Dinky Toys photography specials

Dave--You are right....that does seem odd that they never referred to it as a Studebaker truck...just tanker ...... And it wasn't like they had never used the Studebaker name before....the 39 series was obviously before that and then Landcruiser Sedan about the same time. All the other trucks in those catalogs had names to them...Austin, Fordson, Dodge, Bedford, Trojan, etc..........And back to my original thought...why Meccano was prone to using so many lesser known U.S. cars. By the early 1950's, Packard had faded a lot, and was a very minor market presence, yet Dinky made the convertible, and then the sedan in the late 1950's, as the death knell was already sounding. Then there is also the Hudson...always a decent car, but again, never a large seller post war, yet Dinky made the early 1950's version as well as the later sedan. And there are many Studebakers, including the post war French trucks, the tankers, the Landcruiser, the Golden Hawk, and finally the President...and of course,the early French Commander. Another late model in its death throes at the time was the DeSoto Fireflite.It sure would have been interesting to know what was the consideration back in the day, when they chose what to model. I would've bet they made a 1955 Chevrolet or a 1955 Ford Thunderbird, just to name 2 iconic cars from that era. I think part of the problem was they had already introduced several passenger cars earlier, and wanted to make those for several years to recover costs, etc., and by then, that was the Golden Era and sales were very good and little competition til later......... Terry

The naming of the models was an unexplicable and curious mix anyway. For the Estate Car Meccano even seems to have regretted to use the name Plymouth, which shows up on the first individual box only and then disappears forever. Moreover, I haven't seen any internal factory document which the name Plymouth ever mentiones! Always just: Estate Car. Regards, Jan

JanOf course you are quite right......all this just adds to the continuing mystery of many things Dinky. We have found out a lot of things about the models and their manufacture, but many others will likely remain I solved, or at least inexplicable. Terry

Jan would you care to elaborate more on your studio setup? Are you using artificial light & diffusers? Your pictures look superb! Stef

And Jan's drawing for the Studebaker tanker specifies aluminium alloy and not zinc alloy. I have just chequed the prices of aluminium and zinc, the later is 20 % more expansive. So,why were Dinky Toys not made of aluminium ? Was the manufacturing process of aluminium more expansive because of a higher melting temperature ? Jacques.

Jacques, as I am sure you will recall I wrote a lengthy article on Dinky Toys made from aluminium in the January 2011 Journal during my time as the DTCA Editor. A number of Dinky Toys - such as the 582/982 Pullmore Car Transporter were made from aluminium for practical reasons, the weight of a large model such as this being one of them. With regards to the 30pa/441 Studebaker Castrol Tanker and the 40f/154 Hillman Minx, experiments were carried out with these two vehicles to have them cast in Aluminium and not Mazac. See photo above where my Castrol tanker weighs 58.3 grams and my ESSO version weighs 106 grams. As far as is known the only Studebaker tanker to be cast in Aluminium is the Castrol version. This experiment had nothing whatsoever to do with the price of raw materials but had everything to do with the crisis in Korea. Mazac was in short supply and Aluminium was plentiful and as such Meccano conducted the Aluminium casting experiment on the two vehicles mentioned above. In reality things returned to normal fairly quickly and Meccano reverted to only using aluminium where it held a specific advantage over Mazac. This is dealt with in significantly more detail in the journal and members can access the January 2011 issue via this site and read more. Dave

Jacques, Very good question here! The main advantages of mazak/zamak die-casting process over aluminum are the following: superior mechanical strength overall,especially when casting thin walls; no tendency of surface sinkage upon cooling; lower casting temperature,(around 400C against 650C), thus improving die life by a magnitude of 5 to 6; higher dimensional stability; better perceived quality due to increased weight; easier acceptance of surface treatment, coating and painting; more adapted for small details castings because of metal flow qualities; better corrosion resistance. Add to this that for most part of the 20th century, aluminum was more expensive than zinc. In short, it is the ideal material for our hobby and is being used today as extensively as in the past! One of the main drawbacks, though, is that if raw material purity and cleanliness is not at its highest level, the castings quality deteriorate very rapidly and is the main cause for the 'metal fatigue' effect. Wishing all the DTCA forum members a Happy and Healthy Jewish New Year! Jacques H.

The market price of zinc in the late 1940s and the early 1950s, a diagram which I compiled many years ago on the basis of a standard work on metal prices in history: J. Schmitz, World non-ferrous metal production and prices, 1700-1976. As we all know zamac consists of over 90% of zinc. But I would suggest we should keep an eye on the topic header on top of this thread, in order not to make an unsearchable mess of this forum! Kind regards, Jan

I accept what you say about the topics Jan. However, human nature comes into play, someone posts a photograph and it often then inspires a reply and further discussion. I guess we will have to rely on the search function which does work particularly well on this site. The future for TMT looks worrying and this site looks like taking over. Dave

Never mind, Dave, it's just my nature to keep things a bit tidy and organized. To return to Stef's request, I am not completely satisfied yet with the new photo display. It has to do with the fact that I have more space in the room now available, but the windows and the light coming in are more limited than in the living room where I use to make my photographs near a large window. I had to make a stand (from a party table base) high enough to come closer to the window. On top of it I made a very flexible table, allowing even big ship models to be exposed. I never use artificial light, unless I want to get some special effects. So I virtually always make my photographs by (preferably bright) daylight. Well, lifting a tip of the veil: The experimental stand. The resulting photograph, sorry, I cannot present it bigger here. A horrible snapshot, just showing the relative sizes. (by the way, as you can see the room was NOT tidy and organized, because my wife and I were just busy sorting everything out! ) Kind regards, Jan

Jan--It looks very promising for sure, and the picture of that large scale ship turned out very nice! I really like that contrasting background. It looks like you a form of skylite in the ceiling instead of a normal window on a wall....is that correct? If so, I can see where that would be beneficial in getting more natural light in, as a vertical wall gets limited sunlight at certain times of the day. Looking forward to seeing some more great pictures soon! Terry

The window you see in the background can also be disturbing, the main light should come from behind the camera, where there is a (not too big) vertical window combination. But I can more or less dim the light through the window visible there. On the other hand, depending on the time of day, I can even use that window for the job. Therefore I made swivelling wheels under the stand last week, (not present when this photo was made), so I can easily replace the stand and move it to a place where the light available at the given moment is optimal for the job to do. For such a big ship that is very critical and as you can see the lighting isn't that perfect as I would have it to be yet. So the experimenting goes on for the time being! Kind regards, Jan