AlexN Posted June 17, 2017 Author Share Posted June 17, 2017 Hello Simon - I often comment when I should just apply a 'like' - or do nothing... And speaking of doing nothing, I have been moving bits and pieces about in a pseudo-scientific sort of a way: 1. Eduard seat support frame on Eduard F11 Eduard seat support frame on Eduard F11 by Alex1N, on Flickr 2. Epoxy copy '1' of seat support frame on Eduard F11 Epoxy copy '1' of seat support frame on Eduard F11 by Alex1N, on Flickr 3. Epoxy seat support frame '2' on Eduard F11 Epoxy seat support frame '2' on Eduard F11 by Alex1N, on Flickr 4. Three seat support frames side by side. From left to right: original 1/72 Eduard part; ifrst epoxy copy; second epoxy copy. I am inclined to use the first epoxy copy at this point Three seat support frames side by side by Alex1N, on Flickr 5. Eduard seat support frame on Pavla F11. I must do something about that horrible glue blob on F11 - it is in a highly visible area Eduard seat support frame on Pavla F11 by Alex1N, on Flickr 6. Epoxy seat support frame '1' on Pavla F11 Epoxy seat support frame '1' on Pavla F11 by Alex1N, on Flickr 7. Epoxy seat support frame '2' on Pavla F11. I still think that epoxy copy '1' is better than '2' Epoxy seat support frame '2' on Pavla F11 by Alex1N, on Flickr 8. Comparison of Eduard and Pavla flying surface control regions. Pavla top, Eduard bottom. Wait a sec, where's the starboard rudder pedal? Comparison of Eduard and Pavla flying surface control regions by Alex1N, on Flickr 9. Starboard ruddder pedal found, after a rather frantic search. I was guided by the memory of a distinctly sharp sound - I must have hamfistedly bumped the item when retrieving it from the safety of its foam block Starboard ruddder pedal found by Alex1N, on Flickr 10. Rudder pedal put away in a safe place, before the the floor monster and/or relatives can get their lustful jaws around it Rudder pedal put away in a safe place by Alex1N, on Flickr 11. Seafire cockpit floor back on its perch. I will reattach the rudder pedal at a later date - when it isn't as likely to get knocked of (i.e., just before I glue the floor into the fuselage) Seafire cockpit floor back on its perch by Alex1N, on Flickr While not have tinkered with the Seafire (my tinkering with the Skyfarer today ended in disaster, after a couple of days of real progress), I have a bettter idea of what to do next. Glueing the seat support frame ('no. 1' copy) would help stabilise F11 and prevent further disintegration... Cheers, Alex. <-- is being lazy, too 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Spadgent Posted June 17, 2017 Share Posted June 17, 2017 (edited) Sorry to hear about your grumpy chop Alex. It is a bit odd on BM some times with likes and following and blah and blah. I guess the real point is having fun, if you're doing that then all is good with the world. Excellent progress with the Skyfarer, she looks wonderful. Paint too! Nice one. number 2 mould works for me. Take care and thanks for the Floyd. I saw them in London 94. Great gig but Rodger was sorely missed. (Not for the first time I might add) Take care. Johnny. Edited June 17, 2017 by The Spadgent 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexN Posted June 18, 2017 Author Share Posted June 18, 2017 Thank you for your kind words, Johnny :). Lucky you seeing The Floyd line! I never had the chance :(. Bad luck not Maing Roger, but Guy Pratt would have been playing in that line up then, and as a bass player he is one of the best. Some more pencil-sharpening: 1. Front of the dust-jacket of the Seafire book by David Brown. Very comprehensive. This is the front of the dust-jacket of the hardback edition David Brown book on the Seafire by Alex1N, on Flickr 2. The Seafire = the Spitfire that went to Sea - rear dust-jacket photo Untitled by Alex1N, on Flickr 3. Clean-up time. I got fed up with looking at the glue blob on the port side of F1, so I took to it with acetione on a cotton bud. The glue dissolved, of course... Clean-up time by Alex1N, on Flickr 4. Closer-up view of the 'cleaned-up' F11. Acetone dissolves enamel paint - and CA too, of course... Closer-up view of the 'cleaned-up' F11 by Alex1N, on Flickr 5. Acetone also dissolves baked FIMO Acetone also dissolves baked FIMO by Alex1N, on Flickr 6. FIMO block and cotton bud. This snap was supposed to show the cotton bud covered in dissolved FIMO, but it got overexposed. Took 20 minutes to upload, so by Hoky I am going to show it. Bah humbug FIMO block and cotton bud by Alex1N, on Flickr Flickr has been misbehaving - maybe they are under attack like BM. Hopefully silly Yahoo gets what ever it is fixed soon. Or may be it's the iphone uploading to Flickr (my phone service provider isn't very good at all in this necko' the woods). Or our stellar internet service that we don't have here in the country. I'm not going to sit here for half an hour clicking mouse buttons and looking stupid(er than usual). Perhaps the neighbourhood is thrashing the link watching Netflix. I refuse to touch it - and not only because it would be lagged into uselessness. Next step will be repairing F11. Again. Cheers, Alex <-- Not stupid 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyTiger66 Posted June 18, 2017 Share Posted June 18, 2017 Definitely the first version of the seat frame Alex . It has caught