Bandsaw Steve

Excellent!

Indeed true! Here’s another colour-related thing that I find pretty freaky. We teach kids in primary school science that there are seven colours in the spectrum ROY G BIV’ as determined by Sir Isaac Newton. But since the spectrum is continuous he could really have had any number he wanted. Apparently he chose seven because that’s a number with some significance to the occult and so-forth (he was ‘into’ all sorts of arcane pseudoscience at the time) and inserted ‘indigo’ into the official list to ensure that seven became ‘the’ number.

FWIW - I almost certainly won’t participate in this particular group-build, but nevertheless I’ve just thrown in a vote for it so I can sit on the sidelines and see what mayhem unfolds. Good luck Entropy fans!

I’m not really ‘managing ’ three, just muddling along with three.

Yes, that’s an air-con unit. Perth can get a touch warm in summer so this shed is also fully insulated. It’s double glazed too but mostly to keep the noise of power tools contained. Lithoplate over wood; there’s a bit of learning involved but I’m getting there. It’s absolutely dead-easy on flat surfaces but the curves are tricky. Being so thin it puts a very tight constraint on how much sanding you can do once it’s on so get your wooden surfaces as smooth as possible before sticking on the aluminium because once it’s on, that’s essentially the final surface.

Great work @Redshift. I think that might just be your best yet.

How did I manage to miss this for so long. Great work being done here. I especially like that propeller!

Good to see this one back on track.

A very nice job indeed. You and your dad might be interested to know that there are still a handful of us ‘solid modelling’ people about. Although I fear I don’t quite reach your dad’s high standards I have a finished Mig-15, and an Avro 504 plus an ‘in progress’ Mirage III on these pages. I can’t post links right now but if you have a poke about you should find them and hopefully enjoy the threads. Bandsaw Steve.

That’ll be it! Thanks @Iceman 29

Fantastic work all-round Kevin! Very inspiring.

Shipwreck Hunters By the way, for those of you with an interest in maritime archeology and/or any interest whatsoever in Western Australia you should make the effort to watch the recently released documentary 'Shipwreck Hunters'. This is a documentary / adventure TV series about a group of highly experienced commercial divers who team up with the W.A Maritime museum to hunt down lost shipwrecks off the coast of Western Australia. In addition to spectacular diving, maritime and wildlife footage there is a lot of film taken in and around some of my regular haunts in Fremantle and also some great historical material. It also goes to great lengths to describe and demonstrate the hazards to shipping that make the W.A. coastline so notorious. Do not be deterred by the fact that this is a 'Disney Plus' release; yes it's a popular documentary but I think it does a great job of making the story of each shipwreck absorbing and interesting without 'dumbing things down' too much. My 17 year-old daughter, who has never shown an atom of interest in any of this kind of subject matter, is now hooked on the show, itching to get her scuba diving ticket and asking me when I am going to start building a model of the SS Koombana! As an additional point of interest, each episode features a model of the subject in question. These models were all scratchbuilt here in Perth, by a good friend of mine and master maritime modeller - Gerry Westernberg. Unfortunately they don't do anything on Xantho, after all, we know exactly where Xantho is, so there's no point in hunting for it! Bandsaw Steve

Bulwarks Sorry Xantho fans, this thread has gone a bit quiet for a while. This is mostly because I'm working on a computer full time at the moment so when I get home I generally don't want to face another one to update this thread. No excuse really but there you go! At the end of the last substantive post in this thread we were up to here; a basic hull-shape formed and the first load of priming and sanding back completed. Now I have to fit the fit the bulwarks to make a continuous curved sheer from the stern to the bow. The first thing to do is mark up and cut a rebate. If I'd been smart I probably could have built the hull with a rebate in it but in this case I did not plan ahead enough. The pencil line shows where the rebate will be cut. It's really easy to cut out the unwanted balsa but the Paulonia 'skeleton' needed a chisel and a bit more effort. Still, it was not difficult to achieve this much. To make the bulwarks form a single gentle sheer the easiest way is to cut several 'easing' saw cuts into the selected piece of plywood so that it can bend easily. (Sorry about the photo below, it's not well focused so it's tricky to see the small cuts.) What you can see though, is that now it's very easy to bend the plywood since the continuous line of wood is now only about 1cm wide. This view shows the cuts more clearly. Here the bulwarks are firmly glued onto the side of the hull adjacent to the poop deck ready to be bent up into their final position... like this. This clamp really struggled to grip onto the bulwarks because clamps find it hard to grip onto pointed curved surfaces as found at the bow of this ship; they keep trying to slip off the bow. If I was doing this again I think I would make some sort of special jig or vice arrangement. After the struggle to hold everything in place while the glue set, once again I smothered the structure in automotive bog filler. By the time this is finished I swear this model will be more filler than wood. And here is where we are up to at this point. Shockingly I still have not fully worked out how I'm going to make the bow. The two black 'planks' on the front of the ship are carbon-fibre strips that I was planning to use as very strong knight-heads on which to construct the rest of the bow but I’ve subsequently given up on that idea. At this stage it looks like constructing the bow is going to be the most challenging part of this entire project. To be honest, I'm not sure what's going to happen there. So far I've done nothing to make that job easier for myself. Oh well - this is how we learn. In the meantime, the bulkwarks are on and the ship has a nice curved sheer. Best Regards, Bandsaw Steve

Hi Richie, Good call on the Tamiya tape, I’ll remember that one. The lithoplate is a mere 0.15mm thick; paper-thin and nice to use.

