The EDSG files #1: 1/72 Sea Venom FAW.21

[TonyTiger66]

Good grief! I think Dexter may have gone to your head, or rather definitely to their heads !

Then you ground them down! Scratch building meets Edgar Allen-Poe....

In all seriousness, great job on the tip-tanks. A thousand moons ago at the start of the thread, you'll probably remember me having a thrombo about those very tanks. I cut the fins off in the end, as my hand isn't steady enough to file them waffer thin as you have (and the rockets). I hope to replace with scrap etch. One day .

Outstanding build.

All the best

Tony

[Tomoshenko]

Lovely scratch building Tony...er... well not quite "lovely" as you're as busy with Dexter as and 18th century doctor going about an amputation. With much more finesse admittedly, but I'm watching this build whilst biting on a piece of wood after a few gulps of very strong spirit.

PS you can also try dissolved sprue in liquid cement (gloop, or grey nanobots as I refer to it) which works quite well for filling in gaps prior to rescribe.

[bigbadbadge]

Hi Tony

I am sorry for my absence this last week, have been working late mostly (although did go out on Wednesday evening to frequent my local American Diner/car club). I have sent a note in the post!!! This has come on very well indeed and is looking great, The Canopy/fuselage combination fairing work is top notch and the fuselage filling and scribing has come out very well too. The wings are also progressing well. I thought you had reigned in the mad Dexter for a moment then he sneaks up on the two poor pilots and lops off their heads, I did wonder what I had stumbled across for a brief moment.

Keep up the great work, btw will hopefully post some piccies of the Meteor tomorrow as it is now complete. Am off now to complete more on the shelf of doom.

All the best
Chris

[TheBaron]

Ced: And I'm not short of legs to do so...

Martin: Pray I don't have an Oct 31st post up my sleeve in that case!

Rob: Thanks for that sir. Who said modelling isn't therapeutic eh?

Tony: Cheers sir! My hand isn't that steady these days either mate so I've taken to moving the part along the file, rather than vice-versa - it gives a bit more control I find.

Tomo: Thanks! This is the only thread on the forum that you can bring your own tourniquet to and not feel over-dressd... (Nano-gloop on the shelf as I type BTW...)

Chris: Thanks for your kind comments - looking forward to seeing those Meteor pics of yours, I'm sure it's a corker!

Paddy Power is giving odds-on that I'll actually have this finished by Christmas.

Today's activities, in and amongst the necessary bonds of domesticity, wing-foldery beckons. making sure the etch is flush, and a quick snort of grise before commencing any structure:

Don't be expecting rivets now, but don't think I haven't been eyeing up those fancy tools (I'm looking at you Ced).

Just before that, pillaging Nay 870s various image-postings to the forum, I noted a great shot showing the rear of the tanks, including a rather blunt (fuel drain?) ending to the rear of each tank, rather than pointed. A (slightly over-size but I've currently nothing smaller bore) cotton-bud shaft to the rescue:

They'll be trimmed down once the glue has cured.

The main hinge of the wing-fold needs to be quite robust, as you can imagine. None of the original etch passes muster in that respect, so a hole in the outer wing for the main central actuator:

And some thicker gauge wire to give a strong mounting point:

It won't obviously stick out this far in the final innings but I don't want to cut anything off yet until I've decided exactly how to proceed. Get the feeling I'm making this up as I go along? Tush and Fi!

Treating the etch in a rather cavalier fashion at this stage I'm now just cannibalizing bits of it to use as and when they seem to have some utility. The existing hinges are so impracticably thin that I stuck two sets together to make one set, and added these to the mix:

Characteristically they are the wrong length, but they give an angle to work off of, so I'll trim them to size prior to painting and joining together near the end. Plastic scrap to add hinge-points:

Followed by an offering-up, of parts to each other, as well as to the Gods of plastic:

Approaching, but cetainly not yet a reasonable structure. I'm aware I'm going to have to have certain elements of this fold slightly out-of-scale if it's to be structurally secure. The alternative is something in scale but so thin it keeps breaking-off.

At one point I even considered the hinge off of an old pair of glasses for the main actuator:

But you know I'd only be making a spectacle of myself.

Why's it all gone quiet?

Lads?

Come back.....

[bigbadbadge]

Hi Tony

A short interlude from shelf of doom modelling, now on the Italeri Hudson that I started a few years ago, now nearly finished. Great work on the fold all is coming together very nicely. One tip that may help with cotton bud tubes if you will permit me is you can heat them up over a heat source such as a tea light and they can be stretched to make smaller diameter tubing, much like when you stretch sprue, that will give you various diameters of tube.

Hope this helps

Chris

[CedB]

Those wing joins are really coming together Tony! Looking very neat

[The Spadgent]

We have signal. great wing work chap, looking very nice. I agree with your "cavalier" attitude towards PE parts, I've learned to use only the bits that benifit the model and cut other bits to suit. Those bud tubes look great too.

