Scratchbuilt 1/144 Zeppelin. Building a WWI Q Class Zepp.

[Gremlin56]

Quick primer coat on. There's a bit of touch up sanding to do, but nothing too serious.

What IS more serious: I've got some Sharpie bleeding through where I marked a few areas to be sanded/filled. That's not the end of the world - I can sand it down and hopefully remove all traces of the ink. What IS bad is, I'm almost positive there are other sharpie-ed markings that haven't bled through and which could be a ticking time bomb. Granted, the stuff that's bleeding through was 'full strength', while the stuff that's not showing was mostly sanded away, so hopefully it'll be okay but... I'm worried some unseen bit of ink might work its way out over time.

Any suggestions for creating a barrier for the ink? I know paint won't work. Future? I'm tempted to coat the entire thing in decal film... The alternative is to strip the rib tapes, sand the last coat of primer off, strip all traces of Sharpie, re-mark the rib locations, re-tape and re-prime.

Would a layer of gloss varnish do the trick?

[thorst]

Was the Sharpie water proof?

I haven't ever had an issue with a water proof Sharpie showing through more than one or two layers of primer followed by acrylic paint, and it didn't over time. If I remember correctly, the solvent in most primers will resolve the Sharpie color and make it show as it mixes. Acrylics are different, they will neither resolve the primer nor the Sharpie as efficiently as the primer, so I wouldn't be worried. If you are curious, you could make a test on some trash plastic.

Cheers,

Thorsten

[ICMF]

Yes, they're waterproof. Primer was a spray can lacquer filler primer (Rustoleum). Not sure what the paint coats will be, but likely spray can as well, as I have zero desire to paint it with a regular airbrush.

The biggest issue is, this is a problem that appears over time, so I'm looking at 6 months to a year before any tests might bear fruit. If they appear, they'll be relatively small patches that I *could* touch up, so do I gamble and hope it all works out, or go through all the work to strip the tape, sand it smooth, treat any ink spots, re-tape and re-prime.

[woody37]

Might be worth spraying some clear lacquer over the primer which should act as a good seal.

Looking forwards to seeing more progress

[ICMF]

Whoah... it's been a while since the last update.

I have been chipping away at the beast, though.

So... UPDATE!

I ended up sanding back the primer coat to eliminate all traces of Sharpie. Then another few primer coats. A few bouts of curing in the sun, followed by a few more bouts of fixing depressions and sink marks that appeared when it got too hot from sitting in the sun. More primer. More sanding. A brief diversion into a couple of touch up guns, including a Paasche model whose blue powder coat melted on contact with lacquer thinner.

It's been busy, but not particularly photogenic.

In the end, I went with a spray bomb ivory base coat. This worked well, but again, kind of tough to photograph. Once this was cured, I masked off individual sections and shot a streaky coat of various linen-ey tones to give a bit more visual interest and depth, much like David Straub's build: http://www.wwi-models.org/Photos/Events/y2006/ipms_nats/05-zeppelin/index.html Which is where it lies now:

It's quite stark at the moment, but it's not done yet.

Tailplanes have been skinned, and drilled out for rigging. The rigging took a bit of head scratching to figure out, but I think I'm on top of it now. That will be done with monofilament, after painting is completed. The nose and tail cone are still just press fit, hence the gaps.

You can also see the tail bumper in this view. It was grafted over the lower fin, made from some curved brass square-rod and styrene sheet. Other items of note include the rib tape detail on the fins, which helps camouflage the fact that I muffed up the rib spacing inside, as well as the somewhat wonky, wandering lines along the length of the balloon - unfortunately it's not razor sharp and arrow straight, but it's as good as my patience would allow.

I have also got the base roughed out (necessary before I can start adding gondolas):

56" x 12", it's built from MDF sheet and framing, cut and glued together. Aligning holes for the support rods was a little tricky, and I'm glad I don't live in an earthquake zone, but I'd rather sacrifice something that was rock solid in favour of something that looks unobtrusive and 'light'.

