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ianwau

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Everything posted by ianwau

  1. Excellent progress! Don't worry - you are not alone in your araldite adventures. I have a love-hate relationship with araldite. Great for gluing mixed materials but I always seem to end up with sticky fingers and errant araldite on everything.
  2. Excellent work - those transparencies have come together very nicely. Also impressed that you haven't yet knocked off the antennae on top of the fin. Mine survived, much to my surprise.
  3. 'Tis done! It came together surprisingly quickly after the last update - no retractable undercarriage - no wheel spats. Props are some old stock Aeroclub white metal DH items Wheels are some resin aftermarket - not sure what they were intended for but a good match for diameter and wheel centre pattern. Exhaust pipes are from appropriate diameter lead solder (easy to create natural looking bends) Weathering is a combo of airbrushing thinned colours, a (water) pastel based wash, oil paints and some dry pastels. Nothing too heavy - I prefer the light touch. And that's about it! Thanks for tagging along and the interest... Photo below links directly to source - with credit to Ed Coates/Civil Aviation Historical Society
  4. Nice! You should do a tag team build with your old Hasegawa - just for fun, & comparison!
  5. Superb piece of wood carving. Almost seems a shame to replace it with a vacform version! Great progress.
  6. I was pretty happy with the fit of my clear side panels. Required quite a bit of gentle dry fitting. And making sure that the side panels were properly cleaned up (eg sanding flat the leftover bits from the sprue joints). I DID need to include a sliver of scrap styrene on the fuse at the base of the door to improve the alignment - and this immensely improved fit of starboard side. Fettle, fettle, fettle.
  7. Thanks David. Yes, window frames are indeed from the Silhouette and in 5 thou ~0.1mm sheet. Basically the same shape as used for the window masks with some extra width for the frame. The rigging wires are not structural - the wings are all quite rigid given the brass wire spars and the interplane struts.. Rigging wire glued on with a fine dab of thickish Superglue. Thanks Mark - it's been quite learning experience this one. Thanks Colin. Happy with the nose - it's a little wide at the 'eye brows' (the top line of the 2 forward facing windows), but there's enough hints of Dragon in there for me! Thanks Chris. I've been doing a little weathering/toning down of the paint. Looks a little bit like it's straight out of the paint shop at the moment and the reference photos suggest it had done a bit of work. Thanks Adrian. Will aim to get a picture beside my DH.89 Rapide (ex 1/48 Aeroclub)
  8. A masterful piece of carving there! And I can sense how this'll smooth out into those Italian lines. Enjoying watching this come together. I'm particularly impressed with the 'airscrew'! Guessing this gives you the right sort of tapered shape to work to at the tip of the nose.
  9. Looking good! I have one nearly ready for inspection - post-war civil scheme. What a great kit and nice to see different schemes being built - you've picked a cracker!
  10. An impressive start, and what an interesting subject. Already some serious surgery going on there. Following with interest The engine looks a bit like BF.108 but I think that was an Argus inverted V8?
  11. The finish line is rapidly approaching - and there's been a fair bit of progress since last update. Nacelles were fitted and blended in The structure to that point was painted silver, and blue stripes masked and painted, and wing markings masked and painted. Transparencies were all masked using the Silhouette cutter I've used SMS acrylic lacquers for the silver, blue and black. Wing marking masks were cut with the Silhouette Temporary 'undercarriage' was installed in position to make the painting easier - and provide some protection of painted surfaces afterwards Top wing was then fitted, including interplane struts and this all blended in (required a bit of touch up at the upper wing join) Main rigging has been done (used Albion Alloys 0.2mm silver nickel rod) In photo above - you can make out the subtle effect of the wing ribs. Happy with how this has come out - suitable subtle and a slight textural difference to the rest of the wing. Not much more to do now: Undercarriage is the main item left to be fabricated A bit more rigging (waiting on re-supply of more Albion Alloys) Decals (will be printing these up on the colour laser printer at home) And various 'bits' like ag seeder/spreader, exhausts, pitot, aerials, nav lights
  12. What a marvellous result - fantastic level of attention to detail. I'm sure you are keen to see the new Airfix kit and how tricky it would be to repeat this project with that kit as base material.
  13. That looks fantastic Chris. I keep thinking it's 1/48 - you have so much detail in there for 1/72
  14. Just caught up with this one - looks a fun subject and build. I do like your little list - something I do when I think I can see the finish line! Seems to help the motivation - and make sure you don't forget something important!
