Madill 071 Mobile Tower Yarder

[ogrejohn]

Oh man that is a cramped space. Looks like you got it sorted out on this wonderful build! 

[Beekster]

Apr 15, 2021 15:52:08 GMT -6 ogrejohn said:

Oh man that is a cramped space. Looks like you got it sorted out on this wonderful build! 

Now...finally...I think
The top one broke yesterday, and I wasn't surprised...the whole little subassembly is old and brittle. Cleaned up both surfaces, added another shim disc, and put it back together.  Just brushed on a bit of orange to cover the visible white bits, and will hit the area with Dullcote in a couple of days and proceed.  Tracks are finished and base color has been painted; they too are still drying before sealing the base with Dullcote.  Got some JAX blackening chemical to try to blacken the four shackles for the fixed guylines; that was a failure.  The stuff took forever to work and flaked off.  Tried sanding the parts to remove any lacquer from the manufacturer (not sure there was any); washed off any grease with soapy water; tried again.  No joy.  Soaked parts in lacquer thinner for a while, washed and tried again.  No joy.  Shackles now in primer; will paint them normally.  I miss the original Blacken-It.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

They don't make it anymore!!??

[Beekster]

Apr 16, 2021 7:49:47 GMT -6 dogfish7 (R.I.P.) said:

They don't make it anymore!!??

No, been gone for several years now.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Shows how long it's been since I did metal tracks.

[Beekster]

Success! The broken filter housing bits are fixed and the hoses are on for good (I hope).




Tracks have base color & Dullcote on, too. Mulling over selecting a suitable dry dirt color and shooting a thinned layer on the lower hull, suspension, and tracks to start the weathering process down there. More to report later today on the spar, which just got all the hydraulic hose fittings drilled out and painted black. That paint will be dry enough later today to permanently attach the two hoses from the middle of the spar to the hydraulic lift cylinder.

[JCON]

Well done sir!!!

[Beekster]

So, here's the good news: Hydraulic lines are in place on the spar:




And now the bad news. This has been festering for a while now. This is the spar stiff-leg, the end that attaches to the triangular bracket on the front of the winch bedplate:




You see white where I have filed away paint, and a little jagged white seam where one of the jaws has broken off and been reattached. Again. My explanation is that I have been too obsessed with scale accuracy in terms of material thickness, and undoubtedly paid too little attention to how things wanted to fit when the spar is raised. Fiddling with the parts tends to put too much stress on this part of the stiff-leg, resulting in breakage. This is how it all goes together, spar up:






The pin holding the stiff-leg to the spar bracket is obviously unfinished and temporary, as is the pin and bolt head (on left side, nearest the Wichita bits) holding the stiff-leg to the bracket. Frankly, I am not certain that the busted end of the stiff-leg will survive through to final assembly. Those jaws measure .044" thick, but there's a lot of paint on there. I'm pretty sure I used standard .040" thick stock. Just in case, I am making new parts for that end of the stiff-leg, laminated to .050" thick. If need be, I will shave off the original parts, add the beefier ones, and repaint that end of the part.

Now there's a tune in my head, which pretty much sums up the situation: "Look at all my trials and tribulations, sinking in a gentle pool of wine...don't disturb me now, I can see the answers 'til this morning is this evening, life is fine..."

Bonus points if you know the origin of that lyric.

[JCON]

You forgot to put Apostles in front of the lyrics... do I win the Bonus points???

Always hoped that I'd be an apostle
Knew that I would make it if I tried
Then when we retire we can write the gospels
So they'll still talk about us when we've died...

Jesus Christ Super Star,  The Last Supper

[Beekster]

You nailed it, Joe! (See what I did there? Nailed it? I slay me, sometimes...)

It's a great show. I was about eight when my Dad went to New York on business and saw it there, and brought home the original London cast album. Blew me away; music totally different from the pop stuff on the radio when I picked a channel, or the easy listening/adult contemporary stuff Mom listened to. Or the classical music she played on the piano, practicing for her church organist duties. We saw a touring production a few years ago with Dennis DeYoung of Styx as Pontius Pilate and Ted Neeley as Jesus. He did the role for the '73 film and has been doing it on tour for much longer than the actual Jesus actually lived. Another touring production was supposed to come around last year; now it's on again for late this year.