Next step: I'll be giving the entire airframe a coat of clear flat mixed with the base coat to blend all the tones together and ease back the contrast. Then the upper, central portion will get masked off and a coat of smoke, to simulate the looser weave used to vent excess gas. A few decals, some rigging and it's on to final assembly.

[uilleann]

No. Words.

[Teeradej]

Stunning!

[thorst]

Looks great!

If you want to go for full accuracy with the painting scheme: The different tones of the skin aren't just for visual interest on the real thing but depict the amount of dope used on the fabric. The top was doped less such that hydrogen which escaped from the gas bags could flow out of the ship and doesn't build up to an explosive mixture with the air in the interior. The sides were darker in colour, I think for strength. Here sometimes lines were seen in the fields between the girders which are in fact strengthening stripes shining through the fabric. You can see what I mean in the templates of my paper model. It would have been essentially the same on the q-class. Additionally to the dope, also the wear changed the color of the fabric, but much more subtle. If you tell me which ship you want to depict exactly, I can have a look if I have enough information to build the exact scheme.

Cheers,

Thorsten

[rmcclure]

Utterly fantastic!

[general melchett]

Thoroughly inspired build !, wonderful stuff and well worth the effort involved....look forward to seeing the final creation.

[heloman1]

Excellent work...

Colin

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Amazing. And either you live in a mansion or your wife is one tolerant lady!

[RichO]

You need to make this model kit available to all of us when you finish. I had considered building a zeppelin to scale to go with my Wingnut planes. until I figured that at 1/32 scale my zeppelin would be 18 feet long. I just don't have that kind of room, but an 8 foot zeppelin is way cool!!

Thanks for sharing with us.

[ICMF]

As an aside, and because of Thorsten's post...

The Zeppelin I'm building is L23. I picked this one almost entirely because it was shot down by a Sopwith Pup and, having a 1/144 Valom Pup kit, I figured it'd make a neat pairing. The little plane would give a sense of scale (both size and the difficulty of shooting a Zepp down), and tell a neat story. And that's about it.

But, while googling to get the picture from Wikipedia, I stumbled across this specific airframe's German Wikipedia page. Turns out it had a pretty cool career!

https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luftskib_L_23

And as another nifty little tie-in, the pilot of the Pup that killed this particular Zeppelin was Bernard Smart. He survived the war (winning multiple DSOs), and later joined his cousin's firm, Bowman Models... which made scale model steam engines, boats and trains.

If you want to go for full accuracy with the painting scheme: The different tones of the skin aren't just for visual interest on the real thing but depict the amount of dope used on the fabric. The top was doped less such that hydrogen which escaped from the gas bags could flow out of the ship and doesn't build up to an explosive mixture with the air in the interior. The sides were darker in colour, I think for strength. Here sometimes lines were seen in the fields between the girders which are in fact strengthening stripes shining through the fabric. You can see what I mean in the templates of my paper model. It would have been essentially the same on the q-class. Additionally to the dope, also the wear changed the color of the fabric, but much more subtle. If you tell me which ship you want to depict exactly, I can have a look if I have enough information to build the exact scheme.

I'm building L23 (which has a very important anniversary coming up...) so if you've got more than this one Wikipedia image, that'd be great:

(and yes, I know, I've got the wrong rudders. )

Yeah, the looser upper weave has been one of my biggest worries right from the start. It's just really, really hard to make solid paint look see-through. I even (briefly) thought about building the model out of clear styrene, which, given the amount of putty and bodywork... ha!

My current plan of attack is to mask around the 'open weave' area and spray a layer of smoke, to darken it and give a bit of depth. Then I'll add some masks to depict the strengthening stripes and shoot another layer of smoke.

You need to make this model kit available to all of us when you finish. I had considered building a zeppelin to scale to go with my Wingnut planes. until I figured that at 1/32 scale my zeppelin would be 18 feet long. I just don't have that kind of room, but an 8 foot zeppelin is way cool!!

