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[Another] Matchbox Swordfish


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Well that looks bloody brilliant. I had a bit of a panic when I saw "the brown trouser" but huzah! The rubbed off effect is stunning. The grot in the ribs is great. (Never thought I'd say that today. 😜)

Go and get a well earned cup o' tea.

John.

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Well that looks bloody brilliant. I had a bit of a panic when I saw "the brown trouser" but huzah! The rubbed off effect is stunning. The grot in the ribs is great. (Never thought I'd say that today. )

Go and get a well earned cup o' tea.

John.

Tea has officially been drunk. As has two large Martinis. And a beef Madras. :)
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Goshdarnit,

Midweek and only now able to get the carcass to the bench. Stuart Lloyd's excellent and erudite volume on FAA camo and markings arrived in the post this morning - too late to save me from any egregious colour errors but I see why it's name-checked by so many people on the site. Superb. As a bonus my youngest nabbed it and can now tell a Skua from Fulmar...

A limited window for operations this evening so straight down to business getting the elevator and rudder cables CA'd to their respective entrance points on the rear fuselage:

rig_001_zps6vcr6uhf.jpg

They'll need a dab of grey to blend in, though I do seem to recall seeing a colour pic online somewhere where they appeared to have been painted with the same camo colour as the fuselage; I'm not going to obsess about control cable colours at this stage though given the nerdstorm :winkgrin: I set off by posing a question on colour scale effects over on the 'Paint' part of the forum at the weekend...

Then onto one of those fiddly bits I'd been dreading - building the control horns on rudder and elevator to attach these cables to. I'd umm'ed and ahh'd about what to use knowing at this scale that the weak spot is going to be the area available at the bottom of each horn to attach it to the fuselage. In the end I plumped for plasticard, two larger ones for the rudder, four smaller for the elevator:

rig_002_zpsszcj7s4l.jpg

Profanity guidelines on the forum prevent a full and accurate account of the procedure involved in attaching these items to their respective points. Rudder and lower elevator first:

rig_003_zpshhvh5lvb.jpg

Followed by the upper elevator once they'd cured:

rig_004_zpsoazlqaot.jpg

When you look at this arrangement, the Swordfish experts on the forum will immediately hone in one the visible compromises I had to make regarding the thickness of the horns and their respective positions on the elevator: the horns are obviously too thick for this scale and had to be moved outboard a little more than on the real thing. Any smaller and the horns would have been unusable to attach rigging to-any closer together and elevator and rudder horns would clash. As it is I'm expecting further Anglo-Saxon linguistics when affixing the cables to them tomorrow.

The PE racks for the flares are starting to prey on my mind now. I'm honour-bound at this stage to finish the job properly so need to bite the bullet on this and get stuck in :pilot:

Tony

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Good work sir, and what a fine combiation - hot curry, alcohol and a Fairey Swordfish! Fixing the control horns is a pain as there is so little surface area to glue, and to hold tight when you tension the cables. Apologies for another I told you so know it all moment, but I prefer to make them out of a single piecxe, then drill a hole, albeit small and fiddly, completely through the rudder and elevators, and fix the upper and lower actuators in place as a single piece. Stronger and less fiddly.

Edited by Tomoshenko
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Apologies for another I told you so know it all moment, but I prefer to make them out of a single piecxe, then drill a hole, albeit small and fiddly, completely through the rudder and elevators, and fix the upper and lower actuators in place as a single piece. Stronger and less fiddly.

Thanks for the encouragement Tomo...

You know that fixing procedure of yours makes much more sense than Mr. Sticky Fingers here gluing his thumb to the rudder (twice). I'm going to steal...err...introduce that idea into my next biplane build. That and get myself a cheap Dremel clone off the 'bay.

Just been looking at that fancy silver Glad of yours. Some lovely rigging work and those skis are just outrageous. Looks like I'm off to Albion for some tubing as well. What diameter did you use for the gun replacements?

