Bandsaw Steve

That’s really cool, and I think I even kinda get the joke! 🤔

Am loving this already! Naturally will be watching with the keenest interest. Best of luck with this project. I’m sure it’s going to be a ripper! Steve

Glued to top side of the wing? yep! Otherwise each wing would have three degrees of anhedral. 😆Didn’t fall into that trap this time. Not this time! 😜 As for the slots on the bottom of the fuselage, all they are are the remnants of the ‘spalling cuts’ that I made way back when I was preparing to cut out the fuselage. Obviously I’ve cut them a bit too deep. Once the two halves of the fuselage are joined I’ll just fill them with automotive bog filler or maybe a suitable wood filler. They should be completely invisible on the final model.

Things going right! Have a look at the photo directly below and you will see that the rebate that I've cut for the wing to sit in is now a nice clean rectangular cut . It's actually a fairly good bit of woodwork, at least compared to most of my rough-as-guts work. The only problem now is that the rebate bears no relationship whatsoever to the top of the wing that must fit into it. So, short of bodging this gap with a tonne of filler, and in doing so risking a very weak connection between wing and fuselage, let's make a block that will both span the gap and fix the wing at the correct angle of incidence. 'Angle of incidence' 🙂 technical talk that! Did you notice??? Here is a nice looking bit of wood that just so happens be the right thickness to fill the gap. The wood is bass-wood and I bought it at a local hobby shop. It's expensive but it also has the reputation of being some of the very best carving wood in the world. So lets give it a try. Cut it to fit into the rebate. Mark up the top surface of the aerofoil. Start carving. Wow! Go Basswood! Fantastic stuff. I believe that this is a favourite of American woodworkers and I can see why - it's just beautiful to carve. I have to admit that this just might be the best species of wood I've ever carved although - for patriotic reasons - I might have to claim that New Zealand white pine is its equal. Getting there. Note how the front (left of picture) of the basswood is now thinner than the rear. This change in thickness will set the wing at the correct angle of incidence. (Note the technical stuff again!) 🤓 After a bit of smoothing and sanding I ended up with this. Which makes for a pretty tidy bit of gap filling I reckon. Glue it onto the top of the wing with a bit of PVA. Clamp it down and let it sit for 24 hours. And look! There it goes - gap gone, wing set at the correct angle and I'm as happy as Larry with this - assuming Larry is happy. Somehow, just for once in my life this project is actually tracking along really smoothly. Things just seem to have been working out OK ever since the dihedral was sorted. Something must be about to go wrong, but I'm not complaining. It's unusual to have things going right so I might as well enjoy it while I can. Thanks for following along. Bandsaw Steve.

Hello Redshift That’s great news! Am really looking forward to seeing your project. My first scratchbuilt aeroplane was a Spitfire MkXIV. I’ll stick some photos of it on here soon.

Wow! That must have required some serious dedication to have built that! Great result. 👍