the contours very well. A very nice looking book on the Seafire . Here a bit further south, I haven't been able to upload a single picture to Flickr or Postimg. Very strange for both to go down. It gets to 60-76% on Postimg, then stops. Nothing at all with Flickr, just coloured dots moving in a crisscross pattern . Good tip on the Acetone, I didn't know it removed CA. I think I also read that it is good for smoothing two part epoxy when the epoxy is not yet set, e.g. to use epoxy as a wing root gap filler. That's one that sounds interesting, as an alternative to shims of plastic card or filler Onwards with the F1 repair ! Best regards TonyT 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexN Posted June 22, 2017 Author Share Posted June 22, 2017 Hello Tony, Acetone can be used to smooth epoxy - as can methylated spirits, the latter being not quite as volatile (woof! - as in, "How do you turn a cat into a dog?"). Water is good for Milliput, which, according to the instructions, can set underwater, and therefore can be used for repairing such items as water tanks.. I still ain't done nuffin' on the languishing Seafire, having done a long run on the Skyfarer, which now has a functioning and easy-to-put-together-in-a-not-IKEA sort of way wing attachment set up. It uses a cunning slot and key set-up, and a fastening bracket made (surprisingly easily) from 3 mm perspex sheet (an old box lid, in fact). Perhaps more surprisingly, the wing is in fact square to the fuselage - as I had hoped that it would be, given that most of the time was spent carefully measuring, re-measuring and aligning. This is a somewhat long-winded way of saying that I am hoping to allot some time to the poor deprived Seafire bits. And, of course, it has been largely the bits that have been makng the Skyfarer so irresistably alluring. I have some lightening holes to drill in seat attachment frame copy no. 1, having practised on the Eduard part a while ago, so that will make up part of the a forthcoming Seafire work period. Cheers, Alex. <-- not nearly as lazy as the alex... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexN Posted June 28, 2017 Author Share Posted June 28, 2017 12 months ago, we were in Bonnie Scotland - on Skye, in fact. I have been having flashbacks of that holiday recently - sadly, we couldn't go this year on account of various things, but at least I was able to attend a navigation course given by the fire-fighting service, so that was useful. In a piece of unashamèd oneupmanship regarding Monsieur le Baron, er, in yet another flagrant example of copying someone else, I finally managed to track down a couple of Archimedean drills. One was out of stock, but I got this nice little one: 1. 'Small' Archimedean drill. The larger Archimedean drill is on backorder... Set of pin vices by Alex1N, on Flickr I also got the following since I thought that they looked useful: 2. Set of (four) pin vices, although from this snap it merely looks like a bit of bubble packaging containing four vague and indeterminable items Set of pin vices by Alex1N, on Flickr Tools sourced from the Orstrilian branch (element14) of the UK-based Premier Farnell electronics component suppilers. I usually get such things from RS Australia (again, UK-based) or the locally-based Jaycar Electronics, but neither RS nor Jaycar had any Archimedean drills in their catalogues, which I thought was rather odd. Not to say weird. Anyway. What I might use any of these tools for is anybody's guess, but they can go in the drawers along with all the other tools that I've bought because that they 'looked like a good idea at the time'. Seafire? What's that? What does it do? How does it work? Can you eat it? Cheers, Alex. <-- not an Archimedean drill 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 4 hours ago, AlexN said: 12 months ago, we were in Bonny Scotland - on Skye, in fact. I have been having flashbacks of that holiday recently - sadly, we couldn't go this year on account of various things, but at least I was able to attend a navigation course given the fire-fighting service, so that was useful. In a piece of unashamèd oneupmanship regarding Monsieur le Baron, er, in yet another flagrant example of copying someone else, I finally managed to track down a couple of Archimedean drills. One was out of stock, but I got this nice little one: 1. 'Small' Archimedean drill. The larger Archimedean drill is on backorder... Set of pin vices by Alex1N, on Flickr I have that very version, and most excellent it is too. Apart from anything else, it seems to have roughly halved the number of snapped thin drill bits since I acquired it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexN Posted July 3, 2017 Author Share Posted July 3, 2017 Hello Crispin, I'm reassured to hear that it works! Its sibling arrived this morning: 1. The smaller Archimedean drill's bigger brother or sister The smaller Archimedean drill's bigger brother or sister by Alex1N, on Flickr 2. Smaller and larger Archimedean drills posing for a family snapshot Smaller and larger Archimedean drills posing for a family snapshot by Alex1N, on Flickr The larger drill actually seems a bit easier to handle (without a bit). I'm hoping to try them both out soon. