider each winch drum a subassembly, but certainly the winch bay enclosed by the two bedplates is a subassembly (and it includes the two utility winches and the clutches & brakes on the front and back sides).  Similar to the winch drums, those brakes and clutches are little subassemblies in themselves, all built the same way at the same time.  The engine is a subassembly, and so is the top deck and the housing on the right front.  None of us would be modelers if we weren't pretty good at visualizing things, so visualizing how to break down various elements into discrete pieces to build is something we develop along the way.

Perhaps a yarder is a bit much to bite off?  Here are a couple of other oddities using Lee/Grant/Sherman bits that could be tackled:






I have no clue what the Aussie conversions were used for, but there are clearly winches and rollers and power take-offs visible.  Find a few photos of something that intrigues you and let your mind start percolating on it.

[JED]

The list could be endless!!

[JCON]

Fun to watch you build brother!!!

[Steve Ski]

Crazy build, love it. Another huge build, excellent.

[Beekster]

The second track run is still driving me batty. As soon as I repair one section, it finds new places to break. The old plastic of the T54E1 track shoes is just so brittle that the track pins keep shearing off. I've started making tiny little shims of .005" plastic and gluing those to the track shoes in hopes of providing more tooth for gluing the end connectors on and enough friction so that the remaining flexible sections don't articulate and pull the hard joints out of position while the glue sets up. The jury's still out on the effectiveness of this.

[JCON]

Hope it works for you brother!!!

[JED]

Good luck

[Beekster]

Fairly disastrous couple of days. Finally got tracks together, only to discover that all the manipulation for that had caused one of the big winch drums to spin back and forth and tangle the line. Been trying to work the line free and back on the spool for most of the day, and it's not getting better and other stuff is breaking. Not real sure I can save it at this stage, but I'll keep at it as long as the shoulders hold out.

[JCON]

Step back and re-evaluate another day!

[Beekster]

Not much progress to report. Two of the three large lines tangled themselves; one had to be cut in several places and the ends fished out. I have sufficient line on one cut piece to complete the line and hide the join, so that's good. The other one I was able to clear after several hours of working on it. Why has this happened? The root causes are twofold. One is the natural tendency of the nylon line to want to twist on itself and not lay flat on the drum and spool evenly. Any slack left in the line (like for manipulating the model to attach tracks, make repairs, repaint, etc.) can unspool itself along the way and get tangled around the axle shafts because the drums do have some fore-and-aft movement. The second is my own foibles and poor judgement/workmanship. I should never have left as much room for the spools to move fore and aft; I thought that might make touch-up easier. Bad call. I did pre-paint the drums and the inside of the winch bedplate structure before I put the drums in on their shafts, and that was a good idea. In hindsight, I ought to have spooled the lines on (without terminations on the ends), and taped the lines down on the drums with enough tape to keep them corralled and mask them against later painting. They ought not have been run out at all until the spar is attached and in its final position. Lesson learned; I will use this approach on future projects (more on that later). Unfortunately, learning this--and I really did think that spooling the lines near the end of the project would be easier, never having done this before--has resulted in some structural damage to be repaired, might require new tracks, and will require a LOT of repainting by brush to cover where paint has been rubbed off by all the work I've had to do to untangle things. I'll just have to go real slow; the spar is joined at the hip as it were and I can tangle things again if I am not careful how I manipulate the model to do repairs and repainting.

So, other projects...Lessons learned this last couple of traumatic weeks will inform how I move forward on the next one, which I am still intending to do on an excavator frame. Still haven't figured out tracks yet, and all the problems with this one have kept me from even thinking about that recently. There are two long shot future possibilities. One is a very early machine on an M26A1 Pacific frame, though all I have to go on for that are a few very poor photos. The other is a Madill 171, a larger successor to the 071s I am working on now:

Notice that this one uses HVSS with a wider bogie spacing, and has a much longer spar (70 feet from ground to Skyline sheave). Unfortunately, there isn't one of these available to measure and I don't have a sales brochure with even basic dimensions. I have reached out to Nicholson up in Vancouver BC, which owns the Madill brand these days, asking them to look in their archives for a brochure and dimensional data. We'll see if anything pans out. Meanwhile, I've got to get this very troubled 071 back in shape.

[JCON]

Man that sucks!!! Hope you can get it back in shape Beeks!!!

[JED]

Oh dear,certainly a bit disheartening to say the least. Good luck, I'm sure you'll work it out

[Beekster]

OK, I am slowly getting this thing back in shape. The lines have all been untangled. I have replaced a lift ring on the deck that was broken off, reattached the band brake in the front corner that broke off, reattached the bottom angle of the guyline sponson which broke off, and secured broken joints on the right side panel between the winch bedplates and the I-beam under the engine bay door on the right side. The broken safety rail on the deck has been reattached (the whole rear section broke off). The busted bogie wheel has been reinstalled. All this damage was done during the process of fixing the problems with the rigging lines. The areas where paint has been worn away have been repainted by brush; one good thing about gloss enamel is that it levels nicely and doesn't leave brush strokes. It will remain tacky for days, though, so the model is now being left alone for that paint to cure hard before I return to stippling on some rust spots. While that happens, I have to deal with the tracks...

And I've decided I can't save them without risking further damage. Enough places have already broken and been glued that the two runs don't articulate well enough any more to go back on without having the model in a precarious position for far too long. So, back to plan A, which was to have worn T48 rubber chevron mounted backwards. That work has begun today:

All four of these sprues have been gouged with a steel cutter in the Dremel; I'm using two different ones to mix up the kind of damage that results. All four have been scrubbed with a wire brush to remove burrs and washed. The left pair have just been brushed with liquid blue to soften the contours; the right ones have not had that process applied yet. Note that all the ejector pins on the sprues have been snipped off, to make it easier to get the Dremel in there. Needless to say, I've got a few hours of work to do since there are nearly three dozen sprues that need this treatment.