Putty Animal

Hi Serkan, thanks for asking. I've used a bunch of different things over the years from monocular scopes to desktop magnifiers. Strangely, the best thing I've found for small scale modelmaking is the cheap non-prescription reading glasses that you get from discount stores and chemists and whatnot. I started out with 3x magnification and soon got more and more addicted to higher levels of magnification. These days I'm using 6x glasses that I found on ebay for about $7Au and it has made a massive difference to to my work. Desktop magnifiers are less effective, as it is always a struggle to both work and bring the piece into focus at the same time. With the glasses you subconsciously move your head to maintain focus, so you're not working in mid air or trying to do things in a blur half the time. They also work better than a visor, as you can focus and work a lot closer to your nose. Plus you can easily peer over the tops of the glasses to check your references or watch your netflix or whatever I've actually burned through a few pairs due to careless handling and my big stupid head. However I found that if I pulled a lens out of one of the broken pairs, I could temporarily blu-tac it to the front of the glasses to give me super-squinty vision when doing really fiddly jobs. It's like having bionic vision or a borg eyepiece or whatever. When you make something with the glasses and get it looking nice; you take them off and have a look at the thing and think: My God... did I do that??? 😮

Hi I'm so glad you like it! Sorry if the wip link didn't work. You can find the BM thread here: Cheers!

Thank you everyone! I'll have to rest my eyes for a while now as I work out what to try next. Maybe it needs an Eindekker for a mate. Here's a link to the RFI thread with more photos:

Looks fantastic. That's not an easy timber to work with either. Amazing stuff

Thank you! I'm so glad it is done. I think I felt myself level up as the last piece was glued into place. By coincidence: the second I posted the above message to say that the Fee was finished, I suddenly received the following notice..

I've always had a thing for the FE2. To an aircraft-obsessed child, it was that "big 2-seater DH-2" that only sometimes appeared in fuzzy photographs and never in the Airfix catalogue. It was elusive and mysterious, and not a little terrifying too. I remember staring in fascinated horror at a watercolour picture which showed the observer, standing up on the edge of his shallow cockpit to fire backwards over the top wing at some shark like V-strutters that were racing in for the kill. I used to wonder at the kind of courage and desperation it would require to do this - miles above France and without safety harness or parachute. I still wonder at it actually. While I was growing up a mainstream kit of the Fee never seemed to materialise. References were always rare and the aircraft seemed almost lost to history. Over the years I fell in love with 1/144 scale. So when the 1/32 WNW kit rolled around it was waaay out of my league. It did however provide a stack of readymade research material that I could use... Eventually one day I decided to have a go. Four years later and I don't know how many hours or hundreds of parts later, it is finished. So here it is. A scratchbuilt FE2b in 1/144 scale. Materials are styrene sheet, acrylic and sterling silver for the most part. Plus a tiny bit of 18ct gold for good measure (I'm a jewellery maker by trade, so why not). Paints are Mr Color and Tamiya lacquers, while the markings are a mix of hand masked and home printed. With the exception of the nacelle roundels, which were donated by the most excellent Ajmm (thank you so much! I think of you every time I see them ). Markings are for a B-Flight machine of 22 Sqn RFC flown by Captain Francis Don, with Lt Herbert Harris as observer. This aircraft was lost on June 5, 1917 when it was shot down by the famous ace, Werner Voss for his 33rd victory. Both pilot and observer were wounded, however they were able to bring the aircraft down safely in a field north of Vaucelles. Voss then strafed them on the ground for good measure before they were taken prisoner. Classy guy. Anyway enough intro. Here's the pics. I hope you like them! Thanks for looking! Here's a link to the WiP thread if you want to see how the sausage was made.

Oh boy. I made the beastly little landing lights near the wing tips and added what I think may well be the last of the rigging to the top wing. I do believe I am finally finished... More pics to follow and I'll put together an entry in the ready for inspection section.

Hi Phoenix, my tool kit is fairly basic. The main ingredients are a set of digital calipers to establish measurements, and a ready supply of Swann Morton 10A scalpel blades to cleanly cut what I’ve measured. I also use 6x reading glasses that I found on eBay. Everything else is just sandpaper and tweezers. As far as steady hands go: the trick is to rest one hand on the other so that they steady themselves.