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyTiger66 Posted July 3, 2017 Share Posted July 3, 2017 Very nice Alex. Receiving nice tools in the mail is always a good feeling. For a while I lived in a city with a long history of precision tool making (Sheffield, England). I'm not sure if the citizens know how lucky they are to be able to go into 'real life' shops, full of beautiful top quality, often very specialist tools. Wood planes at over a £1000 and so on. I seem to remember a moment of madness where I spent a large amount on a pair of top quality...... bolt cutters . You'll find a use for these now. Maybe it's like the Steve Jobs thing whereby, until now, you didn't realise you really needed them, but you do . The gold coloured one is a thing of beauty, who needs fidget toys ? Best regards TonyT 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexN Posted July 4, 2017 Author Share Posted July 4, 2017 Hello Tony, the Archimedean drills have been on a list of things to acquire, along with things like contour gauges (various sizes). Currently, I have been looking at high-quality copper cable and connectors and propellers for the you-know-what, though. While Hobby King is relatively cheap, it rapidly adds up to $$$. It was nice to get the tools in the post - like kits only more useful ;). The gold one is lovely, but the chrome one is actually smoother to use - possibly because the screw is longer and may even have a finer pitch (very slightly). Perhaps a small drop of Singer sewing machine oil will help it. Oh, and they have rapidly become fidget toys already! Gasp - a wood plane over £1000? Crikey - what is it, gold-plated or summink!? I do have quite a few chisels and so forth made from cast steel in Sheffield, from my maternal grandfather's tool chest (my brother-in-law got the wooden chest). They are all currently in a kerosene (paraffin to you Poms) bath awaiting, um, er, my 'tender' mercies. I'm keeping a close eye on Flickr after the BotoPhu**et incident. I don't trust any of these image-hosting services (with the exception of possible Vimeo, but that is a different bucket o' snakesssss; I don't trust Ewe-Cheweb because it's Google). Still, Flickr has been gradually improving after a frightful dip when it was taken over. I have in a sort of a way taken your advice about a 'mojo-boosting' kit: however, it is neither plastic nor a kit. There is, however, a bit of perspex (clear acrylic) that I bent over the spirit lamp, then drilled numerous holes in and tapped two thereof at M3 for a pair of nylon (M3) bolts - for the Skyfarer's rear wing mounting bracket (it works very nicely indeed . I have unfortunately got way out of synch uploading the resultant snaps to Flickr, as all the associated 'uploading time' went into sending stuff to the RCSB servers after putting the images on seriously 'web diets, instead of Flickr'. In the light of the above kerfuffle caused by the monstrous PhotoBucket, however, such a policy doesn't look nearly so silly now... 'PhotoBucket' always seemed tpo be a very peculiar name to me - I always associated it with the computing term 'bit bucket' ('The Trash') or a slops bucket - very similar. Maybe that's what the PB owners thought of their advertising fodder (the real customers being the advertisers). The recent events have reinforced those thoughts. I was going to post selected snaps of the acrylic bracket here but it's too difficult to sort out the sequence with respect to Flickr uploading, so maybe another time. You never know, I may have started back on the Seafire again. I am currently embroiled in sorting out a problem of (mis-aligned) geometry with respect to the motor mount (which, ahem, is my own 'design', hem hem) which has proved to be singularly intractable. I have finally located the root cause, but fixing it is proving to be difficult - but not as hard as that infernal Seafire F11! Anyway, I may do something on the Seafire this evening, since I have come to a halt with the Skyfarer for the moment. Cheers, Alex. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexN Posted July 4, 2017 Author Share Posted July 4, 2017 This post shows what amounts to a token effort for this evening: 1. Broken Seafire F11 after some cleaning up with acetone. Most of the glue blobs have been dissolved, and I decided to de-blob the paint from the head armour plate while I was at it; I was rather precipitate in painting it in the first place. I dare say that I will remove the rest of the paint in due course Broken Seafire F11 after some cleaning up with acetone by Alex1N, on Flickr 2. Eduard seat and seat frame, and epoxy copies. You can see how much bigger the copies are... Eduard seat and seat frame, and epoxy copies by Alex1N, on Flickr 3. 