[Ecurie Martini]

Time: 1958
Place: Student Apartment in New York
Action: The bits and pieces of a Scalex tinplate car lie scattered over a metal-topped kitchen table. A Merit Vanwall kit is close at hand. Some implement is found that when heated in the gas flame of the stove, will melt through a circular hole in the lower section of the Vanwall body that will just accept the Scalex rolling gimbal guide/pick up. Two holes are bored through the aft end of the lower body section with the heated tip of a knife to accept the screws that fasten the Scalex sidewinder motor in place. The top half of the body is secured with tape and the resulting assembly (sans front wheels - no way to attach them) is taken for a test spin on the figure-8 rubber track...........

And it's still going on!

 

[Ecurie Martini]

QUOTE Do some of you older geezers remember using "liquid solder" for soldering on your pinions? .... it was a grey sludge sold in a jar, you mixed it and then applied it to the armature shaft and pinion and then heated it up with an iron, it was supposed to make a solder joint as good as using the real stuff but never did as some of my cars would regularly "let go" round the Nordic track!

I used a different version which, quite to the contrary, was very good. It was called "Solder Paint" and I got it , by mail order, from a shop in Liverpool. It was a mixture of finely divided silver solder and a paste flux - a match or soldering iron wouldn't touch it. I used a small torch* to make very good brazed joints on brass and steel. I have tried several so-called silver solders in paste form since then and none of them are even close - they are all low temperature solders.

EM (official geezer)

* this was well before the advent of little butane torches. Mine was a twin-tube alchohol torch with a fuel resevoir in one tube and an alchohol soaked wick in the second which, when lighted, would serve to vaporize the fuel at the torch tip and produce enough pressure to provide a nice little flame.

 

[Ecurie Martini]

I'm going to look around and see if I still have mine- it was fussy to use but was ideal for the purpose - hot enough to flow the solder but not so hot as to draw the temper on music wire.

EM

 

[Ecurie Martini]

Well, I'm nothing if not a pack rat. A brief trip to the archives turned up 2, not 1, catalogs from Precison Model Engineering Co. Ltd. 10, South Road. Waterloo. Liverpool 22.

They offered "Fryolux" solder paint for 8/1 for a 1 oz tin and 15/6 for 2 oz.

Additional offerings included Scaltextric F1 Lotus and Vanwall as well as an Aston Martin and Lister Jag for 32/6, K's Precison Mk. 1 motor for 30/7, S.M.E.C. wheels for 7/7, the superb range of SMEC wood kits for 14/10, and the Merit range for 7/7

EM

P.S. for those youngsters out there who grew up after decimalization, 8/1 is 8 shillings, 1 pence - 20 shillings to the pound, 12 pence to the shilling. In those days being a slot car builder also involved learning a whole different currency system!

 

[Ecurie Martini]

QUOTE And I am trying to build up replicas of the others. In that persuit, I have found a Stromie Mercedes kit. YAAA

Why didn't you tell me you were looking for one - have several lying about!

EM