1:72 CMR de Havilland Sea Venom FAW.53

[Martian]

I always try and give vac-form canopies a couple of immersions in Klear (aka Future) I find that it not only improves clarity but also stiffens the part somewhat. Might be worth a try?

Martin

[Hamden]

Glad to hear your back in the saddle, sorry you came back to a problem though!

Roger

[Navy Bird]

On 4/14/2016 at 01:43, rob85 said:

That sounds hugely annoying bill!

Rob

 

True fact - even more annoying was that it seems I sanded through some of the masks in one spot, so I had to remove the masks, and Micro-Mesh the spot back to looking nicely polished.

 

On 4/14/2016 at 02:20, Max Headroom said:

Glad you're back in the saddle but ouch that must have been a clenched fist moment. Have you retrieved it from the carpet monster?

Trevor

 

I was lucky, it never left the workbench.

 

On 4/14/2016 at 02:46, NAVY870 said:

Dont get too excited fairing the canopy into the fuselage, the whole thing sits on top of the

fuselage, held down with a pile of through bolts.

Good to see you on the mend.

 

You're right, of course. Some of the pictures I've seen look right nasty in some spots. But I'm always anal about stuff like this. I guess I don't like a canopy that looks like it's just sitting there. I want it to look like it's part of the aircraft. It's a nasty habit of mine - it leads to situations like this!

 

On 4/14/2016 at 06:34, martin hale said:

I always try and give vac-form canopies a couple of immersions in Klear (aka Future) I find that it not only improves clarity but also stiffens the part somewhat. Might be worth a try?

Martin

 

Sure - I did that before it was glued on in the first place. I knew I was going to have to use CA adhesive due to the canopy being a bit too wide, and the Future not only makes the canopy more clear, it prevents any fogging from the superglue.

 

I'm heading to a follow-up appointment with my doc, and I'll return to the Sea Venom tonight. The windscreen is back on, and everything is almost blended in. Getting pretty close to paint!

 

Cheers,

Bill

[keefr22]

Apologies Bill, but I gave your first post a like - not because of your travails with the canopy, but because of your PS...!!

Keith

[Navy Bird]

Methinks my Sea Venom has shed a ball bearing - there be a strange rattle up front.

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. It's going to have to rattle - no way I'm opening up the fuselage to fix it! It can't escape anyway...

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Strange noises up front? That'll be the Observer

[giemme]

Methinks my Sea Venom has shed a ball bearing - there be a strange rattle up front.

Cheers,

Bill

PS. It's going to have to rattle - no way I'm opening up the fuselage to fix it! It can't escape anyway...

Your aren't going to shake it like a rattle can after it is completed (are you??? ) Just don't tell anybody else, only us will know

Strange noises up front? That'll be the Observer

Ciao

[Procopius]

Strange noises up front? That'll be the Observer

Very tangentially, do you think the Observer in a Sea Vixen appreciated the irony of being confined to a small, largely windowless room?

[Ascoteer]

That's the best place for JAFOs - that way they can't hurt themselves.

[Navy Bird]

On 4/15/2016 at 10:18, Procopius said:

Very tangentially, do you think the Observer in a Sea Vixen appreciated the irony of being confined to a small, largely windowless room?

 

The infamous Sea Vixen coal hole - it would drive me crazy that's for sure. Later models had a sun roof, didn't they?

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Duncan B]

Very tangentially, do you think the Observer in a Sea Vixen appreciated the irony of being confined to a small, largely windowless room?

Maybe not but as an Apprentice (permanently tired) it was a great place to catch some ZZZZs as was the engine bay of a Jet Provost, the cabin of the Basset Beagle (lovely plush leather chairs), any suitably large jet-pipe and probably the daftest was a mate who tied his hands up onto a Leonides while lying underneath it so it looked like he was working but was actually sound asleep (he's now the Technical Manager of a UK Airline and probably wouldn't see the funny side if one of his staff did the same).

Duncan B

[Martian]

The later models did indeed have a "sun roof" but then they went and painted the inside of it black as the extra light interfered with the view on the radar scope.

Great to see you back at the bench, even if the kit is fighting you at the moment.

Martin

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

The sun roof was mostly to do with being frangible; early Vixen Observers had to wait for the canopy to go before the seat fired, whereas after the change the seat punched through the canopy. If you look at a Vixen cockpit you will see that the seats are 'handed', and part of the difference is that the right hand seat had "ears" sticking out of the top - presumably the thing that punched through the canopy.

