For those that have an interest in building from brass I've added a few tips for you here. It's really quite simple.
For my main chassis piece I'm using K&S .032 brass sheet. Very heavy stuff so you really don't want to use it for a large chassis piece. For the skin I'm using K&S .016 brass sheet. The tubing is K&S 5/32 hard tubing. NEVER buy the tubing labeled "Soft Bendable", this tubing will not support a load. Also Midwest .125 solid carbon fiber rod. You can get all of these items and more at Tower Hobbies.
To make my chassis rails incredibly strong I'm inserting Midwest .125 solid carbon fiber rods into them. Super strength without the weight.
For solder I'm using BernzOMatic silver metal work solder and StayBrite liquid flux.
I've been using this little chop saw from Harbor Freight for years. It's made to cut brass tubing and was only $14.00. A very handy little tool.
The most important tool you'll need is a soldering iron that can achieve very high temps.
This cheap little Dubro tubing bender is very handy too. You'll also need a propane torch to heat up the tubing for bending. The first bit of tubing shows what happens if you try to bend it cold. The other examples are heated tubing bends. Note that larger more complex bends will result in some kinks and dents. These are easily fixed though as I'll show later. If you invest in a brake line bending kit you could do perfect bends. The Dubro tool cost about $5.00 so I went with it.
Solder is incredibly hard stuff to sand. I highly recommend sanding sticks as shown and paper of about 120 grit for smoothing the solder joints. Lighter paper of 400 - 1000 grit can be used to smooth and polish the final product.
A drill press, belt sander etc will make your life easy but, you could do the same with a Dremel if that's all you have.
Now to the project! Here's where I'm coming up with my chassis ideas. These are 50's-60's dragster designs, the NHRA/IHRA no longer allow you to compete with such minimal cage designs for safety reasons. Too bad as these were the best looking dragsters of all time. Hot rods are supposed to be dangerous.
No, they did the right thing, there's just not enough driver protection on these old rails. They do look way cooler than the modern ones though.
Here is the .032 sheet that I cut out to form the main chassis piece. I'm using RC12E rear axle mounts, hollow axle and an old Paragon mod motor which I'll rebuild later. The slot for the motor was drilled out and then hand filed. It's better to have too much material than not enough. The rear half will be trimmed away once I figure out how much I need and where to make my cuts
Here is the drivers seat which I cut out of flat .016 sheet. I formed this around a paint bottle I had handy and tapped it with a hammer. I then soldered the bottom in. It will need more trimming and fine tuning before it becomes a final piece.
The driver is actually a 1/12 indy car figure. I'm going to resculpt his arms and helmet. He's going to have an alky mask. Steering servo will mount up about there and a micro receiver will sit beside it.
Here I've added the first brace using the holes in the axle mounts.
The main part of the cage has been completed. The RC12E front arms will not be used, they're just for mock up. I'll be bending up an aluminum axle for it.
Here is piece of tubing that I had trouble forming. Notice the kinks in the tubing.
To fix a part like this you simply fill in the kinked or flat areas with solder.
Sand off the excess solder and there you have it.
Almost ready to soldered into place. The seat will get a major trimming, I want it flush against the cage. This is where I'll have to leave it for this week. Hopefully I'll have the rails on it by the next update.
very nice!
