Catching Pictures in the Air

[825]

On 19/07/2017 at 10:32 AM, perdu said:

And most of us' wives would say "that is a problem because?..."

 

Off to Devon next Monday after our club's Midlands Expo on Sunday

 

There's Wi-Fi

There's my tablet

There's a charger

 

And there's a pool

 

There's a beach

 

There's a BAR

 

Are there any model shops near Torquay? 

 

Make it perfect

 

😀

 

 

Gogle gave the following

 

http://actionmodelcentre.com/

 

and one in nearby Paignton https://www.paigntonmodelshop.com/ 

 

[Martian]

That looks to be an extremely good fit you have got there.

 

Martian

[TheBaron]

17 hours ago, Spookytooth said:

All looking promising Tony, nice work mate.

 

Simon.

Cheers Simon. If feels like a very asymptotic process at the moment, slowing as we get closer....

16 hours ago, 71chally said:

Quick Q, which I dare say is addressed deep within the thread somewhere, what is the black plastic? Advantages over the usual while plasticard stuff?

 

Splendid progress!

Thanks James. 

 

Black. Yes, just standard coloured styrene sheets. Chosen primarily as being a darker surface it would easily show up any surface imperfections in the vacforming process without the tiresome need to keep spraying with primer, as would have been the case with white. Also, I get a bit sick of white sometimes; galleries get me that way too, and I'm not good with glaciers....

 

16 hours ago, perdu said:

See?

 

Almost done and all you needed was the six-incher

 

I am happy, nay proud to say that the clammybeaver looks damned wonderful

Ta Bill.  Couldn't have got this far without ye! 

16 hours ago, perdu said:

Halfords for Araldite, are there no normal hardware shops handy

 

I think even my local Tesco sells it in a miniscule DIY department shelf

I am blessed with an abundance of items locally with which to husband various ovine/bovine lifeforms or construct a barn, yet bereft of the means to construct even the meanest of aircraft. Truly these are dark regions....

2 hours ago, CedB said:

Very nice Tony - that fit looks pretty perfect to me, good job!

Bless you Ced. Your patience encouragement has been a continual pleasure.

 

A quick one at Saturday lunchtime for you then. After a run over to town first thing this morning to collect some Araldite from ValHalfords (they've a deal on bike racks at the moment, those high-mount ones that will actually fit an estate car properly without tapping out in Morse 'I'm bolloxing your paintwork' due to the rather free-jazz  approach to road construction in this neck of the woods).

 

Thence back home. My aged mater is popping over for a roast dinner late this afternoon so I'm on kitchen duty, but I did manage to get some bench time in just now prettying-up the fit from the stage we left it at last night. Sides fettled and 'scallop' for lower wing root added:

Starboard as well:

The top fit is also pretty much done now as well:

You can see below however that there is a slight 'lack' at the top on the starboard side:

This caused me a bit of consternation at first but I reckon the plastic can be flexed and glued into place over that regions so as to only require a minor application of filler along the seam.

 

The 'boxiness' of the underside seems to carry on from the kit to the vacform in a convincing enough manner - I'll need to go in >^gently< with the file on the curve of the bottom corners, but nothing major:

Nest stage: mark and punch out portholes and cut out side and lower door openings, then separate BT and vacform rear fuselage in order to Araldite the latter onto the kit fuselage.

 

Sounds simple, so I expect it to be quite time-consuming.

 

4 minutes ago, Martian Hale said:

That looks to be an extremely good fit you have got there.

Thanks Martian.

 

You can probably sense how I'm forcing myself to slow-down and tiptoe around this part of the process? With so much invested in the manufacture of the vacform, I most certainly don't want the grief of wrecking it with a slip of the scalpel.

 

Oddly enough, with the vacform taped on to the kit as you see it in the last photograph above, it doesn't seem to need as much remedial work down the centre (to widen it due to wastage in the cut) as I initially thought. I'll withhold final judgement on that until we get nearer the gluing stage however as it wouldn't be the first time getting caught out by something like that. 