Fuselage The astute among you may have noticed that this model already has a fuselage, so what gives with this post? Well the current fuselage is a fairly basic affair mostly comprising of 90 degree angles and flat surfaces. By contrast the real aircraft's fuselage has quite a few subtle geometrical complexities for example a 'turtleback' shaped deck over the rear fuselage. Better get on with it then... If you have been following these builds you know my modus operandi by now so I won't need to write much. I've said it before; building stuff this way involves learning a few simple techniques, getting passably OK at them and then just repeating them over and over again. Matt_ I hope your 'young un' is listening to my wise words on this - if he keeps at it, by the time he's in high-school he'll be better at this than I am! From what I've seen he's made a good start already. Anyhow...cut out the bit of paper... Find a good bit of wood and stick it on - in this case the wood is 'bass-wood' from the local hobby shop and it's magnificent to work with. Look at this,, this carving business is just like peeling an apple - only easier. Sand to shape when you get too lazy to use the chisel. Use this fabulous fret saw to cut out the cockpit opening. My dad uses an electric scroll-saw quite a bit for this kind of work but I don't have one. Must get one sometime. This is where the pilot's head and shoulders will stick out. At least it would be if I was giving this one a pilot. I'm thinking it's going to be on the ground with some crew beside it - perhaps doing the paperwork before the next flight. And no Hendie - I'm not carving the b#$%&&y pilot... that would require skills far beyond my ability. Now turn the job through 90 degrees and make the decking taper to a very thin wafer towards the rear of the aircraft. Something like this... There was still a bit more to come off when I took this photo but you get the idea. Now carve out the 3d turtleback shape. Again, basswood - just beautiful to work. Naturally a bit of sanding followed soon after this shot, but I doubt you want to see yet another photo of something being sanded! Leaving this. The overhanging section of deck is arranged like this so that the fuselage behind the pilot will appear hollow. Now thin down the big thick block directly behind the cockpit to enhance the appearance of 'thin-ness' and 'hollowness' There was probably a bit of 'skill' used here but not as much as you might think. The sharp chisel and the beautiful wood made this relatively easy. Just take your time, keep checking the effect, and do this cut-by-cut, slice by slice. See what I mean. Now to the casual observer looking through the cockpit the fuselage will appear hollow and the top deck will appear thin. The main fuselage was still a bit over-width, but a couple of minutes with the belt-sander fixed that. OK - fuselage rear upper deck is under control. Now let's have a look at the wing roots. The first shape I cut out a month or so ago is not really satisfactory. I'm going to revisit this - now I have a more cunning plan. Mark out the revised shape - note that the floor under the cockpit really is getting thin. Cut, saw, sand etc until you get a rectangular rebate in the base of the aircraft. The wing sits completely in that rebate now - it did not fit before. From here I'm going to cut a block of wood that fits into the rebate. Fit the wings at the correct angle onto that block of wood and then fix the block into the rebate. Told you I was making this up as I went along. 🙂 I feel like I'm making good progress at the moment and am really enjoying this project. Hope all you people in internet world are as well! Best Regards, Bandsaw Steve.

OK Hendie - the fuselage it is. Watch for an update later tonight!

Well done Max and Mike, Roxy Music it is. Generally a safe bet with me. I generally try to restrict myself to one mention per thread of my favourite rock band of all time but the photo was there in the background, so what was I to do? Do a Britmodeller search for ‘Roxy’ and you will see that there seems to be a small Roxy Music cult developing on this site. @71chally seem to be the ringleader but there are others - self included. 🎟

Wow! That looks like very tidy work. Nice and sharp clean edges! 👍

Great work here! Don’t let that 1:1 scale ‘real life’ nonsense get in the way of this much more important project! 🤪

Fantastic outcome Adey! And may I also compliment you on the tidiness, cleanliness and beautiful simplicity of your work area. I aspire to a workspace like that but just cannot ever manage it. 🙁

Really good work here! I can see several ideas getting stolen from here and used on my Avro 504 build.

Yea! My mock Shakespeare just scored its first ‘like’. Congratulations @AdrianMF I always had you pegged as a man of culture and learning amongst the less discerning masses. 🤔

That’s all good! Many of us here will have started somewhere pretty similar to that. I know I did! For me it makes doing all this even more worthwhile if there’s even a chance that it will spark an interest for some ‘young-un’ somewhere.

That’s just fantastic news Matt! In fact that makes my day. 😀 I am now waiting with great anticipation to see what comes of his project. If I may offer just one piece of advice it would be this - see if you can find him some good quality carving wood. It can make all the difference. When I did this as a kid I used a lot of cedar as it’s very easy to work. I would suggest avoiding the ubiquitous ‘ pinus radiata’ (white pine) as it good for building houses but discouraging to carve. Good luck!👍