  15. More progress.... The cockpit has been detailed and the cockpit window has been glued on per photo below. I used some carefully applied 5 minute epoxy (Araldite) for the main fixing, then have followed that up with Mr.Surfacer 500 applied with a toothpick to backfill the gaps and give a bit more bite. Happy with the result - still needs a bit of clean-up but will definitely do the job. I've used some strips of tape to mark the outer perimeter of the windows - this'll be used for Silhouette masks Below are the window masks worked up in the Silhouette Studio software. For the cockpit windows, I overlaid a sheet of Kamoi tape and marked out the position of the frames with a 0.2mm marker. Not a precise process - but we'll fix it up in the software. The aim is to get symmetrical masks on each side This was then removed and scanned - with the resultant JPG loaded into the software (you can see it sitting over on the right hand side of pic). I've then drawn a series of rectangles to help get a sense of the extremities. And then draw it up in the software (basically draw the left hand side - and mirror it to get the right hand side). This all sounds a bit complicated - but it's only about 20 minutes work. The side window masks are just adapted from the earlier design I did for the styrene frames. And also some masks for the rego numbers while I was in there Moving onto the nacelles I wanted to get the cutouts in the nacelles for the wings sorted before attaching the lower wings (the plan remains to attach the lower wings first, with the nacelles attached afterwards). Below shows the general shape/location transferred over from plans. These were then cut out and trimmed using the 12V rotary saw I've used previously in this build. Lots of cut a little, test fit, cut a little more etc... Below we can see all the bits dry fitted into place. A couple of points: The wings are just sitting on their 0.8mm brass rod spars. I've 'scalloped' the wing trailing edges between the ribs - basically a light sand with 600 grade wet and dry wrapped around a curved sanding block. Nacelles still need engine panels scribed, and the various intake/exhaust holes inserted. And finally, ready for gluing the lower wings to the fuse per pic below Trusty Lego jig swings into action again. Wings are held at correct dihedral by those flat Lego bits at the wing tips. A few styrene strips can be spotted here and there to chock out the wing and fuse so everything is pretty much jammed in place. Confident this'll be nice and square when it is released. The jig is already set up to receive the top wing, although I'll have to raise everything up by 1 x Lego block in height to allow room for the nacelles to be slotted in first. Easy enough... Next steps Blend in the lower wing Fit the Nacelles Lots of drilling for the rigging, struts, undercarriage etc. I'm planning to paint most of the model before fitting the top wing (easier to get the stripes on without all the struts etc in the way
  16. A small milestone to report. (is that a yardstick?). Finally took the step of cutting out the vacformed cockpit window per picture below showing the finished job (well about 95% done) Broke out the trusty power tools - my Arlec engraver fitted with a fine rotary cutting saw and a sanding wheel. The edges of the buck provide a clear indication of the edge I am cutting to. Very much a case of slow and steady - with much offering up to the model to make sure I've cut not enough vs too much (the saving grace of course if if I muck up - I can vacform another canopy. Not that I want to do that of course, but it does inspire confidence to push on. I've marked the edges of the cut with a black marking pen - which helps identify the edge highs and lows. (and in due course will minimise refraction of light - ie silvery edges) And below shown dry fitted to the fuse It's probably obvious - I've glued the fuselage sides on - they're basically glued into required shape all the way to the nose. The fuse top and fuse bottom are yet to be sanded back/blended in to match. The cockpit window is just sitting there with a bit of tape at the top and another bit of tape at the bottom holding in place. Once glued, the sides will tuck in nicely with a bit of tape to hold them in place There's still a bit of cleaning up still required to get my cut edges as straight as possible. Some thin tape roughly marks position of front windows. It looks like a slight step at the rear of the canopy but that's a bit of an illusion. The white styrene roof was intentionally overwidth (will sand back) and needs the edges rolling over a bit. Whilst I've built the model to the drawings - I'm forming the view that my nose may be a millimetre or 2 wider than it should be. It's really hard to interpret photos when there's so many angles going on around the nose (and haven't had the advantage of measuring up a 1:1 DH.84). The background photo below is probably sympathetic to my cause - but I think I need my nose sides to be tucking in more, forward of the "T" in Taniwha? But that's not what the drawings show - grrrrr! Anyway - I'm not doing it again - I'll just wait for the aftermarket correction set to come out! Next Steps, Blend in the fuse sides/top/bottom Detail the cockpit. Glue on the cockpit 'canopy' (I think I'll do this before attaching wings to minimise risk of dust in the cabin)
  17. Thanks David. My current plan is to get the side panels (both the 0.5mm styrene 'inner sheet' and the outer 0.5mm clear) guided right round to the nose and glued into place (hoping they'll stay put of course!). This will then leave me room to sort out the interior framing (not that much of it) and add in the cockpit paraphenalia. Before gluing the canopy over the whole lot. I like your idea of the 'backer' and expect I'll go down this route - it's going to require some patience and finesse. Thanks Adrian. Sounds interesting and a quick google suggests it comes in sheets - so now wondering if I can put that through the Silhouette cutter as well. Worth a try. Thanks Zac. This was a whole lot less tedious than gluing the slotted flap 'slots' on the FU24/Cresco! Getting a machine to do the really tedious bit did require a bit of preparation but the result as you say is so satisfying. I'm hoping that there'll be a 1/48 injection kit in due course- surely someone from Airfix is waiting for me to finish before making an announcement? It's the natural next step from their DH.82 is it not?
