Bandsaw Steve

Excellent, truely unique collection. I particularly like the Devon - brings back a lot of memories that model.

it seems sir that you are taking your punishment like a man sir!

That looks fantastic! Such a good colour-scheme! Really well done too. Full marks I reckon!

Agree with your comment on the impact those fences have had on the build Hendie. They have made a big difference to the model's overall appearance and I really like them. I can't wait to get a uniform coat of primer over this model now, but still have a few more steps to go until then.

Same construction method as the fuselage I presume? Looks very tidy!

Hello, It's a very quick update this one - because as it turns out - I've already written it in the last posting! "I'm thinking 'just' cut some slots in the wings and fit some thin appropriately cut metal sheets (say flattened aluminium from a coke can) into the slots." Well - that was exactly what I did - and it worked! - and I didn't accidentally cut the wings off or anything, so it's all good. Here are some photos. I used a set of dividers to carefully mark out where the slots were needed. This shot might look like a saw - but it's actually a contour gauge. I'm using it to record the exact shape of the top of the wing. Find an aluminium soft drink can, cut off the top and the bottom and split it long-ways to form a bent sheet of aluminium. Remember - Real Taste, zero sugar! Use the shape from the contour gauge to mark out the shape that the fence will need to conform to. Cut this shape out of the aluminium so that the slot in the wing doesn't have to be too deep. Now, protect the wing either side of the marked cutting point with dymo tape, borrow a razor saw off one your modelling buddies (thank you 'Van-Roon') and saw a shallow slot in the required spot. Note that this is exactly the type of tool that DMC recommended of page three of this thread and he's absolutely right -it's a great tool and I need to get one. See, just like DMC says - a beautiful straight line - would be very good for panel lines. Anyhow, this is the slot that the fence will sit in. The slot holds the fence nicely - in this case the wing fence is slightly out of scale, a touch too large...Looks like something that should be used to advertise 'Red Bull'. Better cut it down to size a bit...scissors are ideal for this. That's looking better... and a bit more perhaps... Ah-ha! I think we have it... Repeat process three more times. Result! I must say that I am very happy with the outcome. I have never used aluminium sheeting in modelling before, but it's quite pleasant to use - and very cheap. The fences are not yet glued on but, in the meantime sit in the slots quite nicely. I won't be gluing them on until just before painting as I fear they will always be a little fragile sticking up like that. Next time - if all goes to plan - the Mig will get some teeth. Hope to see you then. Reconcilor.

Good work!

Looking good. Am going to be watching and learning!

Airfix should lidar this and make it into that 1/48 mk XIV that I'm hankering for!

Lighting looks great. Esp the engines

Listen Sprueloose! That flying boat is just a distraction from the task at hand. Stay the course mate! Starting new projects before finishing current ones is the path to pain. I ought to know.

Hi sprueloose. I think I might have a idea re your knockout panel. Have a look at my mig15 build where I use a 'Half laminating' technique for surface details. I think you could adapt that technique to your needs. PM me if you want to discuss further. Reconcilor

As always, thanks to everyone for showing interest in this thread. Patrick Martin - judging by your icon you might be interested to know that I have lost sleep (actually lost sleep!) over trying to work out how to set the wings on a hypothetical scratchbuilt F104 at just the right anhedral. Anyhow, as promised the tailplanes are now on the Mig15 - but they put up a bit of a fight... Here's the starting point, complete with a set that I made months ago - supposedly all ready to go. All you need to do is 'just' cut a slot in the tail at the right place and another in the tailplanes and slide the two bits together - easy huh! This is how I determined where the slot would be cut in the tail - cut the drawings, mark where the centre line of where the tail-planes sit, work from there. Should be simple... Cut an equivalent slot in the tailplanes. When both cuts are made to the correct depth obviously the two pieces can be made to interlock. God forbid it's almost like joinery! Suffice to say that it didn't work out quite so well. As you can see in this photo, the process of cutting the slot in the plywood tailplane (it's pretty thin) damaged it's sharp, fronty, pointy bits. Faced with the prospect of having to correct that damage I decided to start again and make another set. The bottom set in the photo above is the start of the second attempt. This time I decided to make the slot 'up front' an integral part of the shape, in another radical development I decided to try to make it carefully. Now I have a confession to make...At this point I nearly gave in and almost decided to make this out of plastic. Yes plastic! Some of you may have heard of plastic. It's a synthetic solid material manufactured from hydrocarbons. Several people on this forum have used it to some effect while building models. Of course it will never replace wood as the principal material for model building but it does have some limited applications - and I think that next time I do some fiddly bits like these tailplanes I will relent and use it, if for no other reason than doesn't 'chip out' as easily as wood and can be formed into some detailed shapes more easily than plywood. In the end however I carried on with plywood - the heading on this thread says I'm going to try to use wood on this project - so that's what I did. The razor blade / scraper tool was very useful here, makes nice straight cuts. Note that initially I tried to cut in the trailing edge fairing for the rear anti-collision light. That didn't work as the plywood was not strong enough to maintain such a detailed component. I'll have to add it latter. Here the two matching slots have been cut - or at least I thought they matched... A lot of fine adjustment was needed to the thicknesses of the two slots to get them to interlock. As you can see by the coarseness of the sandpaper I was starting to loose patience and some of this 'fine' work wasn't that fine. At last - the two pieces interlocked. Except - the damned thing was crooked now - note how (in the photo below) the trailing edges of the wingtips are both lined up fairly closely with row 10 - but the trailing edge tips of the tailplanes are not equidistant from row 1. This means that the tailplanes are not going on straight and are facing slightly towards the port side. That's no good. I'm no perfectionist but as I've said before - I want this model to be as symmetrical and 'square' as I can manage, so this will not do. I did fix it - but a bit more on that latter. I used the old red paint around the perimeter trick. If you aren't sure what this is about, go back to page one and have a look at the post on making the wings. Whittle and sand, whittle and sand, whittle and sand. You know the drill - keep the red line visible and all should be OK. No photos for the next bit, but suffice to say I spent some time working on the slot on the tailplane, carefully widening and adjusting it to give it some more 'give' so that the part could be set square to the rest of the airframe. No bad language was used, honest! At the end though it looked a lot better - you can see in this view how it sits a bit more square to the airframe. Also note that the panel lines and control surfaces have been scribed on - so we are finally ready to go! Whew, tailplanes fixed with some good quality (aquadhere) PVA glue. Job done for this weekend. So - next job? Well next up it might just be the job that I have feared the most from the start of this project. In the last posting I mentioned 'armament, cine camera and tailplanes to go' but I forgot to mention a critical detail that I'm still not exactly sure how I'm going to tackle - the four wing fences (two on the top of each wing). I've got some thoughts on what to make them out of and how to do it but this is new territory for me. I'm thinking 'just' cut some slots in the wings and fit some thin appropriately cut metal sheets (say flattened aluminium from a coke can) into the slots. I'm a bit worried that four deep cuts into the wing will weaken it and that getting the cut metal fences in the correct position will be difficult without damaging either the fences or the wing. Any thoughts welcome. Regards, Reconcilor.