Getting on with it! Hmmmm…. The last substantive post had no commentary at all. That was the 'Modelling in Mime' post. That post scored 11 'likes' My next post after that was in my very best mock Shakespeare - it was in iambic pentameter and everything. Not that I think anyone noticed. ☹️ In fact that post has got zero 'likes' so far... 😢… zero...😪 and a call to 'get on with it'... Oh well... genius's are rarely appreciated in their own lifetime... Seems I'd better just 'get on with it'... 'And trim't to a spar' said Mr Mock Shakespeare so those biscuits have to go folks. Leaving two sets of wings as shown. Lot's of holes and gaps and dents and things to clean up with some car body filler. And all of this scrap - kinda cool really. Looks like my hair in the morning! Use lots of filler - it's good stuff. Smells bad though. Sand, sand, sand. Start with the coarse paper and move to the smooth. You know the drill. I found that that jig that I made for plan 'B' worked really well as a support for the wings while sanding them as it's specifically made to hold them at exactly the correct dihedral. And after a good dose of sanding I've got something like this. Note the bit of damage on the trailing edge - still to work out exactly how I'm going to fix that. I decided to get rid of the 'sticky-outy' bits on the top of the lower wing. I don't think I'll use them to attach the wing to the fuselage and they were getting in the way of the sanding. All gone... Now we can see that the dihedral in both wings is almost exactly equal - that's a good result. Following my recent success using white spirts to clean up paper templates that I had stuck to the wood I used it again to clean up the sanding dust and other residue and give the wood this 'faux' polish. It's only shiny here because it's still wet. And here's where we are up to now. Not looking too bad. Not sure what I'll do next. There's plenty more to do on the wings but from here I'm confident they won't be show-stoppers for the rest of the project. I now think that the wings are under control. From here I could move onto the cockpit or the fuselage or the tailplanes or the engine cowling. Plenty of options now. Bardsaw Steve

And a good thing too! 👍 A key capability for a nation with NZ’s geography.

Looking forward to this resuming. 👍

Sorry but it’s got some accuracy issues. To me it looks a lot more like Harry Potter under his invisibility cloak.

FWIW I agree. This struck me as a capable and relatively affordable Skyhawk replacement but it never stood a chance. Never got a chance I should say.

That’s it! I’m never going scuba diving again!

The Last Post! Well this is it, the last step in this project which will involve, of all things figure painting! A field about which I have practically no experience and expertise at all. Truth be told, finding appropriate figures was damned tricky. I'm building at 1/100 scale and figures at that scale are relatively rare. As luck would have it though, there's a specialist wargaming shop here in Perth and they had a small set of 1/100 scale Afrika Korps officers that I thought with a bit of panel beating might fit the bill. And here they are set up as a dry run. One of the guys was just the right height to rest his hand on the dodging screen which looked great. I was especially pleased with the guy with the binoculars, he looked like he was alert and interested in where the boat was going but still relaxed. I thought he was a natural fit for this environment. So I decided these would be my crew. The only alteration I made to the these German gentlemen was to file down the crown of their desert caps and stick some discs of plastic sheeting on top. This gave them all SD caps. I probably could have done a bit more with these figures, but they are pretty small and fairly well hidden in amongst all of that stuff on the top of the bridge. So I just left them like this... undercoated them... and brush painted white shirts and black uniforms. I gave each of them a black tie, since they were all officers. It was just as well too, because this hid the fact that one was wearing an iron cross around his neck. I mixed up some flesh coloured oil paints, and slapped it on the fleshy bits. Give each officer some gold braid - a bit rough and probably a bit too 'yellow' but there you go. Some two-part epoxy saw these chaps stuck in place. And that's it folks - this WIP thread finally complete! Those of you have been following along will know that this model was actually finished in April 2018 and that these final threads have just been here to complete the story. If this project is new to you please feel free to use this link to have a look at the RFI thread. And now it remains only to thank everyone who offered advice, encouragement and interest in this project. The fact that so many people have viewed, 'liked' and commented on this project has offered me a lot of encouragement throughout. I really am not sure that I would have reached the end without the input and support that the Britmodeller community has provided. Thanks again. Bandsaw Steve.

Exceptional work Mindmax. Have just read the whole thread and am very impressed.

That was fun. Thanks for posting it. I liked seeing the LEGO being used as a jig. I’ve long advocated that to the dismay of some of my model-building mates who want nothing to do with the ‘L’ word. 😀