Motorcycle Emptiness

This little beastie is a companion piece to the MDF shed model in my previous post. It came in the same kit, but I had set it aside for another day.

It is a very basic kit; just a bare motorbike silhouette with a few extra bits added to give some detail.

It only took a few minutes to glue the handful of components together, but it still looked quite 2-dimensional and I wasn't very satisfied with it.

I could have let it be, but being me I couldn't resist tinkering with it to add some more detail. This is probably one of the reasons why my projects take so long, but I know that if I had just left it 'as is' it would have bugged me.

It would have been easy to go completely to town on detail, but I restricted this to the barest areas around the wheels and frame. These were built up with thin strips of plasticard.  The frame and forks should really have a round profile. In reality they would have been tubular, but I decided this was just too much effort when every other part of the model was 'square'. My only concession to this was to file some of the sharp edges off the MDF components, the exhaust pipe being the most obvious area. 

Detailing begins. The basic kit with additional rear mudguard added.

More detailing. Forks, frame, mudguards and supports added.

The exhaust pipe filed to a rounder profile.

As I'm no expert when it comes to vintage motorcycles I scouted around for some useful reference photos as a painting guide. The model is probably quite generic anyway, but a search of the internet produced a few useful examples of which the BSA M21 seemed to be the closest match - so I based my colour choices on an example of that.

Painting the model was quite straightforward. The whole thing received a base coat of matt black and then the various details were picked out in appropriate colours. As if to prove that I make things up as I go along, half way through painting I decided that the fuel tank looked wrong without a filler cap. This was remedied with a thin sliver of round plastic, glued on top of the tank. It's a small but important detail - at least I think so. 

The finishing touch was to add the registration number to the front plate. A hunt through the bits box unearthed some micro-scale decals that were just the right size. Each of the letters and numbers were added individually. This was by far the fiddliest bit of the build but I think it sets off the whole thing a treat.

I did have a look through my collection for a suitable rider, but have no appropriate figures for an early to mid-20th century motorcyclist. However, I did find an old Citadel fantasy 'Arabian' horseman who was begging for a chance to swap his steed for something with a bit more horsepower. Please excuse my silliness. I just couldn't resist :-)  

"Nice bike, but I still prefer my chopper"

Until next time...