 

Thanks for reading!

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

[Spookytooth]

Take it steady Tony and it should go easy (hopefully)

 

Glad to see your roads are sponsored by Diacalm.

 

Simon.

[perdu]

Not wishing to overemphasise it but

 

That is a really good new piece of aeroplane, you are definitely doing it proper like

 

Welcome to the art of vacformation, have to get you into rubber next

 

Fnaarr fnaarr

 

Then you can become a Casterman quite quickly thereafter

 

The new tail is remarkably good for a first time job, now I know the 119J is a goer

 

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

[TonyTiger66]

Just wonderful progress Monsieur Le Baron  

 

The old vacform pull is mating up beautifully to Italeri's injection moulded masterpiece.

 

It's a gorgeous kit isn't it?

 

Slowly is good, there's a fair old journey from here, involving wings, booms, engines and metal finishes, but this is certainly the hardest stage of the whole build. I'm pretty sure that you've won, solved it, got that BT just right .

 

Now, there were requests for Australian War Memorial pictorial goodness. I'm afraid that I have no 'real' digital camera, and I was also learning how to use the iPhone camera.

 

@AlexN had mentioned an Me 262 in the basement. What a wonderful thing to have in one's basement. I think this is the one, lurking behind G' for George' the Lancaster: 

 

 

Next to it is an Me 163 Rocket aircraft:

 

 

As with most exhibits at AWM, they have not been 'faffed' and are very genuine.

 

One of my personal favourites is a completely unrestored Bf-109 G6 with Erla hood and some noticeable wartime repairs:

 

 

Want to know what RLM02 really looks like? Just look up, there are untouched patches of it:

 

 

For all the bad press they get, I feel Humbrol's shade is far closer than eg Gunze. I love both paint manufacturers, it's just an observation.

 

There's also a nice Sea Fury:

 

 

The Lancaster has its own multimedia event every few hours. It's not naff. I had to hold back tears. Many screens, lights, sounds. With the real thing right there. Indescribably touching.

 

The WWI fighter aircraft have a similar event every two hours or so. It's absolutely breathtaking. I filmed parts, but I don't think I can share them on the internet. I have many more photos; Sopwith Camel, Avro 504 etc. Here is a rather gorgeous, very original Albatross:

 

 

 Finally (there is so very much more), a personal favourite, I love them so much  ; an RAAF P40E. 

 

 

I have full walk around photos of this if anyone needs them. Just drop me a PM.

 

Mrs. T liked the Me 262 best. I have to say, it's a menacing stunner:

 

 

Best regards 

TonyT

 

[perdu]

Superb

 

 

 

 

Just that, ta Tony

 

[keefr22]

Ditto wot Bill said, on must visit list after lottery win!   keith

 

 

 

 

[71chally]

Cracking shots TonyT, especially like the first one, looks like a shark appearing out of the abyss!

 

Super fit, your Baronship.

[TheBaron]

5 hours ago, TonyTiger66 said:

Now, there were requests for Australian War Memorial pictorial goodness.

Fabulous shots TT! Thanks for posting them!

 

From the above posts it sounds like a coach party is forming to come visit.

 

Better build a panic room for your puffin....

[AlexN]

That's the, er, 'bunny', Mr Tiger, resplendent in original paint (RLM 83 topsides?). I didn't know that they had, par example, the Me 163 or the Erla-canopy 109. Thank you very much for sharing: my attempts to travel to your neck o' the woods are continually being thwarted. Speaking of Black X, I have a 1/32 markings set which includes it. And two 1/32 262 kits :).

 

Cheers,

Alex.  ->- not Black X.

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by AlexN
Missing left bracket

[TheBaron]

Simplest way to align and mark out two windows onto the rear vacform fuselage seemed to be to mask and spray:

Things being what they are, I didn't notice until after the primer was dry that the vacform had shifted slightly on one side whilst I was holding it, so that the demarcation line was slightly lower on the port side. No problem, just make sure to offset the portholes on that side slightly when drilling out with a 3mm bit:

Nice offset Baron but on the wrong side of the demarcation line you pillock. Globes!

