Roden Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter -Finished

[Ray S]

Hello all.

This will be my first entry for this GB. Oh boy, was it difficult choosing a subject for this? It is a shame my Dreadnought is more than 25% done, as it will probably take 'til November to get her complete. Anyway, my subject as chosen by Mrs Wifey

The Roden Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter. Boxed as 'Comic' fighter, it will be done as a different version. It has plenty of detail, some quite fine moulding (to my eyes anyway), and a fair bit of flash to contend with, normal Roden traits. The bits:

It comes with two upper wings, so I can modify it to non Comic format (I think). The instructions do not supply a rigging guide, so I will need to interpret the box diagrams. I will use EZ-Line for that. Roden supply Etch rigging points, but the hole in them is extremely tiny, so I hope the line sticks to them well with CA, as I doubt I could thread it through.

There is one hitch to try to sort out, one of the wheel hubs is missing (middle sprue, bottom right), so I need to get a pair of replacement wheels - any suggestions would be of great help. I am not sure if they are Palmer Cord, or their sizes, but will do some research. There is also a second upper fuselage deck to enable the different version to be built.

The transfers were the usual Roden quality:

I have built a couple of Roden kits in the past, and thrown one away, so I know their transfer quality is not, shall we say, 'great' but this was daft. They had disintegrated in the packet. Normally at least they seem to wait until you put them on the model before they do that. I found that there was not much choice with aftermarket markings, but Hannants came to the rescue with these:

A set by Blue Rider, and in keeping with me preferring to do things slightly off-beat, are of Imperial Russian WW1 aircraft. I have heard that Blue Rider transfers can sometimes be a little bit see-through, but as these only need 6 roundels, and all are overlaid on the same colour, it should not be a problem.

This may not be a rapid build, but I will crack on as best I can.

As usual, any hints or tips will be greatly appreciated, kind regards, Ray

[Bertie McBoatface]

This looks interesting. I have a Roden DH4 as a second string. Never done a Roden kit before so I'll be watching for pitfalls like those decals!

BTW, what is a 'Comic' fighter?

I wondered whether you could cast a new wheel hub from the old one?

[andy wood]

I look forward to this

[dazdot]

Looks good agree about Roden decals. There are 2 types of modeller. Those who have wtrecked Roden decals and those who will wreck Roden decals

Edited July 13, 2014 by dazdot

[Ray S]

This looks interesting. I have a Roden DH4 as a second string. Never done a Roden kit before so I'll be watching for pitfalls like those decals!

BTW, what is a 'Comic' fighter?

I wondered whether you could cast a new wheel hub from the old one?

Hello all.

Don, A 'Comic' fighter was a modification to the normal airframe where a couple of guns were fitted above the wing. I think they were normally night fighters, and putting the guns above the wing helped keep glare away from the pilot. The Sopwith Camel also had modifications done the same way, and that was the only 'Comic' I knew about, and even then it was only through having a Blue Rider 1/72 conversion set which I fitted to an Airfix Camel in the 1990's (I finished it in March 1990, how sad is it knowing that?). This conversion was the first time I used photo-etch, and it opened a whole new world of modelling for me, although it would be many years before I used it a lot. Then I found this Roden Comic and was puzzled as I had not realised that 1 1/2 Strutters had been mod'ed to. There was also talk somewhere that the conversion made them look comic, and the name stuck. Personally, I think they look great.

Anyway, I have finally made some progress, having put Dreadnought to one side for a short while. As the rules say no WHIFFS, and as I was not so observant as I should have been when agreeing to Mrs Wifey's suggestion that I build this kit, I have had to do some modding myself. The 1 1/2 Strutter on the Blue Rider sheet is a two seater, and my two top decks I proudly mentioned in my original post are as follows

The crew would need to be rather cosy if I used either of these decks. I think one of them is for the single seat bomber version. So I needed a new opening, and following a couple of plans, I went to work

I put some 18mm Tamiya tape over the opening, and coloured in the gap, transferred it to roughly the right place

Chain-drilled inside the blacked out area, armed my scalpel holder with a new blade and carved out the hole

Used a half-round file and got it to shape, along with some rolled up sandpaper to get the curvature about right. I don't think it is too far out. I am not sure about the padded coaming around the cockpit opening, I may use fuse-wire for that, or I have heard of some folks using an incredibly thin sausage of Miliput. It will be a while before I get to that, as the fit of the fuselage is not brilliant, and I suspect a lot of work will be needed.

The seats (two are supplied but only need one) needed a bit of work too, so I used Perfect Plastic Putty on one, and Blutack on the other to try to represent the seat cushion. The great thing about Blutack is that it will peel off if it goes belly up, but I am not sure if I can paint over it, and of course it never goes off.

A 'stool' is supplied for the rear gunner/observer, by that of course I mean a seat.