Tony

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"You know that fixing procedure of yours makes much more sense than Mr. Sticky Fingers here gluing his thumb to the rudder (twice). I'm going to steal...err...introduce that idea into my next biplane build"

I don't think you need to ask what experience lead me to hit upon that technique...fingers, glued, tailplane...re-arrange ;)

"What diameter did you use for the gun replacements?"

Can't quite remember. I think it was 0.6 for the guns and 0.8 for the muzzles or summat. I tend to use a slightly thinner diameter than the kit version. You can get nickel and brass tubing - brass softer and easier to cut, nickel good for oleos or if you want a chrome / polished look for pitots. You can get them in selection packs such as 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 or 0.3, 0.5, 0.9. They're designed to slide fit, so invaluable for scratch building. Well worth the outlay and lots of fun. Can't recommend them enough. Okay not quite as good as alcohol and curry, but you get my drift...

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I did the same as Tomoshenko for rudder and elevator control cables and worked from the other end. So I drilled a hole right through the rudder and each elevator and glued in a short metal post. CA'd my control cable to the post - cut a little over length the thread and CA'd through the fuselage side. It's much stronger, less of a faff and easier to do...

Now to persuade Mrs GB that she wants to make Thai Green Curry this evening, I'll buy the beer...

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I did the same as Tomoshenko for rudder and elevator control cables and worked from the other end. So I drilled a hole right through the rudder and each elevator and glued in a short metal post. CA'd my control cable to the post - cut a little over length the thread and CA'd through the fuselage side. It's much stronger, less of a faff and easier to do...

Now to persuade Mrs GB that she wants to make Thai Green Curry this evening, I'll buy the beer...

Am so using this 'cut and thrust' method next time rather than the current 'glue and pray'. Get stuck in to that curry!

Ok, so this is a bit of a mega-post of images as I had today off and basically got stuck in to the last really fiddly bits of the build. I realize I'd been finding other things to do rather than tackle these so time to man up...

Prior to rigging up to their respective control horns, untangling and application of a coat of grey for the 'cat's whiskers':

thurs_001_zpskddiz29n.jpg

Leaving that part aside for a while, onto the main event - a first ever bash at using PE for the flare racks:

thurs_002_zpslwbetccl.jpg

A ruler for scale so you can appreciate the scale of racks - that's not modelling it's nanotechnology surely :yikes:thurs_003_zpsur9fqahw.jpg

I'd looked at a few Y-tube posts last night about techniques so made sure I was cutting the bits out on a hard surface with a sharp blade. Hang-on, these parts look a bit familiar...Space Invaders!

thurs_004_zpsrbr7yek7.jpg

I'd decided to try a variation on the razor blade/ruler trick for bending, using two pieces of one of those long Stanley blades snapped in half. It worked surprisingly well despite my inexperience. Here's the first fold of some ridiculously small tabs at either end of the rack. There's some equally small mounting brackets to glue onto these bits later believe it or not...

thurs_005_zpsyq2kvmys.jpg

Then the 'hangy-down bits that hold the bang-bangs'...I've got to be honest sometimes it was a little hard to work out which direction to fold these elements initially as the instructions show a rather ambiguous looping arrow:

thurs_006_zpsjdfhp80f.jpg

At this stage I was pleasantly surprised how with a bit of concentration I seemed able to get the hang of this folding metal lark. Then of course the gluing stage and reality set in:

thurs_007_zpscpk4xtjg.jpg

I know some people use accelerator with the CA in this situation but I'm rather glad I didn't as there was a fair bit of wiggling to get the tiny piece onto the rack and lined-up straight in two dimensions. The first row completed:

thurs_008_zpsiu5ddpsq.jpg

Once both racks were done to this level, I decided to make an 'executive decision' :pipe: You can see two different metal lengths in the photo below. The smaller of the two are diagonal braces; no matter how I tried, without a magnifying glass and some very fine pointed surgical tweezers there was just no way of fitting it accurately in place between the uprights:

thurs_009_zpsggmf8jqr.jpg

At this scale it's such a minor detail that it is not going to compromise the build so I simply left them out and attached the longer horizontals without them. The last elements were the miniscule mounting brackets I mentioned earlier - gluing these in place - at least accurately - is a complete :hmmm: nightmare. I got them done but don't know can you even notice them in this photo:

thurs_010_zpsil9amf4w.jpg

Having done a quick dry fit to test the racks at this stage, it's apparent that these little bits add so little space between the wing and the rack that you can really leave them out without any heartache.