Those windows on the port side should have dipped below, not above as you see there....

Ah well.

Given the amount of building and adjustment that's already gone into this crate, even a repair of that nature now seems a matter of routine:

Some 3mm discs punched out of scrap sheet and glued in place, with a blob of melted sprue to fill and strengthen. I'll leave that well alone for 24 hours and then carve flat and re-drill  - on the right side of the line this time! 

 

Ok. So that put a dent in today's intended course of action but rather than wasting time, I just got straight in to working out where the door should go on the starboard side:

Two windows to add in that door as you can see, plus an angled curved base on it to take care of. I had considered just scribing the door on as surface detail but I'm going to build them as the inside of the BT will be visible in the tilted upward position.

 

The plan is to make a paper template of that starboard door, transfer it to masking tape and then borrow @Nigel Heaths genius hack from his Sycamore windows of adding a second piece of tape to the rear of the first in order to make a reversed mask for the other side (in this case of the aircraft itself, rather than a window). Those masks can then be taped on in the correct position, lightly scribed around and then cut out.

 

I've marked the stations off on the above as well - partly to help with working out door size and placement and partly to remind me of the amount of  interior detailing to go on the BT as well as the fuselage - I seem to be discovering more jobs than I'm finishing again....

 

I've been thinking about time as well in relation to other commitments. I want to get as much of this aircraft as right as I possibly can, so see this build stretching on for a good number of months yet. Certainly when it all started back at the beginning of March I hadn't anticipated that five months in nearly we'd still not have glued the fuselage together...or indeed that there would be less kit fuselage than we started out with! I'm signed-up for the Flying Boat GB which iirc commences in September, so in the not-too-distant future am going to find myself for the first time with two builds underway at the same time, and have to plan my time accordingly.

 

Given this situation it would seem prudent in a couple of weeks to look at where we are on the C-119 and do a list of the major tasks still to be accomplished on it; not an anal list of each detail to be ticked-off (which would turn it into a pedestrian exercise) but simply breaking the job down into a series of related phases.That should - I hope - enable me to retain a clear sense of where I am on the Box whilst grappling with a Floaty-Flyer.

 

Best plaid glans of mice and men (as the bloke with a rodent down his tartan underpants once said)...

Tony

 

 

 

[CedB]

Paint! There's paint! OK, primer, but that's definitely progress Tony, and shaping up rather nicely too.  

[Nigel Heath]

The fit of your vacform is very impressive.

[Martian]

3 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Best plaid glans of mice and men (as the bloke with a rodent down his tartan underpants once said)...

I never said that at all or if I did it is being taken completely out of context!

 

Not to worry about the windows Tony, we have all done something similar and will doubtless do so again. You are recovering well from the mistake and the rest of the work seems to be coming along very nicely.

 

Supportive of Mars

[hendie]

4 hours ago, TheBaron said:

 

 

I've marked the stations off on the above as well - partly to help with working out door size and placement and partly to remind me of the amount of  interior detailing to go on the BT as well as the fuselage - I seem to be discovering more jobs than I'm finishing again....

 

given your current state of globular pillockry, and in keeping with my memberary title - you do realize that you have drawn the station positions on the outside of the airframe don't you ?  We wouldn't want you to go sticking all those frames on the exterior structure - it might interfere with the sleek aerodynamicalness of this lithe beast.

 

you're welcome!

 

 

 

[rob85]

That's a cracking fit on the vacform, I'm mighterly impress but how it's turned out! Your a clever man now and again eh?!

 

Rob

[TonyTiger66]

On 23/07/2017 at 5:15 AM, TheBaron said:

Better build a panic room for your puffin....

 

Percy has been hiding under the bed Tony. I had to coax him out with a little dried halibut I had left in the bedside drawer, from last year's harvest festival.

 

We had a good talk about why he had been hiding. He'd heard me mumbling in my sleep about a Martian with a pet Roc !

 

Percy has never seen a Roc, but he thinks they're related to Skuas. But much bigger . 