It you've got a few grand you want to drop at Shapeways... Seriously, it's something I'd kind of looked at (or at least, what would it cost to have the balloon printed), but the costs are kind of crazy ($1000+), which is why I went the styrene sheet route in the first place. Even laser cutting the various template pieces was just stupidly expensive, hence cutting everything out by hand. I guess I could upload the gondola, gun platform and other detail bits to Shapeways for anyone that wants to tackle the project, but that feels a little bit like, 'here's a resin ejection seat, now just scratchbuild everything else'.

Plus, Thorsten's card model is an *awesome* piece of work, and it's free! Hard to compete with that. And many of the headaches I've experienced would have been greatly reduced if I'd simply copied his work more closely!

Edited August 20, 2015 by ICMF

[thorst]

Unfortunately I don't have a picture which shows more details than the one you have of this particular ship. But to me it looks as if it follows roughly the same fabric scheme as LZ 45. The equatorial band and the two above were from the darker type from the second ring in front of the horizontal fins to the ring behind the MG platform. The fields at the top should have been lighter. You also see the darker strips parallel to the rings for strength. The strips covering the seams on each ring were in a dark color on L23, in contrast to lighter fabric as seen on L13.

Sorry that I can not help further...

Thorsten

[ICMF]

The equatorial band and the two above were from the darker type from the second ring in front of the horizontal fins to the ring behind the MG platform. The fields at the top should have been lighter.

Hmm... that changes things a bit. Guess I'll have to smoke the sides and do a lighter layer on top. (what's the opposite of smoke? Ash?)

Speaking of fabric finishes, there are a few patches with a sort of wrinkled texture on your model (just above the panel with L13; directly below the front of the horizontal fins). What are they supposed to represent? I haven't seen any reference to these areas having a different finish.

And in case anyone's interested in what Thorsten is referring to, here's a decent shot. The darker area is quite clear; the lighter patch is hard to see since the top panels just naturally photograph in highlight:

It's even more clear (and complicated!) on the later Super Zeppelins:

[thorst]

The areas with the camouflage-like pattern on my LZ 45 model represent fabric which was most probably washed out of dope by the weather. They can be seen on all available pictures of this very ship, and I copied the pattern as exactly as possible. However, this is special to LZ 45, I don't know if similar effect were visible on your specimen. Unfortunately the references on it are not very good.

Thorsten

[ICMF]

Today was a very significant anniversary for this particular Zeppelin:

It was shot down 98 years ago today.

On the morning of 21st August 1917, Zeppelin L23 was sighted by a squadron of British ships taking part in minelaying operations near Hvide Sande. HMS Yarmouth, having been fitted with a special "fly off" platform, launched one of her Beardmore built Sopwith Pups flown by Second Lieutenant B.A.Smart. As the aircraft was launched, L23 tried to dodge, but Smart raced flat out at 110mph to a height of 9000'. Smart dropped to 7000' before diving to 6000' to strafe the Zeppelin with incendiary rounds. As Smart broke off his attack, he saw the Zeppelin going down in flames, its nose pointed at the sky at an angle of 45 degrees. The flames spread quickly up the L 23, leaving only the nose intact when it hit the sea.

One crew member, probably a gunner from the front end of the airship, managed to parachute from the burning airship, only to drown as no ships were in the area to effect a rescue.

The body of the sail master Johan Schüttrup washed ashore September 3, 1917 at Vigsø Strand in Thy and was buried in Vigsoe cemetery. The clothes were labeled Schüttrup 10,423th. His gravestone reads "He died for his German fatherland".

A putrefying corpse was found on 15 September 1917 in Søndervig and was buried in New parish cemetery. It was believed to be the remains of machine sailor Johannes / Hans Buhr, identified because the name 'H. Buhr 'was found on a metal plate on the corpse's belt. There is a gravestone in his honor at the cemetery in Harboøre.