The lyrics came to mind, I guess, because I am getting a bit more philosophical about this project. It really is getting close to done, and setbacks like this are frustrating but don't seem like the end of the world. When there were multiple such events piling on each other as I ground away at things searching for solutions to problems, the eventual outcome of the project seemed much more in doubt.

[JCON]

Whoo hoo, I win!!! Lol!!! It is quite the soundtrack!!!

[Dukemaddog]

Joe beat me to it. I knew the lyrics as well since I sang them so many times in college. Yes, we did a production of Jesus Christ Superstar in college. All us guys who were cast as apostles decided to grow our beards to look more like apostles. One other thing: Our director surprised everyone (including us!) when he switched the last two scenes and added the Resurrection at the very end. That was extremely powerful and there wasn't a single dry eye in every audience when they saw it.

Thank you for the memories with that one. I'd pay to perform in that again.

[Beekster]

Not much to report. The real world has intruded of late; I bought a new battery electric lawnmower and power head with string trimmer & edger attachments. Time has been spent assembling those and learning to use them, and discovering that one battery is bad. A warranty replacement is on the way. And discovering I've got a bad solenoid valve on one of my sprinkler lines, and after tomorrow when I've got an empty wheelbarrow for spoils I can start excavating that. What fun... Oh, and much of Saturday was taken up with running out to the airport to get my first COVID shot! So not as much time at the bench lately, and later this week might get crowded, too.

But sometimes things work out better than expected. For a long time, I've been bothered by the way the primer & paint has tended to flake off the silicone wire I'm using for the big hydraulic lines to the spar:

You can see here where flexing the line to route it has caused paint to flake off. I tried repainting, but it looked thick and uneven and I wasn't happy. So I decided to take some sandpaper and a scalpel and fingernails to get most of the color off. These lines were painted at the factory, but quickly got stained by fluid, which attracted dirt, and if there was ever a problem they got replaced and not repainted. So this morning I went after the paint, and this is the result:


Under magnification, it looks messier than it is and some more work with a wet Q-tip will clean off remaining bits of paint. If needed, a quick pass under the faucet will do the job. This will look much better, I believe.

Also, with the spar essentially complete I've started running the lines. The three powered guyline ropes have been threaded through their sheaves, and coiled up and taped to keep things tidy. It may look like the lines will easily tangle, but they won't. This is half the job done; the three yarding lines will be added next to complete the subassembly. I am still working on terminations and color on those lines, but when all six are one the spar is ready for final assembly.

[JCON]

Looking good!!! Slow and steady gets it done!!!

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Some more fantastic detail work, Beekster.

[ARMORGUY]

Incredible, a true gem in progress. It looks so realistic.

[Beekster]

After considerable tribulation with track breakage, a result of old and brittle plastic, I finally have the tracks on. Before they went on, I sprayed a very dilute coat of MM Afrika Dunkelgrau '42, which makes a nice base layer for dust accumulation. Unfortunately, in using a bit of thinner to wipe off some overspray the Dullcote fogged in a few places, as evidenced by the white streaks and spots. Irritating, but not fatal...a bit of thinned orange and some thinned Dullcote will fix it. Besides, the tracks need a bit of touch-up too so those spots will also need to be sealed with clearcoat.








Further weathering will be done with watercolor washes, with a dollop of Elmer's glue as a binder. For the tracks, that will have the added benefit of adding some tack to the pins and end connectors to hold things together better. Even when he wash is dry, the end connectors can be tweaked to line up properly and they will stay put.

[JCON]

Man that looks amazing!!!

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

It's nice to see how these rigs work and how much work goes into making them.

[Beekster]

May 5, 2021 15:55:10 GMT -6 dogfish7 (R.I.P.) said:

It's nice to see how these rigs work and how much work goes into making them.

I think much less work went into making the real ones, Dogfish!

Track tension is a little loose for a Sherman, but it seems most yarder operators weren't all that concerned with that.  Many of the tracks I've seen have been very badly worn; some shoes worn so only the through bars remain!  When it's that far gone, the rubber bushes in the track shoe (which apply tension and account for the Sherman track's tendency to roll itself up; a "live" track) are also toast so the track stretches quite a bit.  Eventually you run out of adjustment on the idler, and well before that any competent army would replace the track.  Yarder owners, not so much.  If the thing still rolls, it's good enough for their purposes.  No chance of throwing a track that's too slack when you only move a few hundred yards at a time on roughly graded surfaces, at a top speed of three miles an hour or so.