Bandsaw Steve

We get told to ‘step up’ at work all the time. I don’t mind, I think ‘Stepping up’ is a lot easier than ‘stand up’ .

Thanks for that riveting answer. Gettit?!?! Riveting!! God I crack myself up sometimes. It’s hard being an undiscovered comedy genius, but sometimes there are these small moments that make it all worthwhile…

Excellent work. I especially like the stitching. I had to put some stitching on my Avro 504 once upon a time but your method did not occur to me. Yours looks way better than what I came up with. Sorry if I’ve have missed it but how did you make those exquisite little rivet heads?

Welcome aboard mate.

Watching and trying my best to learn. Fantastic work!

What a great model! Welcome aboard.

Crikey! A stingray! I wonder if that’s the one that got Steve Irwin!

Wow! What a reassuring thought

Wow. I never realised that DC 8’s got stretched so loooooong! Great model.

Great work!

Did you know that ‘Navigator’ is an anagram of something very, very rude. I’ll leave it each of you to work out; If so inclined...

Just ten more names and we will be bunfighting. Come on you fans of dangerous inadequacy!

Classic!

I am starting to see this model being finished as part of a diorama, perhaps Xantho being loaded prior to her fateful voyage. Then I can reassess if I have the mental energy to do a full-hull model in 1/72. The museum probably won’t take a waterline model or diorama but it will be a good dry run.

Good points @hendie and @Malc2. One thought that has occurred to me is that about 80% of the problem at the stern would be hidden if I made this a waterline model…

Difficulties... The only small step forward in this post is that the first coat of Tamiya Deck Teak yellow has gone onto the decks. No problems there. There are however two significant difficulties with this build that are forcing me to have a rethink. Both of the difficult spots are shown in red markings on the picture below: I have not thought carefully enough about how to represent the bow and stupidly just left a gap in the forward bulwarks that I thought I would 'just work around' later once I've worked out how exactly to build this part. This is a mistake as I'm now completely unsure about how to correct this gap while still making a feasible looking structure. There are other more subtle difficulties with the construction here also - so I'm worried that in the end the whole bow is going to look odd. The contours around the stern are clearly very wrong. Even after packing a whole lot of bog filler in the recess in the hull below the poop deck the hull contours still 'undercut' far too severely. I've discussed this with Ross Shardlow who politely agrees that the shape in this area is wrong. To me it's clear that I've misread the drawings; when making the hull cross sectional lines I've interpreted a rubbing strake on the plans as a sort of 'chine' (a sharp line of hull contour change). In the view below the blue dashed line tries to give a hint of what the 3D shape here should look like. In addition, recently I have had the opportunity to view first hand some of the extraordinary work done by the late, and very great, Mr Brian Lemon; arguably W.A.'s greatest ever model builder. Brian was a true master of maritime model-building, specializing in small working vessels of all types. The first thing that struck me about Brian's models was not just their extraordinary quality but also their size. Apparently he mostly aimed to build his models 'about 2 feet long', and adjusted the scale to fit. He was concerned that models that are too small did not allow him to show all of the details that he wanted and did not allow fully satisfactory construction methods. I'm tending to agree with him. By comparison my efforts to date on this are looking shabby. So - currently this project is a little bit delayed as I do some thinking... with two major errors in play it might be easier to start again? As some of you might recall, originally I was going to build this in 1/72... Bandsaw Steve