Many other unidentified corpses drifted ashore on the west coast at the time, who may have been crew from L 23.

---

With no provision for landing back on ship, Smart had to ditch his aircraft, but was picked up safely. The Pup however, could not be recovered.

This was the first time an aircraft had taken off from a moving ship to engage the enemy.

In order to celebrate(?), I started work on the Pup. (I figured I had best not tempt fate with the Zeppelin today )

The Pup is a two-pack from Valom. Ironically, it was this thing, bought off a friend for, like, $5 that started the whoooole saga. I'd been toying with the idea for several months, bought the kit, saw that a Zepp had been shot down by a Pup and figured, 'well I've got the Pup, might as well do the Zeppelin to go with it.' I tend to jump into things somewhat hastily...

Anyway. The kit itself is pretty basic, with a rather hand-made feel to the masters. A bit of a throwback to older Central/Eastern European limited run kits. The plastic comes in the form of a credit card sized sprue of parts for the airframe; you get two sprues to build two Pups, but Valom could easily have fit eight in the box...

...along with two postage stamp sized PE frets for struts, the tail skid and control column. They're okay - not terribly crisp, but they'll do the job.

And a single small decal sheet with markings for three British and one Japanese airframe.

As I said, it's a simple kit. Detail's pretty sparse, so if you were expecting something on par with Revell or Eduard's recent 1/144 kits, you'll be pretty disappointed. This is what passes for cockpit detail (plus a seat, but nothing on the sidewalls):

Which I guess is fair enough, but the instructions are *hilariously* optimistic, given the actual plastic. Case in point, the kit seat is somewhat simpler than the instruction drawings would suggest:

As is the gun:

Which brings us to my planned improvements. I'll probably modify one of my 1/144 Spandaus instead of using the kit part. Yes, it's completely wrong, but compared the the kit part it's a big step up. I've also has some 1/144 wicker seats printed; no idea what they look like, but I mostly just want to stick it to WNW. I've also printed a replacement engine, since the kit part is a.) crappy looking and b.) not symmetrical (again: hand made masters)

The first step, however, was to fix the ribs. Valom depicted the ribs with recessed panel lines. These are waaay too heavy in 1/144, and - yet again because it's hand made - are completely uneven and out of alignment. Notice how the spacing is somewhat arbitrary, and several of the lines are crooked. So I slathered on a coat of Mr. Surfacer, let it cure then sanded away the excess. I'll likely pencil in the ribs once the paint is on - should be much subtler.

Also note that the cutout in the middle isn't actually centred - it's offset to one side. I have a feeling that may become a major headache...

Next, I filled the divots for locating the struts with some CA. The divots were massive and wouldn't create a positive fit, but if I just filled them with Surfacer, it would lead to a weaker glue bond come final assembly, so I drilled out the Surfacer for a much more robust CA-on-styrene bond.

The CA was smoothed out, then I marked the locating points, scribed the control surfaces and drilled out a few holes.

Edited August 22, 2015 by ICMF

[JWM]

I am deeply impressed by the idea and your all efforts! Very interesting.

However - have you considered the construction like a flying models - with all the inside construction build and then cover it with thin paper and nitrocellon laquer? This would save a lot of sanding work perhaps...

Cheers

Jerzy-Wojtek

[ICMF]

However - have you considered the construction like a flying models - with all the inside construction build and then cover it with thin paper and nitrocellon laquer? This would save a lot of sanding work perhaps...

Briefly. But I have zero experience in that field, and didn't want to use this project to learn about it. I also thought it'd be too delicate to stand up to the masking, plus it couldn't take the scribing I'll need to do. The idea certainly has merit - I've seen some pics of someone building a 1/72(?) Zeppelin that way, but... I'm a plastic modeller, so I went with plastic. It certainly would have been lighter though, which would have solved some issues I'm currently having with mounting it...

-----

I'm kind of surprised nobody's commented on my drilling...