You say you aren't sure if it will work. Don't worry, it will work! The only advice I would offer is to pay attention to making the model strong enough. Everyone thinks and talks about detail and accuracy- but when you are building from scratch to have to also think about the thing 'surviving' the entire construction process. If it's strong you can afford to 'rip out and replace' anything that's not working. Good luck - this is going to go well.

Hello Mod Team, First up - thanks for the website - am really enjoying it and spend far too much time on it for my own good. Now for the minor glitch that I would appreciate any advice on that you can offer. Sometimes when I am on my PC (this never happens on my I-phone) when I click on the 'reply' function under the last post in a thread, the button is completely unresponsive - nothing at all happens. No 'type here' panel opens, no error message - just nothing happens, the button appears completely unresponsive and seems to stay that way permanently. When this happens the same applies to the 'reply' button at the top of the page. I first noticed this on my 'Mig15 Scratchbuild' thread (aircraft WIP) when on 28 Jan 2017 I went to make a new posting on the thread. The 'reply' button was completely 'dead' and I was puzzled as to why and what to do about it. Eventually I decided to try out the 'reply' button on page two of the same thread and it worked - so I just went ahead and posted as usual and left it at that. Tonight however when viewing 'chat' and looking at the thread 'Model Theft' I found that, on my PC, the reply button on both of the thread's pages (1 and 2 ) was 'dead'. This was a pain because it means that my previous work-around was not available. I do not recall seeing any unusual behaviour in the system prior to these apparently random failures of the reply key. I have tried all of the simple possible solutions I can think of to clear this problem - switching the computer on and off, closing down all software running in the background (including second instances of Edge), leaving the particular thread and coming back to it. None of these simple 'non-technical' attempts have bought any of the failed buttons back to life. I am using Windows 10, Microsoft Edge. Any thoughts or advice welcome. Regards, Reconcilor

Wow that's really cool!! Thanks so much for the offer. Some closer shots of the arrangement of the armament blisters under the nose would be great. In fact getting views of the underside in general has been tough because when sitting on their wheels their belly is so close to the ground so any shots of underside especially any bumps and blisters would be great! Earlier in the thread 'VanRoon' wanted me to do a polish one but I'm afraid my heart is set on a Korean War one now. I must say, having a Lim2 at the entrance to a primary school shows an admirable commitment to education on someone's part!

It looks finished to me. Still, I don't know anything about steam locomotives (or any other kind for that matter) so who am I to judge. Keep going until it's finished to your satisfaction.

Hi Greggles, Welcome aboard. Am very pleased you are enjoying the thread. Great suggestion about the sticky labels - I had been thinking along those lines but did not realise you could get them specifically made to be removable. I think that would be ideal. I will definitely be looking into this for my next project. The only other slight complication is that I use my company's photocopier for all of this work and I would probably need permission from...well who knows who...to put anything not supplied by the 'the company' through the photocopier. Leave it with me! I'll come up with something

Wow! Thats all, just Wow!

Hey Greggles, check this out we kick started this thread back to life! How good is that!? Off to have a look at that Prentice build right now thanks Britjet.

Looking good mate! Keep going!

Yes, can still count to ten! It's the bandsaw that really scares me with regard to fingers! Give myself a little 'safety talk' every time I start the thing!. So pleased to hear you are enjoying this, it's great to know people are watching, it goes a long way to keeping me motivated and focused on the project .

Hi DMC, thanks for the suggestion. There's a guy here in Perth who specialises in retailing small tools for model building and craft work etc. I'll have a chat to him about this next time I see him.

I'm just doing the canopy for a Mig15 I'm building. A mate of mine 'van roon' has a small commercially purchased vacform rig so hopefully he has a few clues and we won't waste too much plastic.

Wow. That thread sank like a stone! A shame really as it's a good question. Am going to have my first run with vac-forming in a few weeks.