Progress Page 3

Rims and Spokes
The tires are taken from Maisto's bicycle model.  The rims are laminar plastic sheet and the spokes are insect pins.
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 Tires are taken from Maisto's Audi bicycle model.  It was a little too small and too wide, but I expected it'd look all right when fitted to a larger rim, and it turned out okay.

The rim on the other hand, had to be scratchbuilt.  I thought of using my cheap lathe, but it wasn't meant for a precise job.  So, I made them in an orthodox way of stacking plastic sheets.
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 I drew a section view of the rim, and I divided it into five layers, the biggest one as the center piece, and two additional pieces on both sides.  Some of them was a combination of two sheets, because exact thickness wasn't available.
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 I used a divider to carve a circle.  I engraved deep enough, so that it was easy to bend and remove an excess plastic sheet.
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 This photo shows how each pieces are stacked and glued together.  I test fitted the rubber tire to see if it would actually stretch to fit around an oversized rim.

 

 
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Plastic part of the rim was finished, and it was time to fill the beveled part with polyester putty.  The reason why I didn't make the whole rim with plastic was because it was very difficult to bevel evenly without a lathe.
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 Polyester putty is softer than plastic, so it's easy to sand,　and it prevents sanding beyond necessary, because of the material difference.

Also, Tamiya polyester putty is light green, and the color shift tells me when to stop sanding.

The finished and primed rims are shown in the picture below.
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The hub is made with Evergreen plastic pipe and plastic disks, cut out from a  Tamiya plastic sheet.

I used 0.3mm drill bit to drill 14 holes on each side.

Then, I used pliers to bend the tip of insect pins. 
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Then, I pulled out the wires from a small electric cord, and saved it for later use.  The vinyl cord was cut to small pieces, and they were installed to the insect pins as shown in the picture.

 
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I drilled holes on the rim, and inserted the spokes into them.  Then, the spokes were masked with Tamiya masking tape.

After that, I painted the rim in black, and then I airbrushed Alclad II polished aluminum. 
 
There are 28 spokes on one wheel, and I had to make two.  Tedious work?  Well, the next is even worse: the chain. 

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