I am wondering if there are sides of beef I can purchase for my slaughterhouse....
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Brad.
Back a few years K-LINE made woodside reefers that came with sides of beef that you hung inside the car. I see them on eBay sometime. They were rather neat.
Bob
That would be a pretty easy resin casting project. You used to be able to buy a sampler kit from smoothon.com of plastic and silcone for a bit over $20. There is enough for a quite a few projects. You come up with a master and use the silicone to make a mold. After that you can make all of them you want. I used to make a lot of stuff and it is actually pretty easy. I did a simplified web article with pix a long time ago. A guy in England put it on his model railroad web site. If I can locate it again, I will post a link on here.
When I first started as a meat cutter (1966) we still got hanging beef. It came in a semi and we would bare hug a side, hang it on a hook and roll it in the cutting room where we processed it. Actually we didn't get sides, we got fore quarters and hind quarters which would weigh 160 - 220 pounds. Luckily we got mandatory Fed inspections around 70 and that allowed our warehouse to process the 1/4's down to primal cuts and with the exception of a sale of a side of beef, we didn't have to handle the real heavy stuff anymore. Of course any guys that came into training after 1970 didn't know how to "break" beef.
A quick thought. Take an "O" scale cow. Cut off the head, split it in half front to back. Cut each half betwen the 5th and 6th rib and you will have 4 quarters of beef. to be really realistic, smooth off the hide and hollow out the gut area!!
A quick search and the article is still on the net. It's been 20 years or so since I did it!
Matt B,
How hard is this to do for a building (resin kit)? feel free to email me directly.
thx
You guys would be amazed at how easy a lot of this is. Many of you are far more talented at modeling than I am and can easily do this. I might post some pix later of some of the more complicated stuff I did and some of the molds I made.
The wife is not home yet, so I took a couple more pix. The first pic is an original Cox Chaparral 2E slot car, first issue with magnesium chassis. Considered the top collectable in the slot car world by most guys. The other pix are of one of the bodies I made and some of the trim parts. The last pic is a 2 part silicone mold that makes the rear spoiler with detail on all sides. With this mold you would pour in an adequate amount of resin then push the inner mold into the out, dispelling all air and extra plastic. Sometimes you need to cut keyways, shelves and other shapes to hold your inner mold in place and to let air escape. I always enjoyed do this.
I gave about 20 seconds of thought to buying some new material and using my good William Crook loco to cast a nice cab. About every one I see has something broken on the cab. You could easily graft a new cab on and paint one thereby saving it from the junk box. I opted to cut up a cheap lionel plastic engine to be a donor for one of the busted Crooks I have!
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matt b, please do show us some more when you get the chance. What you have displayed and discussed is intriguing! 
