[modeleng] Another one bites the dust

At 09:22 AM 5/24/05 +0200, you wrote:
>Do you think there might be a business for the Chedder Void once they have
gone if the kits could be reproduced to the standard the Stuart Turner used
to make saying having the castings made in the far east?
>Does anyone have drawings of thw S.T. kits before Chedder produced them? -
John Burridge

John,
     I think a few clarifications are needed before, or in, answering your
question.  Drawings for most old stock Stuart engines are plentiful and
should be easy to find.
     While they owned the Stuart line Cheddar produced the kits almost
exactly as Stuart had done, in appearance anyway.  A significant difference
was that the castings were sent out (to the low bidder one must assume) and
quickly acquired a reputation of relatively poor quality and inconsistency,
not at all what people had come to expect of Stuart castings.  Kit prices
also took a significant leap.
     The current owners of Stuart Models have improved the quality of
castings considerably as well as redesigned and remade patterns for many of
the engines, and have completely redone the drawings and graphics to
possibly the highest standard of clarity and quality I've vere seen in
steam model product.  Howsomever, as has been pointed out, their prices
continue to increase.
     NONE of the current Cheddar steam engines or boilers are holdeovers
from their Stuart Turner days and none of them bear more than a generic
technical resemblance to the Stuart engines.
     The key to the current Cheddar designs is that they have been reduced
to the simplest mechanism possible consistent with sturdiness and good
operation, made from as few parts as possible, with as many as possible
machined from bar stock or die cast, thus reducing the amount of man-hours
required to produce a working engine.  They bear little constructiuonal
resenblence to Stuart engines which are designed and intended to be built
piece by machined and fitted piece.
     Based upon what I've seen, aside from components which must be
machined from bar stock (crankshafts for instance), in terms of "castings"
virtually the entire Cheddar range could be reduced to die or lost-wax cast
components, and may very well be now for all I know.
     Do I think there might be a business to be made in the Cheddar void?.
. . Yes, but not in attempting to replicate the Stuart line.  That's being
done (albeit expensively).   Not in boilers, as there are a number of good
boilermakers and one of them will surely end up with the Cheddar forming
plate library.  IMHO there will be only one real void created by the demise
of Cheddar and that is in the availabilty of good reliable components for
the marine live steam hobby. This would be RTR engines, boilers, and
"package" power plants (integrated boilers and engines).  Whether or not
these could be mfg overseas to a significant advantage I don't know.


Regards,
Harry Wade
Nashville  Tennessee

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