  18. I've been distracted by work this past fortnight - but managed to make some progress today. An earlier post covers my experiments with various methods for suggesting/creating wing ribs - and I concluded the most effective method for this model would be through the use of primer/surfacer. The photo below (repeated from an earlier update) shows the ribs all drawn up in the Silhouette design software. A series of rectangles of 0.7mm width with rounded ends. Not overly difficult other than correcting the alignment of the ribs to make sure they were perpendicular to the wingspar (vs parallel to the fuse centreline as many drawings dhow). I'd loaded up a 'snip' of the drawings to assist with dimensioning etc. Below is what the masks look like after the Silhouette cutter has finished cutting. I've already 'weeded' out the 0.7mm strips - as that is where the paint is going to go. 400+ weeds to pull out What you see below is only enough masking for the upper wing - outer panels on the left, and inner panels on the right And not long afterwards the masks are on per below Waaay quicker to apply than having to do this the old school way with individual strips of tape AND they're all equal width and proper spacing Hardest part was making sure I had the correct mask for the right piece of wing (inner vs outer span, top surface vs bottom surface, port vs starboard) - but that got easier as I progressed. I've also put a thin strip of masking tape along the aileron hinge line (we don't need any ribs there...) So onto the airbrushing. Below is at the end of the airbrushing session. I'm using SMS Surfacer - which I'm trying out for the first time. It's lacquer thinner based, so dries quickly and hard. (if you haven't tried SMS - give it a go. It's an Aussie product and available in many countries now) I actually used Tamiya rattlecan primer on my test mule - this seems to have produced a finer result so happy with the choice. The darker shade you can see is me having moved straight on from spraying SMS black on another model - and not wanting/needing to clean out the airbrush properly before moving onto the surfacer. Rather handy as it turns out as it has provided a bit of a pre-shade - which serves to give a sense of which areas need an extra coat. And below is what it looks like straight after removing the masking - the 'white' ribs is what I have painted, and the grey background is an earlier light coat of Tamiya rattlecan primer. I haven't done any sanding at this stage I do need to sand between the ribs at the trailing edge to create the necessary scalloped effect. Really happy with how this has come out - edges of the ribs are very fine - with little if any 'lip' from the paint sitting against the mask. Next Steps Will do some pre-drilling of holes for the wing struts and rigging. Do some test-fitting of the engine nacelles, I think I'll fit them after the lower wings are on (easier to get things aligned that way) But really need to get the fuselage sides on, and sort out the cockpit fit now - haven't had the time to focus on that (will need my undivided attention).
  19. Thanks David. Yes spot on re the strong light. I'm just using a fairly standard LED desk lamp as the source - but do need to hold the buck at the right angle to see the faint black line coming through the opaque plastic. Stronger light doesn't necessarily help. My marker pen is a 0.2mm permanent marker (Artline) - nice and dark, that helps... The white styrene I'm using was 0.75mm sheet, probably 0.5mm thin after vacforming', that helps too. My current plan is to retain the clear sidewalls all the way to the nose. As that will give me a nice clean curvature along the fuselage side. So the 'canopy' will be cut down accordingly. The challenge with this approach is I will have very limited tolerances for glueing the canopy to the sidewalls (effectively it's a right angle joint). I'll probably add some Evergreen strip on the inner edge of the sidewalls to improve purchase and hide the glue! I'll take photos of course. One plus of scratchbuilding is I can always make a new canopy if I muck it up!
