I'm still adding little details here and there to the farm diorama. I decided some time back that a derelict thresher would look good behind the combine shed along with the dead tractor and the old hay loader. I asked around on a couple of ag boards for someone to give me some basic dimensions of a thresher as I've never seen one in person. A guy from Kansas runs one every year at the local tractor show and was kind enough to hook me up with some numbers and pictures of an Allis Chalmers thresher. As an extra bonus, that fits with the AC theme of the combine and tractor.
I used this picture and the 1:1 measurements he provided and used my scale rule to interpolate things down to "S" scale (1:64)
I used those measurements to produce this scale drawing with several reference lines.
That was transferred to some plastic sheet and cut out with an Xacto knife.
Those parts were glued together with liquid Testors, using my 1-2-3 blocks and various magnets to hold things square and in position.
I have to use VERY thin sheet to get the curve in the rear housing so I glued some forms on the inside. At this point the whole thing is a hair over 3" long and about an inch wide.
I bent up the straw blower pipe by inserting some #12 copper inside a suitably sized plastic tube, heating it up with a blow dryer and bending it to shape. I have tubing in various sizes to do the blower housings, and square tubing for the elevators.
The spoked wheels are going to be interesting. Not sure how I'm going to do that yet. The various pulleys I can turn on my mini lathe.