0.13 mm styrene sheet. About the right thickness for a 3/8 " armour plate at 1/72 scale...very, very thin, though! It's so thin that you can't see how thin it is... 0.13 mm styrene sheet by Alex1N, on Flickr 4. Eduard etched fret, with the focus on the seat armour plate. The fret is sitting on the 0.13 mm sheet Eduard etched fret, with the focus on the seat armour plate by Alex1N, on Flickr 5. A rather ridiculous outline drawn around the Eduard template. "Measure with a micrometer, draw with a crayon, cut with an axe." I'll try and find a decent pencil sharpener - or some sandpaper - tomorrow A rather ridiculous outline drawn around the Eduard template by Alex1N, on Flickr Not much - I decided that the best place to re-start would be with some tidying and cleaning. Well, I got the cleaning of F11 done, at any rate. At least I didn't mention the 'you-know-what'. Cheers, Alex. <-- not an etched fret 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexN Posted July 5, 2017 Author Share Posted July 5, 2017 Now that I come to think of it, the outline of the seat armour plate is somewhat consistent with the overly large seat. The upper mount hole spacing would have to be tweaked slightly, though. Hmm... Anyway, we're off to Adelaide for a few days tomorrow, to see my mum, a sister and brother-in-law and some of the daughter's cousins. Cheers, Alex. <-- staying at home with the Dog 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bbudde Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 Hello, have a nice trip and good days. Cheers from the other side of the world. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexN Posted July 17, 2017 Author Share Posted July 17, 2017 Thank you very much, Benedikt. We all had a lovely time, although it was far too short. Well. To quote one of the former Behind the Sofa bloggers, Stuart Ian Burns1, "This is going to be amazing". From the Beeb: Wow. Oh Wow! Jodie Whittaker. Oh my goodness me. Oh my giddy aunt. I haven't been so excited about Doctor Who since I heard about its return and that Joe Ahearne was going to direct five episodes of season one. And Derek Jacobi's "I... am...the Master". I never thought of her - just about every current actor in the UK had been touted - but what a choice. What a marvellous, marvellous, inspired choice. Loved her in Broadchurch with all those other Doctor Who alumni, including a large slab of the RTD production team. In other news, I have been so busy with highly concentrated, very precise (because of previous inaccuracies) work on the Skyfarer motor mount, that I haven't had the time or spare neurones for the Seafire. so I've decided that I should just say 'officially' that I'm putting this build on hiatus for the time being. THat doesn't mean that I won't be reading other people's threads, though: in fact, I am just content to read what others are doing, rather than attempting to do it myself and failing miserably. But Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor? It's like having all my birthdays and all my Christmases all at once! I'm almost beside myself. Squee! Cheers, Alex. is almost as excited about the Doctor Who news as I am! 1 'Bad language' warning in that post, by the way 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keefr22 Posted July 17, 2017 Share Posted July 17, 2017 Got to admit I hate the BBC for this! No, not a felmale Doctor, but the ridiculous spoiler in giving it away now - imagine how much better the surprise would have been when Capaldi regenerated into Jodie! And I know they'l say 'we couldn't keep it secret for that long' blah, blah blah - well they should try harder!! Glad they weren't responsible for the D-Day plans...!! Shame about The Seafire Alex, hope you'll get back to it one day (possibly the same one day as many of my ''w.i.p's'' will re-emerge frm their boxes...! ) Keith, who'd like to feed the BBC publicist responsible for revealing this to .... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexN Posted July 17, 2017 Author Share Posted July 17, 2017 Hello Keith, it's the day and age that we live in, which includes those accursèd tablods, who are hell-bent on spoling things for everyone. And patience (wassat?) has long gone out the door :(. Steven Moffatt has said that one of the reasons that it will be a relief not to ExecProd Dr Who any more is the keeping of secrets. But agree with you 150 % - Jodie Whittaker appearing out of the blue at the end of the Chrismas special would have been excellent! Mind-blowing. It would also have probably been the cause of massed heart attacks and other seizures - but it still would have been excellent! The afore-mentioned tabloids would have weasled it out well before the five months or so before the Christmas Special, in any case, and this gives all concerned a shred more dignity (another vanishing or even vanished thingummy - like my once-large vocabulary). Perhaps Little T might like to gobble up said tabloids and give us all some peace! I may be back to the Seafire sooner than I thought: I have been looking at the plans for the Skyfarer noseleg this evening, and it is going to involve some serious metalwork, and will mean getting the little lathe going again. And that little cascade makes the Seafire look rather tempting by comparison! Cheers, Alex. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CedB Posted July 17, 2017 Share Posted July 17, 2017 Shame about the Seafire Alex but I hope the Skyfarer goes well 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexN Posted July 18, 2017 Author Share Posted July 18, 2017 Hello Ced, thank you very much for your kind words :). Given my lack of meaningful (in a Seafire context - or any other one, really) posts recently, there probably won't be any noticeable difference! I have - maybe temporarily - altered my signature to reflect the current absence of work on the Seafire. Cheers, Alex. <-- ignoring it all and continuing to munch contentedly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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