I did notice another odd thing this morning, just going back to this image from my first post:

I wondered what the three things were on the bottom of the left hand runner. Well, today I found out that in at least one version of this kit, this runner and the one for the upper wings was actually moulded in clear plastic, and the three bits would have been the windshields. They just look odd in pale grey/white plastic.

Anyway, I have started, and with luck will have more progress soon.

Thanks for looking, all the best, Ray

[Bertie McBoatface]

Thanks for the info Ray.

[stevehed]

Don't worry about Blue Tak. I use it to represent the leather coaming around the cockpits and it takes enamel no problem. I usually coat it with superglue first.

Regards, Steve

[dazdot]

Yep I've used blutack on a set of sea venom seats it doesn't like acrylic but enamel was fine

[Bertie McBoatface]

I wonder how stable blutac is over time?

[dazdot]

Venom is still fine 2 years on

[stevehed]

I wonder how stable blutac is over time?

I've had a couple of white metal Jupiter engines blu tacked to nacelles made of wood for five and a half years to date. Still haven't dropped off.

[Ray S]

Hello all.

I have been tinkering with the interior of the Strutter for a while now, but not really added an awful lot. I have got this far at the moment:

The kit has an etched instrument area, I painted it in a sort of wooden finish with H110 Wood Brown then gave a covering of Tamiya Clear Orange thinned with the new Future. This I find helps when you brush paint. I found that if I painted the Tamiya stuff on straight from the bottle, it started to create 'spider webs' as I drew it over the part. I found that happened especially on the seat, where I had mixed clear red and orange on a pallet. That is when I remembered to use the Future (or is it Pledge?). Having done that, I used a sanding stick to rub away some of the paint on the bezels to make them look a bit more metallic. I picked out instrument detail with a dark grey, and added a few light grey bits too.

As regards the seat cushion, I ended up using the one I created from Perfect Plastic Putty rather than Blutack, but thank you so much for all the advice with the Blutack you have given me. I think I will use that for the front cockpit coaming, and cover it with CA prior to painting.

The interior was a bit tricky to line up. The instructions are vague to say the least about placement, so I dry fitted the upper decking to get where it should line up to, then glued the interior in. I have seen online that there is a fuel tank between the two occupants, but I also need to add some spreaders in that area as the cockpit walls angle inwards too much which means the upper overhangs both sides.

The illustration on the transfer sheet by Blue Rider does not show any rear gun in place, and the kit does not supply any mounting for it, so I am going to have to see if I can figure out how to make something fit in there.

Thanks for looking, and all the advice, regards, Ray.

[dazdot]

That's tidy work nicely done

[Ray S]

Hello all.

I have been able to sort out something that may (or may not) look like a fuel tank. I did not have a good guide, so I am afraid I just used some plastic tube and capped both ends with card, painted it grey and glued it in the space between pilot and gunner.

I also added some Tamiya tape seatbelts, using Wingnuts Sopwith Pup etch as a guide to give me the rough shape and paintwork. I think that one side should be a bit longer, and I think it is odd that the two belts are painted differently. I cannot believe how dusty the instrument panel looks now.

Lower wing is on, it needed a lot of fettling to get it to fit, the cut-out was a wee bit too narrow (or I built the fuselage too wide). The horizontal tail parts fitted ok after a bit more sanding, but they do not have any camber to the section (a point highlighted in a couple of on-line reviews), but I think they look okay.

I have also started on the engine. It originally looked quite plain on the cylinders (a bit like Airfix's Blenheim engines are according to chat here on BM), but once I painted them, out popped the ribbing detail clear as day even though I could not see it in the white plastic. Roden supply etch for the wiring harness(?) and also do it in plastic. The plastic version has a detailed hub which I used after trying to cut out the plastic harness. I am glad they supplied the etch, as the plastic one disintegrated when I trimmed it from the runner, despite using a new blade and ensuring the plastic was well supported. I trimmed the remnants of the harness from the hub, and CA'd it over the flat etch. I needed to trim the boss it fitted onto on the main engine too. In the meantime, the pin which will take the prop bent, so I drilled out a locating hole to fit some rod later.

I may try something when I paint the plane. I do not use an airbrush, but I may well try to do some pre-shading over the wing ribs to give it a see through effect. I am not sure how (or if) it will work with brushes. I was thinking painting Humbrol 110 over the ribs, then CDL in a number of thin layers over that. I will see how it goes, or chicken out.

That's all for now, all the best, Ray

Edited: I forgot to put the engine pic in. Doh.

[dazdot]

Nice work there I like be that engine its a little gem

[SimonR]

Looks great Ray, I built the same kit in a different box earlier this year so will watch this with interest!

cheers

simon

[Ray S]

Looks great Ray, I built the same kit in a different box earlier this year so will watch this with interest!

cheers

simon

Simon, that looked great! I still have to try and figure out how to mod the rear cockpit (it was the only one on both top decks until I opened up a new front pit) and how to get a mount in for the rear gunner.

