Jim is completely correct. Dennis' kits more or less fall together because they are well thought through and engineered to fit well and just as important, easily together. The "easily" is hard to explain in words. but the patterns were clearly done by someone who was thinking about assembly. Getting your hands on one of his kits would be helpful to you Brian, but I realize this may not be easy.

Alternatively, you might want to see if you can get your hands on one of the Northern Pacific stock cars done about 5 years ago by Aaron G. (I will only mangle the spelling if I try, sorry Aaron). This kit is another that I remember kind of "putting itself together."

This is not to minimize knowing what to do in terms of making the castings. I have done three full kits for Sunshine now and I remember speaking to Martin a couple of times to understand his process of using hard rubber to create the secondary masters to in turn create the production parts for the kits. I spoke specifically to him about how much I could push the envelope with undercuts as I saw these as very important in helping components fit together easily and accurately.

Bill Welch

--- In STMFC@..., Jim Hayes <jimhayes97225@> wrote:

It's not the casting. It's the very high quality of the masters.

Jim Hayes
Portland Oregon
www.sunshinekits.com


On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 10:53 AM, Brian <cornbeltroute@> wrote:

**


I'm soon entering a casting phase and would love to know what makes
Dennis's kits special. Those are lessons I'd love to learn about. Dennis?

Thanks much,

Brian Chapman
Evansdale, Iowa