Thanks Murdo! ♥️ I often get told that I'm nuts when making these things, but I don't think that is the case. I tend to associate that more with unpredictable or erratic behaviour. Whereas this requires you to be a bit more single-minded and deliberate than anything else. The other thing I am often told is that I have a bloody huge matchstick. I made the little dynamo thingy last night and attached it this evening. It was made from black sprue and some Evergreen rod that was painted with Mr Color Brass. The little prop blade is a very thin material which was painted silver and glued in place with PVA. I used the clear cellophane panel from a packet of old Microscale decals. This stuff is amazingly thin but quite workable considering how fine it is. Gert beg match again: I very nervously turned the Fee over to glue it in place. Only a few more details to go now. I need to do the raised landing lights near the wingtips next, but I have no idea how to make the tiny tear drop shape yet. One detail I've decided to leave off for clarity is the reinforced canvas bags that hang down from the Lewis guns to catch the spent ammunition casings. I feel like the model would look much better without them. As at this scale it would be very hard to tell what they were, and they would look a bit "Drew Peacock" (if you know what I mean). 😉

Getting towards the end, some of the tasks that remain are some of the most difficult. The course-setter bombsight on the side of the nacelle was definitely not what I signed up for. Its tiny and ludicrously complicated, but it was there on A857 so I had to do it. 3mmx1.3mm and 14 pieces of wire and sprue in total. Here's a shot of it glued in position. I hope I never have to make one again! 😭

Hi ajmm You're absolutely right. I'm really happy with how its coming out, but I'm having a bit of a modeller's crisis wondering what on earth I will do when its finished. Something a lot easier I hope!

Almost there now. During the week I was able to add the control cables and rigging to the top wing and along to the tail. I think there's maybe six more wires to go now. I also made the windscreen from some super thin cellophane and added the two Lewis guns (been wanting to do that for ages). Here's a dawn shot for a bit of a moody backdrop:

Oh SWEET!!! It looks big and meaty and very British. A lot more broadsword than dannyboy too, if you know what I mean.

Thank so much! I'm really looking forward to getting the undersides done so I don't have to keep flipping the thing over onto its back. I'm running out of places to pick it up from 😬 I made some bomb racks from styrene strip and glued these in place with PVA. A bit more (!) rigging was added to the undercarriage and out from the lower wing to the pulleys near the ailerons. The wheels got a tiny wash of grotty coloured oils to pick them out as well. Plus the nacelle grab handle and wingtip skids were made from 0.15mm wire and glued in place. I still need to make the control horns and add a couple of last wires before this bit is done. Then carefully turned it over for a look... Another dozen rigging wires went into the booms too. That's the last of the bracing wires, so I should be able to permanently attach the tailplane soon. Then it is onto the control cables. I'm pretty happy with the "sit" of it though. And my 1917 shilling arrived in the post today!

Looking great! I’m getting typhoon envy.

I love your work. I always feel like I'm watching a real machine coming together.

Oh my god it is gorgeous!

Hopefully it'll be all over by Christmas

Amazing. That's a trophy winner for sure.

Bravo! Really impressive work.

Thank you! I hope I can keep the momentum going. There's lots left to do, but all the rest of the details feel like cake now that the major assemblies are done. The tail codes were a bit of a problem, as there is nothing out there in 1/144 that can be used for them. I found a fuzzy screenshot of wingnut wings' decal sheet however and was able to reduce it in photoshop and use it as a guide to draw high resolution ones of my own. I printed two of these out. One on white and another on clear decal film. I used a regular domestic laser printer and set it to grayscale and Best quality. It printed out nice and clear. Both sheets were brushed with a light coat of satin acrylic clear to seal them. The plain black "85" was put on first and settled in nicely with my favourite MRP Mr Mark Softer. I allowed myself plenty of spares! The next bit was the tricky part. Using a fresh scalpel blade I roughly cut out a nice looking A and 7, leaving a generous margin of space around them. These were soaked off of the backing paper and placed on a dark surface... (an old plastic gift card if you must know). I then popped my Borg eyepiece in and carefully chopped the excess white away from each of them. This took a number of tries but eventually produced a couple of pairs that I was happy with. Rather amusingly, my head was practically touching the bench as I was doing this. My wife happened to walk past while I was doing this and thought I had nodded off... Anyway, here's a shot of the finished tail codes. I also managed to get some more rigging in place along the booms and made a start on the control pulleys on the wings.

Beautiful!

Hi Steve, I know what you mean! On the one hand, I was like: well if I know what length the wire is there's no reason not to cut another one and put it alongside it. While the other half of me was going: Noooooooo!!! I want to do my best though. I added some more rigging to the wings during the week and turned my attention to the booms today. These had chord bindings around them at regular intervals between the struts. A mere 76 of them according to the WNW instruction manual. I did them the same way Sir Peter intended too, and sprayed some decal sheet and applied them as little strips. It took about three hours and when they were finished they were all but invisible. A tiny wash of artist oils was needed to pick them out. Once that was done I was able to nervously coax the booms into the slots in the wings and sit back in my creaky chair to take a look... 😮

Downloading...

Troy that’s fantastic, just bought it. Thanks heaps!