  20. Looks great Derek. I keep thinking it's 1/48 (the scale I think in!) - and have to remember it's 1/72. Great job on the scribing - always something I've approached with trepidation.
  21. Thanks Derek, yes I've seen those and been very tempted - the limiting factor for me has been the 'dentures' size constraint. It certainly looks more industrial though vs my more agricultural set up. Will keep an eye out for your posts demonstrating use. Thanks Richie. I've actually been doing it the hard way for many years! Then worked out the bleeding obvious. I think Plato is attributed with "necessity is the the mother of invention" - reckon he must have been a modeller in his spare time..
  22. A few more steps forward.... The lower wing(s) need some dihedral - 3 degrees outboard of the wing fold. Technique as follows (with reference to the photo below) A bit of high school trigonometry and a calculator tells me how high the wing tips need to be. And Lego comes in very standard dimensions - so with a bit more calculating I work out where I need to place my Lego 'chock' outboard of the wing fold position. For creating the dihedral, I simply cut the wing about half way through (from the underside) at the wing fold position. I then insert a strip of styrene and slot that into the cut created by razor sawing. A bit of dry fitting and fettling with a sanding stick lead to a nice fit that holds the wing with the requisite dihedral. This is then glued with liquid cement and held in the Lego jig with clamps as shown below. Once dry (24hrs), a bit of wet & dry cleans up the joint. There was minimal need for putty for this one... So turning now to a bit of home vacforming. Below is the first shot for the canopy - a very good result. I positioned the buck in a nose up position - as that optimises how the molten plastic falls. The clear sheet is 0.75mm PETG. I wanted something not too flimsy - gives me a bit more material to get purchase on when we get to glueing. The obligatory banyan tree roots are nowhere near the canopy and I'll be able to cut this as a single piece from rooftop through to nose.as intended (I've covered off my vacform 'machine' in some detail in previous builds - have a look at the DHA.3 Drover link below for more). So to a mini production line for vacforming the engine nacelles. The picture below shows 2 upper nacelles and 2 lower nacelles (one still locked in the vacform machine waiting on removal of buck). The 'draw' on these happily passes more than halfway down the buck. That means success. The pencil line is me roughing out where I MIGHT do the 'cut' to bring these back to proper top halves and bottom halves... I'll just cover off below the process of getting these joined together. Bullet point numbers cross reference to corresponding photo. I've kicked off by cutting down one of upper nacelle on one of my pencil lines. Using a razor saw. The actual position really doesn't matter - and it doesn't even need to be straight. Easy modelling this eh? In photo 1, the piece at the top is the nacelle top - that's the buck in the middle and the offcut down the bottom. With the top of the nacelle cut - just pop it back over the buck and use a fine dark marker to transfer the cut line onto the buck. Photo 2 shows the lower nacelle vacformed piece now fitted back into the buck. Holding it up to a strong light reveals the dark marker line drawn on the buck. That has been mimicked onto the vacform piece with a dotted line. That's my cut line. Photo 3 shows the upper and low nacelle pieces after cutting. For cutting I've used a 12v rotary tool with a fine circular saw tool. The two pieces are just sitting together (with the buck inside). Noting the buck was intentionally undersized to begin with - this is effectively the final and correct position for the upper and lower nacelles. Also of note is that I have retained some offcuts (seen at top of photo 3) which will be glued to one of the nacelle halves as 'tabs' to assist alignment (just like on a real kit!) Photo 4 shows the offcuts pegged into position mostly ready for gluing the halves together. Below I've now glued together top and bottom halves and will set them aside overnight to dry (and vent!). A couple of extra items attended to before I glued. Inserted a bulkhead towards the front of the nacelle. The front of the nacelle will in due course have the obligatory DH Gypsy air vent - through which glimpses of the engine might be possible. (Also put in a couple of bits to represent the front of the engine). I've painted the inside of the nacelles black. making it difficult to glimpse anything at all thru the front of the nacelle. I'm not big on adding detail which can't be seen.... Also some extra strips of styrene behind the propellor hub - to give a bit more 'meat' and to address (later) some minor mould imperfections on one of the nacelles Lastly a vent hole has been drilled where the prop shaft goes (we don't want anything melting in a week because of enclosed fumes...) That'll do for this update. I've also been progressing the wings for the primer-based wing rib application. Will give a report on that next time and show results...