An annual update. Wow. It's been nearly a year since I last made a substantive update on this thread! As those of you with a long memory might recall, this project was stalled by the replacement of this old shed... with this new one! Which really is a beauty (especially if you disregard the small foreground pile of paint cans and chemicals awaiting responsible disposal). Here it is from another angle. In this photo it looks a little lop-sided - like the front wall is leaning out slightly - but don't worry, that's just a trick of the camera's lens... honest! Anyway, when the shed replacement project got underway I foolishly wrote something like 'don't expect many updates prior to Christmas' (and at the time I meant Christmas 2021). Obviously this was based on the assumptions that the shed replacement would be quick and that upon completion I would be straight back into the Mirage project. Neither proved to be correct. In the end the shed replacement took about 6 months and once complete I sank a lot of time into the PZH2000 and Xantho projects (neither of which I have managed to finish yet) . Finally, last week, I circled back to the Mirage and so I now offer the following humble annual update. Those of you with very long memories might recall that I intend to skin this model with aluminum lithoplate. This remains my intention but the accurate geometry of curved surfaces is proving difficult to convert into 2D cut-outs, especially where two surfaces that have not yet been glued together meet. Here I'm making some careful measurements to try to work all of this out mathematically; a good idea in principle but it's involved and not a very fun process. I could probably use a computer for this but that would make it even less fun. Instead I've decided to cut representations of the panel lines into the model and then resort to sort of 'brass-rubbing' technique to transfer the resulting shapes onto a sheet of paper and then onto the lithoplate. Here I'm using a saw to cut a panel line into the rear fuselage. Here I'm using an old-fashioned razor blade to etch major panel lines onto the air-intakes. But just etching the odd panel line does not overcome the issue of sorting out the geometry of panels that pass from one component to another or sets of panel lines that must align across more than one component. I think therefore the time has come to stick the major pieces together. The blue 'acrylic stud adhesive' is a glue that I discovered during the shed construction. It's generally used in the building industry to hold plaster onto walls. It spreads like butter, has a very long working time, is incredibly strong and fully sandable once set. It's also absolutely permanent; otherwise people's walls would start falling down after a few years. The 1kg bucket shown cost only $18 and provides a lot of glue at a very low price. The only drawback - which I learned subsequent to purchase - is that it has a 'best before' shelf life of just one year. I will be interested in seeing what condition this glue will be in a year from now. That can be in my next annual update. So, for now, blue glue it is! Here is the fuselage and wing assembly clamped up and left overnight, during which time the glue set like rock and achieved an extremely strong bond. Just for old-time sake I include this photo of the forward fuselage halves prior to being stuck together. Just look at the stupid amount of lead I've put in each half to guarantee that this model will not tail-sit. Here is the fuselage spine being glued in place. Leaving this. At this point I could not resist sticking the nose-cone on, mostly because this jet looks much cooler with it on. Even though the blue glue is extremely strong I still put a short length of carbon fibre rod through the middle to reinforce the connection. Sooner or later this nose-cone will get bumped and when that happens a bit of internal structural strength might be very useful. Nose-cone on. Project to date. Everything here is now glued together. The white stuff around the spine is my preferred detail filler; 'Vallejo putty'. Here she is with drop-tanks and air-intakes temporarily attached. She's looking a bit patchy at the moment, but I think will look OK under a coat of primer. Now, finally, I have a 'Mirageish looking thing' that I can fly around the room! This model is mostly made from Jarrah and has a bunch of lead added to the nose and fuselage. It weighs a tonne! I might do some 'scale weight' mathematics one day to try to work out just how over-weight this thing is. IIRC the Avro 504 model had a bulk density seven times greater than the original. I fear this one might be even worse! I'll try to keep this thread moving along a bit better in future. Sorry about the long wait. Best Regards, Bandsaw Steve

Come on folks. Vote to make sure that ‘Above the Karman Line’ stays above the line!

Perhaps all of your supporters have just naturally dispersed.

I would suggest looking at the Entropy group build proposal as a near equivalent, and so far it seems to be doing quite well in the bunfight.

Keep going mate. This ship is a favourite of mine!

Sometimes the only thing that really counts is who really counts the votes.

Are we there yet?

Choice bro!

Great to have you back on board here @RichO! Good job on getting the photos to work so well. Don’t worry mate, you are not alone in not enjoying computers, I struggle with the damn things too!

These are fantastic!

Looks ambitious!