Rather helpfully Marabu include a drilling guide on the PE sheet to mark out the holes on the wings correctly. Less helpfully these guide holes are so small that you'll need to drill the PE to be able to fit something like a 0.3mm pencil nib (or similar through) to mark the holes out on the wings:

thurs_012_zpszyyky0dk.jpg

:work:

thurs_013_zpsijo1m7di.jpg

Prior to attaching the racks to the aircraft, an undercoat of Alclad followed by a strong black oil wash:

thurs_014_zpsdqw4cfor.jpg

Once fixed in place they actually look rather good, despite my mauling:

thurs_017_zpsb3in9ivs.jpg

Last task of the day was to get the cat's whiskers into place, making sure to get the rudder and elevator cables in the right configuration:

thurs_015_zpsphafwneg.jpg

Despite my trepidation, the control horns all held despite the pressure of tightening the cables onto them. In reality the top elevator cables have a small guide at the front that leads the cable up over of edge of the tailplane. I won't be bothering with this detail as in comparison with the cable it will look too fat and out of scale. Finally, added the bracing wires from tailplanes to rudder. This was a single length of line with a knot tied in one end that could be passed back and forth through holes drilled in the rudder:

thurs_016_zpskykbxsbe.jpg

After filling the gaps with a blob of CA dripped from a cocktail stick and painting over, that's it for the day. Over the rest of the week I want to cast a critical eye over the beast, a few little bits of oil wash, and make up a flare for the rack. If all goes well I hope to have an RFI up over the weekend for scrutiny.

No curry tonight but a :drink: and a salad.

Cheers!

Tony

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Super work. A whole day modelling eh, nice one. 😃 I think I would have gone loopy with that tiny PE. You sir have the patience of a saint. Enjoy that beer you've earned it, the fish is looking stunning. 🐠 😃

John.

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Super work. A whole day modelling eh, nice one. I think I would have gone loopy with that tiny PE. You sir have the patience of a saint. Enjoy that beer you've earned it, the fish is looking stunning.

John.

Thanks John. Hope you've wrestled that FW into submsission. Sure it doesn't need any bomb racks?....
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Gin and microscope eh... now that is impressive. That'll nail the etch. Also opens up a whole new world of micro-modelling, and possibly insanity. In the nicest possible way of course.

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Is there a drink/ steady hand relationship?

I would quite often take a coffee into the cave I don't get the jitters from coffee but some might. I might even take a beer in but as the cave is at the end of the garden and the loo in the house - only one. Gin might slow the shaky hand (you should try the GVine gin, the green one not the purple one) but enough of it might obscure the vision.

What do others do?

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Gin and microscope eh... now that is impressive. That'll nail the etch. Also opens up a whole new world of micro-modelling, and possibly insanity. In the nicest possible way of course.

Is there a drink/ steady hand relationship?

I would quite often take a coffee into the cave I don't get the jitters from coffee but some might. I might even take a beer in but as the cave is at the end of the garden and the loo in the house - only one. Gin might slow the shaky hand (you should try the GVine gin, the green one not the purple one) but enough of it might obscure the vision.

What do others do?

The gin is there purely as a 'in case of emergency-fill glass' measure with the PE, just in case the trauma of the build gets too much :ike: ...my hand's shaky enough as it is at that scale of operations! To be entirely accurate - given the reward system I operate for a successful stint at the bench - I should perhaps have called this thread 'Martinis over Taranto'...

You'll have noted as well it's Lidl gin. Don't I just ooze class?

Tony

PS. That GVine stuff looks real fancy GB; a definite candidate for the drinks trolley.

Edited by TheBaron
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