When I were a lad in the FAA there were still a few old & bold ex-Vixen Lookers serving. Most ex-Vixen crews are pretty complimentary about it as an aircraft / weapon system (especially in comparison with contemporaries like the Javelin), but I think it's fair to say that the whole 'coal hole' experience wasn't a barrel of laughs. Mind you, Sea King Observers couldn't see out either, and it never seemed to bother them much.

[Navy Bird]

Hi mates,

 

In case anyone still cares about this build, I'm continuing my efforts to blend in the canopy in a way that I am satisfied with. This has been the craziest canopy I've ever had to blend in - it's either been sent directly by Beelzebub to haunt (taunt?) me, or I've completely lost my touch. Perhaps my "touch" was powered by opiates, and now that they're gone...oh dear.

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. Wifey says "It looks fine, slap some stickers on it for crying out loud."

[NAVY870]

Like I said before, dont bust a gut over it, its a dirty big casting that sits on

top of the fuselage with a bit of madapolin slapped on to make it nice.

As for still caring, its WZ.895 my care factor borders on obsession

Edited April 17, 2016 by NAVY870

[Ed Russell]

In case anyone still cares about this build,

I imagine that there are lots of people like me following with interest.....

It looks fine, slap some stickers on it for crying out loud

Ahhh it's good to have a consultant's second opinion............

[Navy Bird]

OK, time for some pictures seeing as I haven't posted any lately.

 

Before the canopy went on, it was necessary to paint up the gubbins that are located on the shelf immediately behind the ejection seats, and under the rear canopy. I did this back when I was starting my rehab program, so I took the lazy way out, painting the area flat black and then dry-brushing to bring out the details.

 

 

 

You can also see the areas where I used my red putty to clean up the fuselage and boom seams, and some places where I used some white spackle paste to fill some very tiny areas. I used the spackle in these areas since it's hard to sand there, and the spackle can be smoothed with a damp paintbrush.

 

(Notice how you can see "through" the wing in certain places? The resin is pretty thin!)

 

You may recall that I chose to open the canopy after all, and after cleverly using both vacuforms provided by CMR, all pieces were dipped in Future and ready to go:

 

 

I used superglue to attach the rear canopy and the front windscreen. They were a wee bit wider than the fuselage, so I started by first gluing just the port side of the clear pieces and letting that cure for a while. After the glue was cured, I proceeded to the starboard side. To make the canopy line up with the fuselage, I had to squeeze the pieces until I had a satisfactory alignment, and then apply the superglue. This was accomplished with a calm professional demeanor, and a mastery of modelling skills. NOT! This was a royal pain in the bum, and I cursed like a sailor! It literally took me an hour to get this right! Arghhh!

 

Navy Bird's Law: Superglue will not cure quickly if you're holding parts in place. It will only cure quickly if something is inadvertently put in the wrong place, at which point it will stick immediately, never to be moved again.

 

Eventually, though, I was happy with the alignment of the two sides of the canopy with the fuselage. I sprayed some Gunze H333 Extra Dark Sea Grey as a "primer" to see how my seams looked, and it was then that I realized that the canopy really wasn't matching the fuselage shape very well. I would have to blend it together with some of my red putty. I thought about using the white spackle paste, but it would not work well for this type of blending.

 

I would sand the putty, spray some EDSG to see what it looked like, then reapply the putty in areas that needed more work, followed by some more sanding, etc. This went on for several cycles - driving me more loony than I actually am in the process. The next photos show where I was somewhere in the middle of this debacle.

 

 

 

Each iteration brought me closer to my goal. However, it seemed like each time I only got halfway there. Meaning, of course, that I'll never actually arrive.

 

Here is the latest (you'll note that there is a lot more EDSG applied, and the areas where I'm still blending the canopy have gotten very small indeed). I sprayed all that EDSG in order to give myself the false impression that I'm moving forward with the build. Wifey may be right, I should just slap some stickers on! After I spray some Sky on the bottom, of course.

 

 

Sometime in the distant past, I built the Matchbox 1:32 Sea Venom as a favor for the guy who owned the LHS. He hung it up in the store, and it was still there when he closed up the shop. I wonder what happened to it. I thought it was a pretty nice kit at the time.

 

Cheers,

Bill, Resident Styrene Sniffer and Opiate Killer Man

 

PS. The EDSG/Sky boundary looks like a sharp edge in all the photos - my rolls of Kabuki tape stand ready!

[Procopius]

Each iteration brought me closer to my goal. However, it seemed like each time I only got halfway there. Meaning, of course, that I'll never actually arrive.

Are you familiar with the old Severn Darden routine about Zeno's Paradox? I reproduce it below for any who might have missed it.