Anyway... turns out the Pup in question (N6430) was actually an Admiralty type 9901, which means conversion. I took the opportunity to make a few jigs and templates as well. Up top are a couple of wing alignment jigs, which will also let me set the fuselage as well. In the middle is a wing diagram, to mark off rib locations, ailerons, fold lines and gun slot. Bottom left is a jig to align the landing gear; bottom middle are some guides for the struts and bottom right shows the gun slot on its own:

That done, the first order of business was to carve out the slot for the gun - some RNAS Pups had a modified gun mounting with a slot in the upper wing so that tripod-mounted gun could be fired vertically. After marking the edges off, it was a fairly simple matter to carve out the hole using a Gunze chisel. Less easy... notice that the wing doesn't really fit my drawing, which was pulled directly from the scale drawings in the Pup Datafile. The kit wing is wrong, but fixing it could open a whole can of worms, so I'll probably just live with it. This also highlights the wonky rib lines and if you look carefully, you'll see that not even the cutout is the right size...

Next order of business: fixing the instrument panel. The kit part looks terrible. It'd be better with a smooth piece of plastic + decal instruments, but Valom weren't that generous. So, I measured up the kit part (2.5 x 3mm), sketched it out in illustrator and printed a bunch of copies - with delicate work like this, it's good to have some backups. Next I flooded the paper with thin CA, which gives it a hard, sort of plasticky texture, sort of like thin styrene sheet (a technique learned from the great Rato Marczak).

The various bezels were carefully drilled out, then the panel trimmed from the sheet. And then it vanished, so I had to do it again. THIS time I glued the panel to some .010" styrene sheet, leaving a sizable tab to increase visibility, then tucked it safely in the zip loc baggie with the decals. Hopefully the revised panel is a bit of an improvement over the kit part:

Next up, I cut away the raised bulge over the lower wing mount. It's a standard item in many WWI kits, but I felt it would push the floor up too high - the fuselage is only a few mm high to begin with, so I need all the room I can get. Then I CAed some .2mm monofilament to the sidewalls, to represent the framing. It's not perfect, but it should add a nice, subtle detail. Unfortunately, it's a bugger to photograph (funny thing about 'invisible line'...) I'd just like to remind you that a.) this picture is WAY bigger than the actual part, b.) it looks much better in person and c.) it'll be fixed by the time it gets primered. Ahem.

Finally, I cut a replacement floor out of .005" sheet stock. Again, the kit floor is too thick. It's also WAY too wide - see that panel line on the right side? I've already trimmed that much off the left side, just to see if it'd be enough. It wasn't. Not even close. Kind of ridiculous having a 5mm wide part be 2mm too wide.

Next order of business: load up the airbrush and get some paint on the cockpit.

[CedB]

Amazing work going on here... and now some tiny Pups?

Our local news has been reporting the last remaining Pup going on display, background story here and latest news here - some nice shots. Long way from you though, sadly

[DMC]

Excellent, just keeps getting better.

[ICMF]

More updates.

(gondolas are just test fit here; also, note the Pup for scale)

Shading has been done on the balloon. The top section was masked off and sprayed with a thinned-out mixture of the ivory base to lighten it up, simulating the looser weave up top to allow gas to escape. Simple and straightforward. I briefly considered using some fine mesh or pantyhose as a mask, to give a 'woven' texture, but decided it probably wasn't worth the hassle, and would likely look overscale. So, just paint.

The sides were then masked off to simulate the darker, reinforced fabric. This was less straightforward. I originally started by adding 2mm wide strips of paper over the panels to simulate the fabric strips visible here, then oversprayed the area with an ink and future mix. This... failed. The Future soaked into the paper, it ran, it was blotchy and the edges were too hard. Luckily it stripped off easily with Windex/Windowlene. Attempt #2, I ditched the paper and used a mix of paints to get a darker look... which I didn't like; so I tried another mix, which I also didn't like once applied; then some Tamiya smoke, which looked too dark, followed by more paint, which looked meh, followed - finally - by a streaky coat of Humbrol 71.