Just having a morning tea on the hillside overlooking ludlow reading about plastic fantastic. Wonderful.

John of the green.

[Martian]

Heat stretching the cotton wool bud shaft will give you a smaller diameter tube.

Martin

[TheBaron]

Chris & Martin: Great minds and all that Of coure I read that about stretching the tube after I'd gone down a different route, but it seems to have worked (see below). Thanks all the same!

Ced: Thanks

John: I hope you have your green tights and doublet on in case the Sherrif comes by. Sounds Idyllic mate - hope you're having a chance to re-charge.

Being very little to show for a lot of time....

First thing this morning I came down and whipped of the oversize fuel drains at the back of the wing tanks. I just knew they looked wrong so replaced them with a bit of sprue of the correct diameter, drilled-out:

Thence to the wing-fold. An inauspicious start as I pinged-off one of the hinges I'd glued on yesterday into the void. Actually a piece of serendipity -I'll explain in a second. The crux of this part of the build is the main actuator in the centre of the wing. I've decided to make that the main supporting feature, with the hinges on either side in buttressing roles. Having wasted several hours scouring the house for something that might be coaxed into shape (to no avail) I just decided to bite the bullet and build it myself:

Plasticard and brass tubing - not pretty but I'm hoping strong enough. Added next to the remaining hinge you get the idea of the of the way the wing-fold works - hydraulics in the centre, hinges on either side:

When dry-fitting this stage, I discovered that the original (missing) hinge would have needed taking off and re-modelling anyway, so I simply rebuilt one out of scrap plastic. I also added a second piece of thick wire glued into the lower wing surface mirroring the one I'd added previously to the top part - the idea being to have a little more to anchor the actuator to than simply a flat surface. A final test fit to check angles and alignment and that's all for today:

A poor photo end on I'm sorry, but my eyes are tired now and the soul cries out for a Martini.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend folks.

More during the week Tony

[bigbadbadge]

Hi Tony

You have a Carpet monster too!!! I thought that it was just at my house, It has been hungry lately and has eaten some larger than normal items that it usually has. Looking like a great Baron recovery though fella.

Keep up the good work.

All the best
Chris

[Tomoshenko]

Looking superb. I like all this serendipity stuff which usually in my case is a bi-word for blagging it. Seriously though that folded wing is looking quite professional with all the scratch built hinges and all that. Particularly given the etch replacements were complete pants.

[Martian]

A wing stay made from brass tubing will also add great strength to the wing fold.

Martin

[TheBaron]

Chris: Much obliged I rarely ping bits, but when I do it's usually substantial. Toying with the idea of looking for one of those containment units they use in the nuclear industry that you slip your hands into through long gloves...

Tomo: Thanks mate. Serendipity in my experience is the retrospective rationalization of chaos! - or just plain clumsiness in my case at times Was the known universe OOB or scratch-built - discuss!

Martin: The wing-stay is the supporting pole-type thingy bracing the wings as in this below?

^{Image credit: Australian Navy / 724 Sqn history: http://www.navy.gov.au/history/squadron-histories/724-squadron-history}

Too kanckered to do much fiddly stuff tonight but hope to have more in the next day or so.

Tony

[Martian]

That's what I mean. I use the same trick myself to add strength to wing folds.

Martin

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

What's going on with the port intake on that aircraft? Is it some kind of home-made FOD cover? The RBF tag looks like a standard Pusser's brown label - it should have "Please look after this bear" written on it in crayon...

[NAVY870]

Martin: The wing-stay is the supporting pole-type thingy bracing the wings as in this below?

^{Image credit: Australian Navy / 724 Sqn}

That's what I mean. I use the same trick myself to add strength to wing folds.

Martin

Wing fold jury struts would be the words your looking for. Correct terminology at all time Gents, this is a Naval aircraft we are speaking of!

(The aircraft in the pic is reputed to be WZ.937, my second resto)

What's going on with the port intake on that aircraft? Is it some kind of home-made FOD cover? The RBF tag looks like a standard Pusser's brown label - it should have "Please look after this bear" written on it in crayon...

Debris guard, the tag looks like a US label or some such, way too small for an RBF.

[TheBaron]

Martin, Crisp, Steve: Jury struts it is at all times from now on. I'm assuming an RBF tag is nothing to do with Bears then? I realize that previously I'd been referring to the wing fences as 'strakes' as well for some reason....

