Update: Lidgerwood Tower Skidder in progress

[muleskinner]

Here are some pics of the latest project I have taken on. This is the haul back and lead out unit for a very large model in 1/25Th scale of a Pacific Northwest built Lidgerwood Unit. They were huge machines and were mounted on removable Rail cars so they could be moved around the mountains to where ever they were needed to load and yard in turns from the fall areas. Manufactured from around the turn of the into the thirties, they were the ultimate machine for bringing in the logs from the landings. They had massive amounts of winches and cables which required a minimum crew of eighteen just to operate. The unit I am modeling is currently on display at the Camp 6 Logging Museum in Tacoma Washington and is one of the very few Lidgerwoods which remain in existence today, on the west coast of the United States.

My model is scratch built entirely of Evergreen Plastic and the plumbing is made of scrap plastic sprew from numerous model. kits. The axles for the drum are made of brass for added strength.
This is an on going project and will take some time to complete but it will be well worth it as as far as I know there has never been one attempted in 1/25Th scale. Will keep posting as I build.



















Below are some shots of the real unit and one with a shot of my son who is also on this forum for comparison of the size.













A few notes on the original:

The tower in the up position makes the unit 100 feet high from the ground.

The total length is 65 feet minus the loading boom which adds another 30 feet to the unit.

The boiler operates at 285 psp to operate all three pairs of 14x20 steam drive cylinders of the winches, including a small 8x10 drive unit in the tower for the guy line winches within it. This being an early model, the boiler I chose to be wood fired rather than oil as later on. I also chose the Willamette steam type boiler or WISCO unit as to the smaller units which under powered a lot of the units.

As my unit sets right now, it could be mounted on skegs and used as a heavy duty yarder with a spar tree if needed, but this is not the case. I'll reserve that option for another model. Thanks for looking. Sorry about the blurryness of the pictures, rain kept me from photographing outside.

[signature600]

William
Your building and weathering is just getting better and better,
and the detail in this is just......beautiful
Look forward to an update, as it is going to be huge

[Deleted]

That is an impressive piece of machinery & model building. Wow! What did you use for gears?

[tufftin]

Another piece of art depicting the logging history.

Nicely done.

You must take a ton of pic's of the original when you go.

Ever go to the museum north of Chiloquin, OR on 97 at the Williamson River?

Mike

[gatormarcstaug]

Well Bill,
You said it was going to be big!! That is very impressive now! I look forward to watching the progress and completion of this one!

Gator

[muleskinner]

Apr 19, 2011 7:33:08 GMT -5 @jimb said:

That is an impressive piece of machinery & model building. Wow! What did you use for gears?

Jim,

The gears are hand made from Evergreen sheet which I made a paper overlay of the inner gear and traced around. After adding the outside rim which is done with overlays of thin plastic off set at the joints, I cut, spaced and attached each one of the individual cogs. The large drums which can be seen which are unpainted will eventually be geared all the way around also, as soon as I get the inside base gearing done on the primary clutching and drive units. Have to make sure they all mesh up and interlock.

[muleskinner]

Apr 19, 2011 8:37:04 GMT -5 tufftin said:

Another piece of art depicting the logging history.

Nicely done.

You must take a ton of pic's of the original when you go.

Ever go to the museum north of Chiloquin, OR on 97 at the Williamson River?

Mike

Mike,

My son took these pictures when he was on vacation and passed them on to me. What we both do is make a complete walk around of the units taking pictures with the digital and try to get as much detail as possible of the subject. After he gave them to me I did a lot of research finding actual operating pictures of the original units to get a good idea as to the setup and operation in the field. These I use along with the originals to construct the pieces for building.

As for Chiloquin, I have never been there but my wife and I are planning on taking the jont this summer if all goes well. There are a few other places which I would like to explore for subjects.

[muleskinner]

Apr 19, 2011 10:04:43 GMT -5 gatormarcstaug said:

Well Bill,
You said it was going to be big!! That is very impressive now! I look forward to watching the progress and completion of this one!

Gator

Gator,

I was really suprized at the size it was going to be after scaling down the main drive drums and assembling them. But the whole of the project will keep me busy for a time.

[thebrush56]

Brilliant, what a master, is that a coffee pot on the boiler?
Graham.

[muleskinner]

Apr 19, 2011 15:44:14 GMT -5 thebrush56 said:

Brilliant, what a master, is that a coffee pot on the boiler?
Graham.

Yep, a Sears and Roebuck, $.79 cent loggers special coffee Pot which I built of plastic tubing. I thought it would be a good additive to give the unit a little life. In real life during use the loggers dried their clothes and often cooked or warmed their meals on the boilers of these brutes.

[muleskinner]

Here are a few more pictures of the build. I thought I'd better do some techs as I went along so you could see how I fabricate some of the parts. I have been asked about the gears and wheels and how I make them, so Ive done a short step by on the process.



This is one of the soon to be geared wheels broke down into its major parts. The inner wheel is carved from Evergreen .040 sheet plastic and has the hubs already attached. The outer rims are from .020 and then curled, using the same process as you would curl ribbon, for a package. I find that this makes it a lot easier to attach the ready curled plastic to the outer area than trying to bend as you go.



This image shows the process of getting the outer rim on the spokes.



This image is blurred but I think you can see the arrow on the right which is marking the joint to the first wrap. The arrow on the left with the dark line in front of it is marking the point where the overlap of the next wrap will start and end. I repeat this process of overlapping as I go, to get a nice strong outer rim, as shown in the picture below of the finished wheel, which will eventually have cogs added to it.



use this process with all wheel and gears as it has proved to make pretty strong pieces for the builds I do.

[muleskinner]

This image shows the Feed Water Pump which will eventually be attached to the main water tank of the build. The main eight inch drive cylinder was made from a thread spool which looked basically like the one in the picture of the 1:1 in shape and form. The rest of the unit was scratched out of evergreen plastic with the plumbing made out of old Plastic kit sprue.



This image shows the 1:1 on the floor below the steam activated air pump in front of the main Water tank, near the rear of the Lidgerwood unit. The photo below is the build which I attached to the flooring grid of the boiler.

[muleskinner]

The photo here in contain a few prints of my build, paint, and then weather technique. It helps me spot missing rivets and what not and make corrections as I go along. the first photos show the new details which I added last night and today.







the second photos show the prime reason I weather as I do. These pics show the new details painted black like the base paint of the rest of the unit. As you can see from the photos a lot of detail is lost by the shine of the paint and this would also happen if you viewed this model under normal lighting at a show.





here is the units after I weathered them down. As you can see from the photos, the small details come out in the light as they should appear. When I am working with equipment such as this there is a lot of detail that you would not see in the pictures unless you saw the actual build in real life.





The pics of the other side of the unit are not included here because I found a bunch of rivet points I forgot to put in place. I'll show it on the next installment.

[muleskinner]

All the parts in this unit drums and gears are made to come apart so I can add the cogs to the gears and the Haywire to the drums. It will be left this way to break down in case I decide to set the completed project up as it would be in the Field with all guys, leads, haul backs, skylines strung out as if the unit were in operation. I'll have to manually run out the lines with the drums removed and the put them back into the unit again. The same goes for rewinding them. To animate this unit when completed would be a major project in itself and the plastic would not stand up to it.

[78KW]

amazing