The net result actually looks good. All the thin, tint-ey layers add a bit of translucency to it, and the blotchy Humbrol gives it a weathered, natrual look which I quite like. A bit touch and go for a minute, though.

I also rigged the rudders. Simple job with some .1mm monofilament, pre-coloured with a Sharpie. Fun fact: each control surface uses a single length of monofilament; it's just wound 'round and around.

Also, also, I finalized the base. I think I mentioned above, but originally I had hoped to have it supported by just a couple pairs of 1.5mm hypo tubes, running through the gondola. With all the weight of the putty and paint, and with raising it up off the base (I had originally planned to have it 'grounded'), there was no way that was going to work. Plan B was to use a length of carbon fiber tubing as the main brace in the middle - it's nice and rigid, but will flex rather than bend under strain, plus being black, it's unobtrusive. Plus, the thought of mounting such an archaic form of aircraft on a high tech material makes me giggle. The balloon isn't perfectly balanced, however, so I'll still need supports in the nose and tail just to keep it from pitching. All this had to be done before I could start adding the gondolas and scaffolding.

Final update on the balloon - I had a good modelling friend drop by with some much-needed accoutrements last week:

Bit of sanding and a bit of gloss, and it'll be ready for the markings.

----

I've also made some progress on the Pup.

First up, the cockpit got a coat of paint, then a couple of extra details for the instrument panel made from some brass rod. The instruments were also picked out with black and white paint.

Next up, because this particular Pup had a tripod-mounted, jacket-less Lewis gun, I had to scratch a gun (you'll recall, the kit part looks terrible, and was just a jacketed barrel anyway). I lopped the barrel off of one of my printed Spandaus, glued a length of .2mm and .3mm brass rod together inside a length of 1mm tube, then grafted this onto the Spandau body. Not exactly accurate, but good enough for the purpose. The brass 'arrow' beneath the modified gun will actually become the tripod mount.

The fuselage was glued up, lower wing and tailplanes attached and it was on to the jig:

Normally I'm pretty cavalier about adding upper wings, but normally I'm dealing with kits that have SOME sort of positive fit. The Valom kit has tiny, crude, PE struts that (maybe?) fit into vague dimples. It was really obvious that it would be a hassle, so I decided to make a jig to hold both wings securely in place while I added the struts. The templates were as mentioned above. They were spray-mounted on some styrene sheet, then cut out and hot-glued to a piece of MDF, using LEGOs to set the spacing and alignment. Incidentally, I went with hot glue because it'd set quickly (no need to clamp it for hours) and be slightly flexible, allowing me to squeeze the plane in and out.

And it worked great. Actually installing the struts, however, not so much. Turns out, two of the interplane struts were slightly too long, while everything else was too short by at least 1/2mm. My first attempt (yeah...) was with epoxy, as I wanted something more robust than CA to take the knocks of construction. I eventually managed to get everything in place, but when the glue cured and I started trying to trim away the excess, the struts just popped right out. Not exactly a great bond.

Frustrated, I knocked the rest of the struts out, scraped off the rest of the epoxy, and resigned myself to plan B. I wanted a secure, robust locating pin, and that meant I had to make it myself. So out with the soldering iron and .2mm brass rod.

It's not a perfect job. I know it's not a perfect job. But these things are tiny, and they're going to get brush painted, and they'll be buried between the wings of a tiny aircraft that will be overshadowed by a much larger build, so, screw it, it's good enough.

Seriously, did I mention these are tiny? It'll do!

And with some alignment pins added, construction was a whole lot faster, easier and more solid.

I do have some excess wire to lop off, but it's an acceptable trade-off. Besides, I'll have to touch up the wings after rigging anyway.

Edited September 5, 2015 by ICMF

[hendie]

fantastic work.

I can't believe the scale of that thing against the pup - I had to look for a moment to see where it was

[kev67]

Excellent stuff