Now we come to another pre-Socratic, Zeno, for time and motion, and

Zeno's Paradox. Now, a paradox is something which when it isn't, it

is, paradoxically. And Zeno's Paradox is that if Achilles, the great

Greek hero and athlete, were to get into a race with a tortoise, that

he couldn't win. Silly, isn't it.

Well, if, for example, the toroise was here and he would give the

tortoise, say, a 10-foot headstart, just to be fair to the beast, and

there would be--it would take, say, Achilles, 1 second to go 1 foot.

So at the end of 9 seconds, he would have one foot to go in one

second, ja? And in a half of a second, he would still have a half of a

foot to go, you see? And in a hundredth of a second he would have a

hundredth of a foot to go. And in a millionth of a second, he would

have a millionth of a foot to go. And since time and space are both

infinitely divisible, he would never pass the turtle! Heh, heh.

But this is ridiculous! Anyone in this room could win a race with a

turtle, you know, and we're not great heroes and athletes. Even for

example, some old, very dignified person, like Bertrand Russell, HE

could win a race with a tortoise. And if he couldn't win it, he could

outsmart it, ja?

Nonetheless, I have discovered possibly the meaning for this paradox.

I was reading recently a book called "Greek Pots In Polish Museums" by

John Davidson Beasley. 8vo, $9.75 and worth every penny of it. Big

wide margins--er, I'm getting off my point. Anyhow, in there is a

picture of a pot that has on it a picture of a ripe [?] archaic

tortoise of the kind that Zeno would have known about. Now, it isn't a

little, flat American tortoise. IT'S A LITTLE BULLET-SHAPED TORTOISE

WITH LONG, SINEWY LEGS, ABOUT 4 FEET LONG, AND IT COULD RUN LIKE

CRAZY!

Now this would seem to explain it, ja? But it doesn't! Because Homer,

who never lied about anything, said that Achilles could, if he wanted

to, beat any man or beast in a foot race. Now what does this mean, "if

he wanted to"? You know how some people can't step on the line in the

sidewalk? Achilles couldn't pass a tortoise! He was a very sick hero!

[Blogs On]

"Navy Bird's Law: Superglue will not cure quickly if you're holding parts in place. It will only cure quickly if something is inadvertently put in the wrong place, at which point it will stick immediately, never to be moved again."

Oh so very true, sir! I was able to witness the in action whilst at the bench last night. Intake to bench bonding was instantaneous !!

[CedB]

+1 on "Navy Bird's Law", so true. Might I add to that "when you reach for the activator the part will immediately ping off and stick to the first thing it touches"?

Looking good Bill, vanishing seams all around

[keefr22]

Are you familiar with the old Severn Darden routine about Zeno's Paradox? I reproduce it below for any who might have missed it.

Now we come to another pre-Socratic, Zeno, for time and motion, and

Zeno's Paradox. Now, a paradox is something which when it isn't, it

is, paradoxically. And Zeno's Paradox is that if Achilles, the great

Greek hero and athlete, were to get into a race with a tortoise, that

he couldn't win. Silly, isn't it.

Well, if, for example, the toroise was here and he would give the

tortoise, say, a 10-foot headstart, just to be fair to the beast, and

there would be--it would take, say, Achilles, 1 second to go 1 foot.

So at the end of 9 seconds, he would have one foot to go in one

second, ja? And in a half of a second, he would still have a half of a

foot to go, you see? And in a hundredth of a second he would have a

hundredth of a foot to go. And in a millionth of a second, he would

have a millionth of a foot to go. And since time and space are both

infinitely divisible, he would never pass the turtle! Heh, heh.

But this is ridiculous! Anyone in this room could win a race with a

turtle, you know, and we're not great heroes and athletes.

But was he actually racing a tortoise or a turtle?? Rather different beasts & enquiring minds need to know. Or perhaps they don't...

Anyway, great to see you back fighting the Sea Venom rather than your medications Bill, no doubt victory will soon be yours in both battles, if they aren't already won!

keith

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Looking good, Bill (& even better to see you back at the bench).

What is "spackle"?

[Max Headroom]

Navy Bird's Rule of Supergluing needs to be pinned for all to see.

Trevor

[Navy Bird]

Axiom: A fiasco is a bottle in which Italian wine is sold.

Corollary: If you're ever stuck with a fiasco, it's best to make spectacles of yourselves so that you have some glasses to drink it with.

 

Not that the Sea Venom is a fiasco yet, but I can only work on this canopy for so long!

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Martian]

PS. Wifey says "It looks fine, slap some stickers on it for crying out loud."

Methinks Wifey might be right, they usually are.

If you are really still worried about the canopy, and I don't think you need to be, then a smear of Perfect Putty, smoothed over with a moistened cotton wool bud, should blend things in nicely.

Martin