 

Puffins are really scared of Skuas. I told him everything is fine because they only exist in Blackburn, Lancashire, where there are no Puffins to come to any harm .

 

He's not sure about Martians, but I told him that they're not like Icelandics or Faroese people, and don't eat alcids (I hope ?).

 

The memory of the hotel menu, on that poorly thought out holiday in Seyðisfjörður, still gives him nightmares .

 

After our chat we settled down to a nice candlelit game of Mini-Mastermind, then a few games of Connect 4, Computer Battleships and Kerplunk! He always wins at Kerplunk!  .

 

The BT is coming along nicely Mr. Baron. It's almost the shape of Percy's beak from the side. I've been making inquiries of other Britmodellers regarding their recipes for 'sprue soup' , as all my attempts have been abysmal, never setting solid, failures

 

If you have any hints on how to make this modellers dish successfully, it would be most appreciated.

 

The forward planning sounds like a good plan, your Baronship. Something with floats will, I think, speed up your boom build rather than slow it. As the saying goes; "Two birds on the bench are better than gout ". As long as they're Puffins.

 

Best regards

TonyT

[Gondor44]

You asked how to hide the join on the inside. Easy as long as there are some ribs etc near the join on the vac-form side as them sticking out or rather inwards from the fuselage side should hide any join.

 

Gondor

[AlexN]

13 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Given the amount of building and adjustment that's already gone into this crate, even a repair of that nature now seems a matter of routine

 

Welcome to my world   

[TheBaron]

On 7/23/2017 at 6:40 PM, CedB said:

Paint! There's paint! OK, primer, but that's definitely progress Tony, and shaping up rather nicely too.  

Steady on ma man. I've just rubbed some of it back off again! 

 

Portholes damage repaired an new openings in right place this time:

On 7/23/2017 at 6:40 PM, Nigel Heath said:

The fit of your vacform is very impressive.

My thanks Nigel!  

It did require multiple libations to Bacchus to get there...

23 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

Not to worry about the windows Tony, we have all done something similar and will doubtless do so again. You are recovering well from the mistake and the rest of the work seems to be coming along very nicely.

Cheers Martian! 

Watching the apparently effortless way you waft a Roc together in a blur of tentacles has been an inspiration along the way whenever I've felt things slipping here. 

22 hours ago, hendie said:

given your current state of globular pillockry, and in keeping with my memberary title - you do realize that you have drawn the station positions on the outside of the airframe don't you ?  We wouldn't want you to go sticking all those frames on the exterior structure - it might interfere with the sleek aerodynamicalness of this lithe beast.

Nuts!  For that I'm going to nick one of your techniques (again) hendie - see below. 

 

If I hadn't drawn them panel lines on for reference, there's every chance them side door openings might have ended up a tad 'rustic'...

 

22 hours ago, rob85 said:

That's a cracking fit on the vacform, I'm mighterly impress but how it's turned out!

It's been a bit of a surprise for me too Rob tbh!

21 hours ago, TonyTiger66 said:

The memory of the hotel menu, on that poorly thought out holiday in Seyðisfjörður, still gives him nightmares

'Never ferment a friend': Old Icelandic puffin's saying.

 

I'd had the shape of the BT rattling round my noggin too TT but you hity the nail on the head! If I can just drape the parachute artfully from the BT in the final display then the resemblance should be complete:

Looking at that picture I thought how sad the Puffin's eyes looked -  until I looked at the eyes of those fish and realized how much infinitely sadder they appeared to be at the situation...

21 hours ago, TonyTiger66 said:

I've been making inquiries of other Britmodellers regarding their recipes for 'sprue soup' , as all my attempts have been abysmal, never setting solid, failures

 

If you have any hints on how to make this modellers dish successfully, it would be most appreciated

All I do is use an old sealable 10ml paintpot Tony with a bit of sprue bunged in and then pour in some Humbrol Poly Cement or Revell Contacta, letting it dissolve into a thick custard - 70s English comprehensive school dinner would describe the consistency most accurately. Every few months I'll squirt a later of glue on top of the mixture again, this seems to keep it nice and workable and keep any air off of the gloop. That stuff you saw me blobbing on was rock hard by this morning and able to be drilled.