  23. Richie, Marvellous work on the latest batch of ribs - practise makes perfect as someone once said and you've surely reached Jedi master status. Sorry to hear about the wing fail, but not sorry that you've got stuck back into this project - it deserves to be finished and will have stories to tell!
  24. Various bits progressed. First off a report on my experiments with the various techniques suggested for wing ribs. As a base I had at hand an old discarded scratchbuilt wing - a bit rough around the edges but OK for testing. I'll run through the 5 x techniques and observations below - and with reference to the photo. Primer/Surfacer. Mask off the wing leaving the area of the ribs exposed. Apply 2-3 coats of primer/surfacer. Remove masking, a lightly sand. As suggested by @davidl and @Malc2 above. The result is actually very good - would have been better if I took a bit more care with the masking. And playing with the heaviness of the primer coats is in your control. Twin scribed lines. 0.7mm apart to create the illusion of the ribs. As suggested by @Old Man. Actually remarkably effective, probably more so with a bit of selective shading weathering with pastels etc. I sense this'd work best in 1/72 (vs my 1/48) and probably a little subtle vs what I'm after. Embossed 0.1mm styrene sheet. Use an old ball point pen to emboss the rib impression on the reverse side of cut-to-size styrene sheet. Once done - flip the sheet over and glue to the model with liquid cement. Probably the most effective technique of all of these and if I'd planned for it would be my preference. The issue is that 0.1mm in 1/48 is about 6mm in 1:1 and that added thickness on top and bottom surfaces is an issue. Also there's the need to blend in all the 0.1mm sheets with the rest of the wing - all gets a bit hard... 0.1 styrene strips. Glue the strips on with Liquid cement. Apply a couple of coats of primer/surfacer to blend in. Lightly sand to tone down sharp edges. This ended up my least favourite method. Despite the primer/sanding it really looks too pronounced.. Tamiya tape. Cut the Tamiya tape in even strips (I'd probably use the Silhouette cutter to cut these out of a large sheet). Apply a couple of coats of primer. Actually a better result than I was expecting, although as warned by a few - it's all too easy for the sandpaper to disrupt the tape strips. And really hard to keep the strips straight and parallel... With all of these - I did a bit of wet sanding of the trailing edge with a curved sanding pad - to suggest the scalloping between the ribs. Doesn't need much sanding at all to create this effect.... So my conclusion for this project, is to go with the 1. primer/surfacer route (with a note to self re using the embossed styrene on a future project)... So below is the tailplane masked up ready for the primer surfacer. A somewhat tedious process which got me thinking about a more precise way for the main wings. And that's where the Silhouette Cameo comes to the rescue again. Below is my 'design' ready to send for cutting. I'm basically cutting out a 0.7mm wide rectangle for each of the ribs. And the leading edge riblets also 0.7mm wide but with a rounded end I did need to adjust the Grainger plans to make sure the ribs were perpendicular to the wing spare/leading edge (vs parallel with fuse centreline as drawn). Easy enough. Top of wing vs bottom of wing are slightly different. Then had to duplicate for the upper vs lower wing - then mirror all of this for the port vs starboard wing! So that's eight sets of masks Sounds like alot of work, but this'll be so much easier & precise vs replicating what I did for the tail. So switching back to the bucks for the canopy and engines, below is where I've got to. I've used 2 pack 'car bog' for filling the bucks - ie same as used by panel beaters for fixing up cars, and available from all the auto spares store. Takes a few coats to build up to what you see below. The brown filler is a one pack skim coat filler just to finish off a few blemishes. This is pretty much ready for vacforming now. (if you want more detail on the bucks - click on the link below for my DHA-3 Drover build) And for a bit more variety - I've put a bit of time into building up the Lego jig I'll be using for putting this all together. What you see below is all dry fitted (other than I've now glued on the empennage). There's a reasonable amount of time put into prepping the jig - making sure I have everything square/symmetrical, and building in the necessary wing dihedral, and wing sweepback, and incidence etc etc. Noted the bottom wing has nil dihedral for the inner span, and 3 degrees for outer span (still to be done). And upper wing has 2 degree dihedral! Oh, and the the Lego helpers have been rostered on... Next steps Get the wing rib masking cut and applied - and apply the primer/surfacer. Vacform the engines and get them glued up and fitted to wings (expect I'll do this before gluing to the fuse. Vacform the canopy and resolve it's fit with the clear fuse sides...
  25. Nice work with the detailing, correcting and scratchbuilding. I've always liked the Twin Otter - so many colour schemes to choose from!
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