Navy-ating Bucc's fizz - On the deck at last

[Courageous]

55 minutes ago, perdu said:

I've just done a comparative on the Frog, Matchbox and the beautiful CMR upper fuselages

None of them actually fit the Falcon canopy, as you say James it is far too wide at the spine end

 

I have the inner frame issue sorted James, its pretty well all inside at the arch 

 

I'm off into the fridge to see if I can get some decent photos for Mr B to reference from

(Giorgio, I ought to have used 'refer to' above but as Ced wants a reference discourse I decided to mangulate my English again)

I don't see Airfix in that lot 'cos I 'might' have a Falcon canopy (it wasn't in a packet when I got it) and I have an Airfix Bucc Better look at the canopy fit tonight.

[perdu]

I do not have an Airfix one to compare with

Frog with Falcon here

The Falcon one was cut to suit my Matchbox one

Matchbox one with Falcon

 

CMR with Falcon

 

It seems to me that the Lesney one was moulded a tad slimmer

 

This interested me a bit

Obviously not a direct fit but confirms for that Frog and CMR have a similar song sheet

Measured the spines on each of them

0.459

0.401

0.403

Frog is wider and the Falcon fits it like a glove

 

Seen here on the Frog one

A very snug fit

[Hamden]

 

Your attention to detail never fails to impress me!

Love watching you beat these old moulds into or better than the modern shake and bake

 

  Roger 

[giemme]

4 hours ago, perdu said:

I'm off into the fridge to see if I can get some decent photos for Mr B to reference from

(Giorgio, I ought to have used 'refer to' above but as Ced wants a reference discourse I decided to mangulate my English again)

 It was perfectly intelligible to me, though - but thanks anyway  

 

Looking forward to how this canopy saga ends

 

Ciao

[71chally]

Even from the photos the Frog one look nearer to me to the original - how often do we hear that!  The Matchbox spine seems to reduce the taper and get too parallel at the fwd end

That's kinda why I mentioned this earlier, I would hate you to modify the canopy to find that the issue is with the kit spine.

 

Nice to have the luxury of seeing these comparisons, would love to see a thread on just comparing 72nd Bucc kits.

[perdu]

The canopy mod James?

Well it is something I usually do anyway so the work inside is visible otherwise there's no point to doing the work inside

Vis: my Catalina, lots of stuff inside ALL OF IT invisible, I need to rationalise this henceforth

 

I have bulked out the forward spine on the Matchbox one to allow for an opened canopy, Massimo is doing the same moulding, you can tell the kit canopy is supposed to locate down inside a step on the front spine end

 

I filled the step on mine for appearances sake

 

Plan A is to go ahead with the canopy changes I have already put in motion

 

We discussed an exposé of plunge moulding for Ceb and yourself I recall

 

I start with the raw materials, here  we have 0.06mm actetate sheet from the local Artists supply shop cut down from A4 into handleable sizes

Posing with the  moulding buck (here made from a VERY ancient Matchbox canopy) that has been filled with green stuff malleable putty and before it set I inserted a stem with which to grip it in the vice

 

I  has had its frame lines removed with a selection of files and then polished to a shine with Nail Bar type buffer blocks

 

Like these, four different surfaces starting with a hard grit filing surface then graduating through to Shine

The file surface has Smooth on its opposite face and I usually use them in the order FILE, SMOOTH, BUFF and POLISH

 

Makes a lovely shiny surface in no time

The plunge/pull moulding technique needs heat to transform the acetate, I use one of these

 

But frankly they aren't much cop as a heat source, I prefer a proper candle for decent warming ups

Still we have what we have, tomorrow I intend having proper jobs

 

I place the upright stem in my bench vice and set up the candle (usually atop the end of one of the buffing polishing blocks for a bit of height)

 

Here I am checking the amount of acetate I have to handle, I do not want burnt hands do I?

 

This should do

 

I take a grip on the ends of the sheet and after holding it over the heat source I pull it firmly down over the moulding buck

Thus

 

The left side didn't take deeply enough due to the poor heat source but as I have a need for a separate front and back 'cos the Bucc is going to be displayed with its canopy slid back therefore I moulded a different front piece to the back  piece, this will all depend on getting the straight cuts lined up proper, see?