20 hours ago, Gondor44 said:

You asked how to hide the join on the inside. Easy as long as there are some ribs etc near the join on the vac-form side as them sticking out or rather inwards from the fuselage side should hide any join.

Cheers Gondor. Yes - one of the blessings of this particular aircraft is the busy nature of the inside that allows for some cunning camouflage.

13 hours ago, AlexN said:

 

Welcome to my world   

Chin-up Alex. Just be glad you're not a sandeel in the puffin's beak of life...

 

Spurred on by a rather positive start to the week, I had a lash this evening at getting the BT and vacform fuselage separated.

 

I'd been mulling over the problems inherent in the rather complex set of curved dimensions around the back of this aircraft, both for accurately adding panel lines all the way around  as well as for actually segmenting the vacform. On waking-up this morning it was with the realization that I could in fact adopt a technique that I used previously in making a removable radome for the Meteor NF I built last year. Or more accurately, a technique shamelessly pilfered from @hendies seemingly bottomless casket of construction gems.

 

Basically this involves clamping-off a blade and moving the part, rather than vice-versa.

 

This time around, the size of the part in question meant that a razor saw was too small so I clamped a spare Dexter blade at the required height:

You can see in the photo that once you have the blade clamped at the correct height, it's simply a case of progressively rubbing the Vacform back and forth gently along the blade, rotating the piece from time to time in order to create a continuous cut all the way around. You want to keep the cutting-pressure gentle and continuous, and also with a longer blade of this kind , check that you have kept it it straight all the way along - hence the reason for using two clamps on it here to avoid any 'bowing' of the blade under the pressure of a single clamp.

 

A couple of minutes of this and:

Job done. More importantly, a neat and regular cut all the way around:

Childish glee to the fore now, I simply had to tape the parts on for a quick gander:

And from t'other side:

There is a quiet pleasure in such moments at the bench sometimes, isn't there?

 

It strikes me that the same process used for cutting there might be readily adaptable for scribing panel lines all the way around both of those shapes also, substituting a sewing machine needle for the saw blade.

 

Not rushing into that though now tonight as I want to let tonight's session settle into the grey matter first.

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Spookytooth]

Nice work Tony, a very precise cut and true to.

I can see no reason why you should not be able to use the same method foe scribing.

Although it would mean adjusting the height each time.

Maybe a surface block and scriber set would be easier.

 

Simon.

 

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

12 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

 

Never mond the Puffins or Sandeels, even your Beaver Tail has got sad eyes now.

 

Great work, though that hinged section reminds me of a 70s Smash advert.  "They peel them with their metal knives...".

 

[Apologies to any non-Brits and/or people under the age of 50, who have not the tiniest clue what I'm on about, or even what Smash was...]

 

P.S. I have used a similar method for drawing true horizontal lines around the hull of a ship.  Works every time.

Edited July 24, 2017 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Nigel Heath]

Quote

or even what Smash was..

 

I think its still out there....somewhere.

 

Quote

Smash continues to be popular in the UK, selling 140 million servings a year.

 

Unbelievable. More Wiki lies.

[hendie]

1 hour ago, TheBaron said:

For that I'm going to nick one of your techniques (again) hendie - see below. 

 

oooooh... nicely pilfered and even nicelierally executed.

 

It's great watching this all come together, particularly as you are not afraid to jump into new skills with both feet and no parachute.  The BT has turned out remarkably well... well, better than that actually.

One thing to be aware of coming down the pike is that once you cut the bottom door out, the structure will become a bit, maybe considerably flimsier.  I'd start thinking ab

out ways to add any internal cross bracing to add some rigidity back

 

1 hour ago, TheBaron said:

 until I looked at the eyes of those fish and realized how much infinitely sadder they appeared to be at the situation...

 

not so much sad as WTF !!!!