Scale Weight Scale weight is the equivalent weight of the original subject if the original's mass was reduced in proportion to the reduction of dimensions. In the case of a 1/32 scale model (any 1/32 scale model) the mass of the original would need to be reduced to 'the original weight divided by 32 cubed' or which is equivalent to 'the original weight divided by 32768' If for some odd reason you want to delve into the logic behind this maths - it's all laid out here...(on page 9 of the Avro 504 thread) So - let's work out the 1/32 scale weight of a Mirage 3. According to Bill Gunston's 'Encyclopedia of World AirPower' an empty Mirage 3 weighs 7,400kg and one with a typical operational load of fuel and weapons would weigh 10,900kg That means that the 1/32 scale weight would be: Empty; 7,400 / 32768 = 0.226 kg Loaded; 10,900 / 32768 = 0.333 kg Now let's have a look at the weight (so far) of my Jarrah, Lead, MDF and Lithoplate creation: Zero The Scales Put some ancillary bits and pieces in the bowl and sit the airframe on top... and read the number. 0.645kg! So my model is almost exactly twice as heavy as it 'should be' even if it was represented in a typical mission configuration. Alas - even with full afterburner - I don't think she will ever leave the ground. Bandsaw Steve.

Thanks @HOUSTON My security team has advised no comment on our extensive security arrangements but suffice to say, even if security layers 1 through 8 are breached , any intruder would still need to overcome Mrs Bandsaw and her rolling-pin.

Keep plugging away mate. This is going to be awesome when all put together.

That’s a worry!

Great suggestion on the foil food trays. I’ll give that a whirl as it might be very good on compound curves. As for the guy making stuff out of PVC I’ve seen his work before and it is really quite something. It’s the precision of the work, especially the fit of moving parts, that I find really impressive and very, very difficult to match.

Maybe not inundated because my modelling time is still rudely interrupted by ‘life’ and ‘work’ and other such fripperies. Also, foolishly, I have three projects underway at the moment so my efforts are a little dispersed at present. Nevertheless I think these Mirage updates will now become much more frequent than they have been.

Loving it! At the moment I'm loving this project. Big exciting shapes are coming together and steps that I thought were going to be difficult are proving easier than expected. At the end of the last post we had this... I was unsure whether to round off the forward fuselage / cockpit section at this stage as to do so would further weaken the forward structure and I was hesitant to attach the air-intakes because I had convinced myself that that was going to be difficult. But then I realised that any serious attempt to litho-plate this thing can really only happen once the main shapes are finalised. So I pressed on; the first job was to round off the forward fuselage... using chisels, files, Stanley knives, sandpaper - all the usual suspects. To my delight it all went quite well and the 'thinner than ever' slither of jarrah under the imaginary pilot's imaginary seat was still easily strong enough to hold the whole front in place with no real worries - assuming I'm reasonably careful and don't drop the thing on its nose! Then my attention moved to attaching the air-intakes. I was unsure of the geometry of the ramp / fillet thing between the main structure of the air-intake and the side of the fuselage. Then I found this view on-line which proved that there are three forward-pointing bits in this fillet and not just the one sometimes depicted in cut-away drawings. So I did some measuring and some guesswork and came up with this template. Which allowed me to cut a single piece of 3mm MDF to the required shape. I then split that one shape into two identical 1.5mm-thick halves. I then looked more closely at my previously-made air-intakes and decided that their interior voids were too restricted. As a result I spent a pleasant 30 minutes or so deepening them with a chisel. If you look closely you can see that prior to assembly the inboard side of each air-intake now has a brass panel added to complete the 'D' shape. I used PVA to attach the ramps to the side of the fuselage and cyanoacrylate to attach the air-intakes to the ramps. This all happened with no issues at all. MDF and all kinds of different glues play quite nicely together it seems. Unfortunately due to some lax measurements I made more than a year ago, there were three vast gaps left on the underside. I'm not exactly sure how I got this so wrong; but there was really only one thing to do... Fill the gaps with some lumps of wood. Viewed up this close the woodwork is as rough as guts but after a bit of carving and sanding... It did not look quite so bad. in fact -over all - I've got to say. I'm loving how this thing looks at the moment! I'm not sure what's next - but I think it will be some work to the lower rear of the fuselage and once that's done I suppose I have to start on the cockpit! I hope you lot enjoy reading this half as much as I am enjoying making it! Bandsaw Steve

Welcome aboard.

Welcome aboard. I have never built that Revel double-decker but there was one here at our local model show / comp and it looked stunning.