This one had distortion caused by letting the acetate burn in the flame

but its front, screen area pulled in nicely so that is part one

 

I was able to pull a nice rear end just ripe for trimming back

 

This is the screen moulding for trimming|?  \/  \/  \/

Back end

 

Well as usual my pictures didn't help much, tomorrow I intend using a decent candle, I can show you better things...

 

I hopes

 

 

 

Edited February 22, 2018 by perdu

[hairystick]

Most excellent work and an informative post!

 

Would a fearsome hairdryer work?

A heatgun would be the solution but only if really controllable temperature wise.

[perdu]

The problem with using a hairdryer (or my gas blow lamp in the garage) is having more gadgetry to manipulate at the same time as the acetate

A decent heat  source just sitting reliably hot will allow the operator (me or maybe YOU) to control the pulling and the moving about

 

The essence of the technique is getting as much of  the available surface softened enough to pull down into the mould buck

 

It would be possible if you went the Alan Hall route with a top and bottom frame to mount the sheet on however, you might like to try it

[CedB]

Thanks Bill, that’s great and very clear (pun) but for me the problem is how you mould the buck?

Let’s say you have a canopy that’s got nice framing but it’s too wide and too thick. 

If you fill the part with stuff, don’t you end up with a buck that’s too narrow?

With no frames?

Some pictures of how you make the Buck buck (sounds like a chicken, quick, call KFC!) would be very informative  

[hairystick]

On 2/21/2018 at 3:46 PM, perdu said:

The problem with using a hairdryer (or my gas blow lamp in the garage) is having more gadgetry to manipulate at the same time as the acetate

A decent heat  source just sitting reliably hot will allow the operator (me or maybe YOU) to control the pulling and the moving about

At times I'd be challenged operating a candle...

 

I was thinking about the heat guns we had at work. Makita type that can sit on their end so the heat goes straight upwards. Just put onto a low heat setting and move the acetate around until soft?

It sounds as if holding onto a heat source (gas torch or whatever) makes the job far more involved and I appreciate the method you have shown us.

 

[perdu]

I am trying desperately not to become a tooliac, getting enough grief round here just for having THIS  hobby, but that Makita sounds good

 

It is the regularity of the heat source that makes the operation possible after all

 

Ced, are we at cross purposes here?

 

I do not make the mould from the insides of the canopy which would be too small as you suggest

 

I use the packing material to solidify the kit part (Unless I am making an entirely new piece in a prototype manner) and  then I convert the kit's canopy by reducing or in this case by removing completely the centre framing and if I think it necessary to make more drastic 'modifications' I introduce the part to sihrsc before polishing the beauty back into it

 

The kit part most usually becomes the mould to work with

 

When I built the Scout the Milliput block it filled the canopy unit with came out under duress but that turned out to give me a buck exactly the size the model needed (Airfix had been a little generous with the kit part without making the back windows  big enough, the new buck was exactly right)

 

So to recap

 

make or adapt the buck from the kit bit

allowing for thickness of materials adapt the size to suit (most packaging materials acetate is thin enough to stretch without making grossly oversize clear parts)

fit a stick of some sort to allow remote handling

fix in a vice (or hole in the workbench, don't laugh)

grip acetate tightly at the sides and heat it up

mould new part and trim it to fit

 

sorted!

[Courageous]

9 hours ago, perdu said:

Well it is something I usually do anyway so the work inside is visible otherwise there's no point to doing the work inside

Vis: my Catalina, lots of stuff inside ALL OF IT invisible, I need to rationalise this henceforth

 

Great demo on canopy molding 

[giemme]

3 hours ago, hairystick said:

I was thinking about the heat guns we had at work. Makita type that can sit on their end so the heat goes straight upwards. Just put onto a low heat setting and move the acetate around until soft?

That's exactly what I use, a heat gun that can seat on its end. Mine has three heat levels (I to III), I use it on II. And I use thermal gloves to handle the acetate (or APET or PS) cutout.

