Almost as good as the real thing. Plane final renders

 The object I chose to reproduce is called a Veritas pocket plane. It is used to trim wood surfaces, and is made of cast and machined stainless steel. This post shows the final renders of my weeks long progress reproducing its eight parts using digital photos, scans, and calipers. The lighting is a sunny mountain day from the Rhino render library, and the plane is sitting on a a black glass base.

In these exploded views, you can see the four different materials that make up the eight parts of the plane. The lever cap was created using a layer assigned with polished stainless steel. The blade has been constructed in a layer assigned with matte steel, and the adjustment nuts and bolts with satin stainless steel. The plane body consists of parts created on three separate layers using matte, satin, and burnished stainless steel from the Rhino materials  library.

The plane body and the lever cap were the hardest parts to model due to their complexity. Also I didn't have an outside calliper to measure the thickness of interior details that my standard caliber could not measure.

Front view of assembled plane.

Right side view of assembled plane.

Rear view of assembled plane.

This project enlightened me to how complex, and how many minute and beautiful details are contained in a product that we use each day. I especially enjoyed the final rendering process, where my efforts to recreate this object came to visual life. My youngest son exclaimed "hey that looks like the real thing!" when he saw my renders, in his opinion I did a good job.