Last time I left you was with a dry-fit of the wing-fold to check for angles. It's surprisingly easy to get either the vertical or horizontal angles of the two wing-sections wrong in relation to each other when scatch-building this part of the aircraft, so I've been paranoiacally checking at every alteration. The detailing and supports of the wing-fold are now (thankfully!) complete:

I won't bore you with the steps, but card, brass and sprue are all involved:

There are one or two short sections tubing and wires to go on yet, but I'll need to wait until joining the two wing-sections at a later stage, as the piping goes from one section to the other and I'll just knock it off in the meantime. It would be easy to obsessively add finer and finer bits to this, but I've settled at the level of the main structural elements: beyond a certain point at this scale I've come to feel there's a diminishing return in relation to the amount of time taken on smaller details. If one part of an aircraft is super-duper-detailed and the rest isn't, it will probably look odd, so I'm keeping this to the general level of the overall detailing involved in the aircraft as a whole.

Most of the major panel lines are now scribed. As I mentioned a page or two back, I'm definitely going for lighter, finer scribing from now on. All that remains is the access panels on either side of the nose behind the radome, and the various circular filler caps around the wings. To give you an idea of the abysmal quality of the plastic on parts of this kit, this happened earlier:

No undue force or anything, simply dry-fitting the elevator to the booms to checkout alignments and Snick! - it just went. Currently clamped up and glue curing overnight. Also of note is the 30º or so of variance between boom and wing:

I've re-shaped the junction area for these two parts at the back of the wing now to cure this.

Here we are at page 16 and finally - FINALLY I say - the wings are on:

And on that bombshell....

Tony

[TonyTiger66]

Looking almost nothing like the base kit now Tony. What a farce with the elevator ! A similar thing happened to me with an (early) Amodel I-16 wing some months ago.

I felt like Yuri Geller! All I had done was handled it (a fair bit) and it just snapped off like yours has here, not even on a join line. It's almost as if some of the plastics used are inherently brittle. I'm not a chemist/physicist so I probably sound completely stupid .

Following advice here on BM I put wire in to strengthen the sheer break. I'm not sure if you did this here, but if it breaks again, that may help. I had many more bits snap similarly and in one case even wire didn't help .

The link to the RAN site was superb . A Sea Venom display team eh ?

Booms soon?

All the best

Tony

[CedB]

Bad luck with the snapper Tony but the rest looks really nice... good job

[NAVY870]

The link to the RAN site was superb . A Sea Venom display team eh ?

Known as the Ram jets

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Great video! You have got to love that howl from the Ghost

[NAVY870]

Great video! You have got to love that howl from the Ghost

Even better when your hands on the throttle!

[TheBaron]

Tony: As per standard practice, I read your post after gluing the parts back together If - as seems possible - it shatters again, the whole thing may get a dose of rod. I think I mentioned previously the awful quality of the plastic on this kit: it's full of impurities that you can feel rasp against a file. Hope the back's doing ok?

Ced: Thanking-you for the unfailing encouragement on this penance

Steve: Great piece of film of some great flying- very well shot for the time as well The mass cartridge-start reminded me of a pub of heavy smokers all lighting up over that important first pint of the evening.

[The Spadgent]

snapped, Bugger. At least it's all glued now and .....we......have.......wings. Edited September 14, 2016 by The Spadgent

[TheBaron]

So the state of play before this fancy-pants new forum (nice work Mike...) sprang up last night was this:

1.5 wings on and filled with sprue soup, then an overlay of PPP.

 

Once that combination had a decent interval to cure, it was a few glamorous hours of file, sand, w&d, prime and repeat. A diagnostic micromeshing all over and we're left with this:

The wing-roots weren't too bad in the end so I'm quite pleased with the way they've turned out. I've definitely benefitted from all the advice on various fillers on this build (cheers chaps!) - the Squadron green is largely in retirement as dissolved sprue, PPP and Mr. Surfacer  are giving me far better results.

 

Rooting around in reference photos I noticed that the large engine access panel that sits on top of the fuselage behind the fireproof bulkhead appears slightly proud of the main skin, so I've added this using metal tape:

 

Whilst on a roll in that area I also added the squarish panel that sits on the rear of the canopy, just in from of where a couple of antennae and the external canopy handle sit:

That's my eyes and patience exhausted for now, leaving the state of play at this:

You can see the booms have been mated with the elevator and clamped off for the night - I expect some fiddling and filling will be required at the weekend to get them positioned and blended in with the wings. It's a bit bonkers to think this beast started in late July and we're now in mid-September; it makes me wonder how long it took to build an actual Sea Venom!

 

I have to admit though that even in this half-finished state, picking it up and making faint Ghost-like engine sounds as you tilt it in the light makes you realize just what a rather beautiful shape these aircraft were. I've an old Paul Nash essay on the personalities of aircraft - 'Aerial Creatures': admittedly he was talking about WWII ones but I'm going to check if it's out of copyright and if so I'll scan it in here for you to read. The Sea Venom seems graceful in the way that seabirds are, skimming the winds.

 

Good to be back brethren,

Tony