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1917 Fordson Model F Tractor

Sierra West Scale Models produces a 3D-printed kit of the 1917 Fordson Model F Tractor in S-scale. It seemed like only a couple of months ago that I bought this kit, but, luckily, I took this photo of the box when it arrived, and it is dated January 2023! Two and a half years just flew by! The kit is based on the Model F tractor that Henry Ford and his son Edsel produced until 1928. Over a 750,000 of these were made in the U.S. (and about 7,500 in Ireland, from where Henry Ford's parents hailed). This tractor did the same thing that the Ford Model T did for the automobile industry, i.e. it made mechanized farming affordable for small farms.

(external link: Sierra West Scale Models)

Sierra West warns of the delicateness of the kit's parts, and so the parts are very well packed in this nice box.

The frame and engine is one part. There are two bags of parts, one containing the details (center), and one containing the wheels.

Despite this being an S-scale model, the main part is actually quite small. It wasn't until I looked up the prototype data on these tractors that I learned that they had a 63-inch wheelbase, which means, in S-scale, the wheelbase is just 1/64th under a real-world inch long. The model measures exactly to that measurement. So, it is a small model, because it was a small tractor in the real world.

The kit's instructions (of which there are none) are actually quite simple, i.e. paint the parts as desired, then glue them to the main part. I decided to hand-paint the parts with Vallejo "Surface Primer" black (part #74-602), first. While airbrushing or spray-painting is another approach, there are a lot of hard-to-reach areas in the main frame part and the rear wheels, so you wind up having the hand-paint some of them anyway. I do my work on a glass plate, to which I put some blue masking tape. This holds the parts down and keeps them from rolling around while I am trying to paint them. I did one side and then let that dry overnight. The next day, I carefully removed them from the tape and flipped them over to paint the other side. I took this photo after the second paint session had cured.

After searching the Web for photos of real tractors, I settled on the one I have linked to here. It seemed like a large majority of the photos out there had these painted in an off-white/very light gray color. The wheels were anywhere from red to orange. I painted my model's wheels using Vallejo's "German Red Brown" surface primer (part #73.605). The body was painted with several coats of a 4-to-1 mixture of Delta Ceramcoat White (#02505) and Rain Grey (#02543). I would have preferred to have used Vallejo's paint for this, but I don't have a lot of those paints yet. The Ceramcoat goes on a bit thick and does not flow as well. All in all, after several days of not looking at the model, I am happy with how it is coming out. Note that some parts of the body are black in the prototype photos, which I tried to follow. Once the body was painted, I used superglue to attach the four wheels to the body. There was a bit of 3D-printer plastic in the holes for the rear wheel, but that was easy to twist out with a pair of pointy tweezers. Note the orientation of the "treads" of the rear wheel; again, I matched them to the prototype photo.

(external link: Prototype Example)

The model is now finished. I painted the starter bar the same color as the body, and the seat the same color as the wheels.

The exhaust pipe was mostly left the primer black, with the top of the pipe being painted the same red rust color. The only real fabrication required is the steering wheel. The kit comes with a short section of brass wire. I used a mini drill bit to drill an angled hole through the driver's side of the motor area and well into the motor block, so that there would be lots of interior glue surface. I used superglue to attach that wire to the steering wheel and let that cure. I then used a pair of self-clamping tweezers to hold the brass wire, so that I could paint the shaft the primer black, and the wheel a light brown (to simulate a wooden steering wheel as what the prototype had). I let that cure overnight and the next day I test fitted the steering wheel. Even though I drilled it at the desired angle, the wheel wound up sitting on the seat, so I determined where the brass shaft entered the motor area, and then put a slight bend in it at that location with a pair of pliers. I then used superglue to attach the steering wheel assembly to the model, making sure that it sat straight with respect to the seat. I will eventually find and fit a farmer figure to this model.