Mediterranean biplanes-Swordfish and Gladiator

[Hamden]

These are coming along nicely well done

Roger

[Vulcanicity]

Thanks Roger!

After much faffing around with little pots of paint, here we are! I was amazed to count and find that the Gladiator has no fewer than seven major colours!

I have been scratching my head over Dark Slate Grey. Traditionally I've always used Humbrol 102, which I realise is a bit bright greenish for accuracy. Now Humbrol have bought out 224 which I bought and trialled for this build. To tell the truth however, I just don't like it. Compared to colour photos of FAA aircraft, it's more accurately dull and greyish than 102 (less green) but it's also much too washed-out and beige-looking. Applied next to Extra Dark Sea Grey, the contrast is very stark, not at all like the subtle contrast between colours visible in photos.

Now of course, what I should have done was bought a pot of Xtracrylix to try out, but having wasted money on one pot of paint I didn't like, I'm afraid to admit I went back to 102 instead. To my eyes it's certainly no more inaccurate, and with the less stark contrast actually looks much better. plus it matches my existing FAA machines.

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I haven't shown any pictures of the engines yet, as there hasn't been much to see. However, I have had a fair bit to do with the Gladiator, as N5520 carried a Blenheim prop.

By sheer good luck, I had a resin prop hub from the MPM Blenheim in my spares box. Unfortunately it's just the base of the hub, as it's supposed to have a spinner attached for the Finnish version.

However, it's a good base to build on, and having the MPM Blenheim being stripped down concurrently with this build helps.

For blades I'm reshaping and shortening an old prop from the Airfix Lancaster. So here's the prop blades before modification, together with my work so far on the hub:

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The blades needed thinning and re-profiling towards the roots. I've now finished all three, but here's a shot to compare the unmodified blade (left), the modified version (middle) and a blade from that handy MPM Blenheim (right).

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Until next time!

Edited June 13, 2014 by Vulcanicity

[Winenut]

Loving the amazing biplane bibuild!

looks great so far.

Chocks away!

[Vulcanicity]

Thanks!

These are coming on apace now. With the painting all done, it was time to assemble the wings to the fuselages. The Gladiator was pretty painless, but the Swordfish gave me a good deal of grief. This was partly becaase I made that mistake in assembling the inner struts to the top wing. They were set at quite the wrong angle so that the insert which fits into the bottom wing didn't fit without bending the struts considerably. Lots of bending them to test fit had basically caused them to break off at the ends.. In the end I had to apply the bottom wings with just the outer struts to locate them, and add the four inner struts individually afterwards.

Since this I've also mounted them on their wheels. I'll finish off the dark grey on the tyres after the final flat coat.

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I then turned my attention to the engines and cowlings. Here is the Gladiator's built up.

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To me it's the weakest part of this excellent kit. The bumps over the cylinder heads are pretty faint and weakly moulded compared with the real thing, and the top one is irritatingly right on a joint in the cowling. Airfix also missed the shallow bulges in the collector ring in front of the exhausts, made a poor representation of the restraining strips holding the exhausts into the cowling ring, and missed the four small latch panels on each side of the cowling altogether!

I dealt with the latter issue with Tamiya tape, but left the other problems as is:

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Lastly, I finished off the prop hub for the Gladiator. Only the yellow base is resin from the Blenheim, the rest is scratchbuilt.

DSCF0087 by Vulcanicity558, on Flickr

Edited June 21, 2014 by Vulcanicity

[tonyot]

Looking very nice indeed,......what did you use for your Sky Grey underside colour as it looks very good?

Cheers

Tony

[AdrianMF]

They are both looking fab. I bet you are looking forward to two sets of rigging!

Regards,

Adrian

[Vulcanicity]

Thanks both!

Tony: I used Airfix's suggestion in the Swordfish instructions, namely Humbrol 64 (wot I used to use for medium sea grey when I was a small snotty kid!). I agree it looks the part-I'll be using it again.

Adrian: funny you should mention that. Ms. Vulcanicity even made mention of how quiet and calm I'd been rigging! To be honest it was a breeze, mostly due to switching from 0.5mm to 0.3mm holes I think. The CA holds the wires much better in the smaller holes, and with care no filling is required afterwards. Trying to sand back the filler (or worse, trying to trim it with a scalpel!) right next to the wires has historically been the stage that has made me stressed and caused wires to ping.