Thanks for the link, regards, Ray

[SimonR]

Hi Ray,

I have still got the second top section in the box from my build, got both cockpit sections opened up (although you would still need to scratch build the gun ring) if its any use, although to be honest you've done a cracking job on the rear opening up anyway!

cheers

Simon

[Ray S]

Hi Ray,

I have still got the second top section in the box from my build, got both cockpit sections opened up (although you would still need to scratch build the gun ring) if its any use, although to be honest you've done a cracking job on the rear opening up anyway!

cheers

Simon

Hello Simon, thanks for the offer, but I have already fitted the top deck on now, so I just need to modify it. I have a bit of an idea for the gun ring, but we will see...

Cheers, Ray

[Ray S]

Hello all. Well, with ex-hurricane Bertha over the country, the opportunity arose to do a bit of modelling, and how to sort out the gun ring. Well, thermal print rolls came to the rescue, in the form of the plastic tube that holds them. A bit of sanding on the outside to reduce the diameter a bit, then a careful sawing session and I ended up with:

I needed to trim the rear cockpit opening a bit, and do a bit of reshaping to match the Blue Rider illustration, but it fitted ok in the end:

There were a few gaps just underneath the ring and fore-and-aft, but a trickle of thick CA and some PVA has filled that lot in. I cannot see any signs of a coaming around the gunner opening, so that had come off too.

I have been having fun drilling a few holes for the rigging on the lower wing, and am just building up my courage to try and cut out the openings in the top wing that were clear on the real thing, having been moulded in grey plastic on this version. I will replicate that with either clear card or sellotape, with Tamiya tape for the edging details. There are also some inspection panels on the leading edges of the wings, so I will need to check my Wingnut Sopwith Pup instructions to see if they were clear or painted. I hope it was the latter.

Thanks for all the comments and advice, all the best, Ray

[dazdot]

Good work looking nice

[Ray S]

Hello all.

It is funny how when we build our models (construction), that there is an awful lot of destruction too. Having demolished some of this kit already, yesterday and today it was the top wings turn for surgery.

The upper wing had some clear sections which applied to the two-seaters, and although this was a single seater boxing, it did supply both styles of upper wing. In the original boxings of the two-seater, the wings were moulded in clear plastic, so a simple masking session would suffice, but this version is moulded in pale grey so something a bit more drastic was needed. I chain drilled a series of holes with my pin drill, and it took until I finished the second of four cut-outs for me to remember that I had an electric Como drill which was quicker and less sore on the wrist. Those of you who read a number of my posts must by now realise that memory is not a strong point of mine. Anyway, having chain drilled, I used a scalpel to start a cut to join the dots, then an etched saw to cut the rest out. I needed to be really careful the more I cut, as the wing started to get a bit flimsy towards the end. They need just a bit of tidying now. I also need to figure out what I am going to cover/fill the slots with transparency wise - clear card or sellotape?

I have also got the first coats of paint on the upper lower wing and tail planes and rudder, but it is not worth a pic yet.

Any advice on the clear cut out would be really appreciated. All the best, Ray

[Ray S]

Hello all.

Over the last few evenings I have tried a new (to me) paint technique. I had painted the horizontal tailplanes, but felt that it needed a hint of structure underneath. I have heard about you airbrush users that do pre/post shading to get the effect, but I still use the hairy stick, so I tried this:

I painted some Humbrol 110 over the base paint on the ribs and shorter ribs at the leading edge, then

I gave it two further coats of Humbrol 121 Pale Stone. That seems to then give the effect of shadow on the underside. Can you tell from the photo if it looks okay? I am not going to do anything like that on the upper surface, but may well try to discolour the overall H121 a bit. I will be doing this on the underside of the main wings too, but I just wanted to see what it looked like, and if it was possible to do this with a brush.

I have also added the front cockpit coaming, so thanks to all those earlier in the thread who suggested blutack and a CA coating, that seems to have worked a treat:

It may be just a wee bit thick, but I am happy. I will get it painted when I have got the main colour onto the fuselage.

I found out the other day (Tuesday) that I have got the seatbelts on incorrectly, I had them going over the back of the seat, but they were actually lap belts. I blame my interpretation of the WNW's Sopwith Pup instruction guide. I had CA'd them onto the seat, and although I have the spare seat, it will not fit through the opening to allow me to replace it, so can we keep this little faux pas a secret?

Thanks all again for looking in, and the advice. Cheers, Ray

[dazdot]

I like the shading nice one and the blue tack looks nice. What faux pas?

[andy wood]

Ray, that was our secret! You've blabbed!