This Japanese site has been running since 1999, including an increasing collection of paper models of aircraft and rally cars, some quite complex. Sadly it has not been updated since 2010. In January 2008 he added a motorcycle, the Yamaha Serow 225. This is an off-road "mountain trail" bike, also known in other parts of the world as the XT225, I believe.
The kit consists of:
| a 9-page PDF file of parts, |
| a 4-page PDF instruction manual with assembly diagrams annotated in Japanese. |
The scale is given as 1:8.
A first inspection of the parts file showed good clear computer graphics, but with rather heavy black outlines suggesting possible problems with light-coloured parts. Conversely, fold lines show very little contrast against the part colouring, particularly on the dark green of the frame, fuel tank and seat.
I wished this to match my collection of motorcycle models from Yamaha in scale. As nearly as I can tell those are scale 1:7, and I have made them half-size, so I constructed high-resolution bitmaps at a relative scale of 8:14, or 57%. I do not have a capable vector picture-processing program, or expertise in using one, so I do any manipulation necessary on the bitmap. In this case, I toned down the black outlines around light-coloured parts to a mid grey before printing the pages.
The only major change I have made to the original model is to discard the printed wheel spokes and make the wheels using thread for the spokes.
|
|
|
|
|
|