 

Ciao

[AdrianMF]

On 12/02/2018 at 23:36, 71chally said:

Bill, if it's detail that you are after,

In the Pathe news video, is that wood grain on the cockpit cover at 0:47 in??

 

Oh and nice modelling by the way

 

Regards,

Adrian

[CedB]

1 hour ago, perdu said:

I use the packing material to solidify the kit part (Unless I am making an entirely new piece in a prototype manner) and  then I convert the kit's canopy by reducing or in this case by removing completely the centre framing and if I think it necessary to make more drastic 'modifications' I introduce the part to sihrsc before polishing the beauty back into it

 

The kit part most usually becomes the mould to work with

Thanks Bill - that's the process I was missing. Now I have 'the set' I can bookmark it for later use.

Ta matey, great stuff.

[71chally]

Bill, you really make this stuff look so simple, but I bet that there are years of experience behind this!

 

I think that you may have misunderstood an earlier post, I wasn't doubting the idea of having a nice clear acetate canopy, but whether or not it was the Falcon canopy or the kit spine that was at fault - you don't want to discard the good bit!

[perdu]

I did think you meant that James, not that I needed to dump a useable piece 

 

The Matchbox canopy is wrong in several directions and dimensions

The 'hump' at the front is too high and needs rounding off nicely and of course the external middle frame is both tangible and running in quite the wrong direction

 

And to cap it the spine was engineered for the kit canopy not for the real shape we need

 

All is fixable, the hump is slowly disappearing from the buck this after noon whilst I play with another of my Bucc bodies

 

Just hacking out the Frog bomb bay so I can fit the camera pack, can't waste that

 

[71chally]

Have you got a resin camera pack, or are you making one?

I have an illustration of it somewhere if you need more info.

[perdu]

On the bench as we speaks, thanks to Richard's generosity

 

Which reminds me I have lots of goodies that need returning home as soon as, must get repacking

[perdu]

Well I did decide to pop the Froggy in too, this is going to be an S1 too, thanks to Brian's early support

 

The breakdown is different to the Lesney Product, being more like the Airfix one I remember from back along a long long while

 

There is room for improvement all over but I intend this one to be down and dirty quick

 

Made some of the framework for inside the wheel wells and decided to make the Gyron Junior Jet Pipes from old and discarded Phantom gun packs which come in dimensionally close to the ones I made for the Matchbox one

 

Wheel bay roof

twice

 

Jet pipes

 

 

And vestigial internal walls for the engine mount frames to be affixed to

 

Just visible inside the tank bay

 

That is that for tonight, beer's on now

 

Bar's open and I don't do sharps with beers

 

Edited February 22, 2018 by perdu

[giemme]

You're not kidding around here Bill, are you? and

 

Ciao

[Massimo]

Beer o'clock isn't it?

I tried once to shape a canopy with a similar process, but with no vice to hold the master!!!

What an idiot!!! (me!)

I see you're starting a parallel build? That's  the Frog kit, isn't it' ?

Good start with the wheel bays' detail!

So how many have you got in mind and what colour will they be?

 

Edited February 22, 2018 by massimo2

[perdu]

Hi Massimo, beertaps opened around 2100 GMT so no more cutting or sticking

 

Both of these are going to be S1s so I need to make two more MB4s which will take all of thirty minutes  He He

 

Working quickly on the engine and wheel bay innards shouldnt take too long and I might just copy the cockpit on the other one for quickness

 

I need to check out pylon positions but the Frog one does at least have vortex generators, yippeee

 

And of course the Falcon canopy will fit like a glove

 

My other Matchbox will be an S2 as nature intended, with just a few minor alterations to the wheels and legs

 

Oh yes and a cockpit and nose wheel bay

 

Night all

 

ciao

[huvut76g7gbbui7]

7 hours ago, perdu said:

On the bench as we speaks, thanks to Richard's generosity

Wait until he sees the invoice 

Did you see my Buccaneer here ?   Scroll down page 8.

 

[perdu]

O U C H ! ! !