Here are the results. All done with only one slipped wire to re-attach halfway through!

After finishing the final flat coat, I'll run along the wires with some gunmetal.

Next up was decals, weathering and some final finishing on the engine/cowling assemblies. I've left these loose until after the flat coat, as I don't want to loose the nice sheeny collector rings, and I can't be bothered to mask off the engines and cowling rings.

Here's the Gladiator prop finished and ready to go on. I'm quite pleased with this, as to me it does look rather like a DH constant speed prop off a Blenheim (Like it's supposed to!)

Unfortunately 'cos it's black you can't really see much of the hub detail in this shot.

DSCF0093 by Vulcanicity558, on Flickr

On the home straight!

[Winenut]

Awesome subjects and great builds

I don't know if I missed it in the thread but how did you do your rigging and what materials?

[Vulcanicity]

Thanks Winenut!

Unfortunately the rigging thread I use is of completely unknown origin. My mum had it in her sewing box, and lent it to me to do rigging when I was about 14 or 15, so I've had it about 10 years. (and still not given it back!). It's just a fine (c.0.1-0.2mm) nylon clear thread, non-stretchy, and it comes on a plain white reel. I suspect it came from a haberdashers (remember them?!) years back.

I just drill holes in the wings (both kits even provide little dimples to guide you in some places, and use small blobs of superglue to anchor the thread in the holes - I usually apply a bead of glue to the thread and gently pull it through the hole until the glue blob soaks into the hole. After that it's basically wait a minute or so, and repeat, pulling taught at the other end. With a long enough thread, you can loop it through multiple holes and do several lengths at once. Once the whole lot is dry I use a new Swann-Morton blade to skim the loose ends , and any excess glue off the wing surface. It's vital to use a super-sharp blade, because otherwise you can just pull all the glue out of the hole and the thread goes loose.You need to slice the excess blobs of glue off neatly while leaving enough in the hole to keep the thread anchored in.

As I said in the last post, having invested in 0.3mm drills has made the whole lot much easier as the holes don't need any filler afterwards. I did break six drill bits in the course of this build however!

This is the last pre-RFI post. With the decals on and weathering done, the models got a flat coat from the Humbrol spray can, and had the engines fitted.

All that was left was a little final construction. The main outstanding job was some ordnance-up until now the models only had one Vickers gun between them!

I read that Swordfish "5A" carried six 250lb bombs and one parachute flare for the Taranto mission, so this is what I added. I also found out (after I'd attached it!) that the internal fuel tank in the observer's position was probably only carried by the torpedo-carrying aircraft at Taranto! So out it came...

I hate painting bombs, especially yellow ones with red rings around them. This is as good as I could manage:

They look OK on the model, but I'm glad they're under the wings!

The Gladiators in Malta had head armour attached to the canopy support post behind the pilot's head. I have an old magazine build of the Pavla kit as N5519 in which the modeller added a sort of trapezoid shape of plasticard, but careful study of photos confirmed that it follows the shape of the canopy:

Airfix would have you attach a separate part to replace the cut-out pilot door. Mercifully, I kept the cutout (and did the cut carefully!) because the replacement part is rubbish. No prizes for guessing which one I kept, painted and attached!

With that done and a scratchbuilt gunsight added, it was time to put the canopies on, add the Swordfish's Lewis gun and the Quickboost Brownings to the Gladiator, and finish off some little bits of detail painting.

Da-da!

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I've been pleasantly suprised how painless this exercise has been (so has Ms. Vulcanicity!), and I think further biplane bi-builds might just be the answer to attack my ever-fattening stash. So watch out in the autumn- I've got something large and Matchbox-shaped to come!

Edited July 4, 2014 by Vulcanicity

[StephenCJ]

You have done a wonderful job on those kits.

[Tomoshenko]

Excellent build all round. A good reference as well. Like your rigging technique in particular.

[Winenut]

Bravo! and thanks for the tips on the rigging....now where's my mum's sewing kit!

[Brandy]

Nice work on both of these. I must admit Airfix have done a great job with their new mouldings - my one complaint would be the tramline size panel lines, which will need filling! Interesting approach to the rigging, I always rig after painting, but I use the same drill and thread method which works great!

Ian

Edited July 5, 2014 by limeypilot

[Hamden]

Stunning pair Great job they really look the part

Roger

[Karel Wod]

Nice work

Karel