1/32 Sopwith Triplane. Correcting the Roden Kit *Finished*

[Viking]

1/32 Sopwith Triplane.

Correcting the Roden Kit

With the Wingnut Wings SopwithTriplane kit having long since sold out, the only game in town is the Roden offering. Hannants had them on special offer recently, so I was tempted and purchased one.
There is one major problem with the kit however, and that is that the fuselage is too short by about 6 mm. I believe it was Rowan Broadbent of Pheon Decals, John Adams of Aeroclub, and Brian Fawcet who originally brought this to attention, and Brian offers his own resin fuselage correction set. Here

If you have a Roden kit and want to fix it, Brians correction set can be heartily recommended. However, I decided to have go at fixing it myself with some old fashioned modelling, using what I had available so as to keep the overall cost down.
Firstly I sawed the fuselage in half where the rear decking starts, then cut a strip of 40 thou plasticard 6mm wide. This was cut into lengths for the side and bottom of each fuselage half, and inserted where the cut was made. I set them standing proud of the outside surface to give a little sanding room to bring them down flush. Using 40 thou gave a good strong bond as well.

 

The trick here is to do the fuselage halves with the locating holes first (I think it was left side). Lay it on a flat surface when the inserts are first attached, to get a nice straight fuselage half and let it set solidly over night.The next day do the other half with the locating pegs on, and align it on the by now strong other side, to get a perfectly straight fuselage.

This left the cockpit decking too short, but fortunately Roden supply two, one for the single gun and one for the twin gun option. I simply cut a 6mm section off one and joined it to the rear of the other, sanding it flush later. I am not 100% certain that the extra length is in the cockpit decking (rather than the rear fabric decking) but I think so, based on studying photographs and plans. Perhaps Triplane experts can throw some light on this?

Annoyingly Roden do not supply any decals for the instrument panel, so I sourced some from the spares box.

 

Having built Wingnut Wings Sopwith Snipe with the 'late' four point Sutton harness, I had a spare etched brass lap type seatbelt which was perfect for the triplane, as again Roden do not supply this.

 

The forward of the two filler caps on the decking need to be filled in and relocated further aft. I simply drilled a hole in the new location and carefully cut one from the spare decking and cemented it in. Before;

Having cut the fuselage, there was now a section of fuselge lacing missing on the starboard side. I scraped and sanded off what was there, and replaced it with some Eduard 1/48 etched lacing that I had in stock. Although 1/48, one of the patterns matched perfectly with what was on the kit before I removed it. (Note relocated filler cap)

 

The undercarriage legs do not have much of a contact point where they meet the fuselage, so i decided to fit them while all was still bare plastic for the sake of getting a good strong join all around. Note also that there was a bit of sink marking in the area between the lower wings, as well as other areas where white Milliput has been used to fill in and smooth things up.

With Halfords grey primer from a rattle can sprayed on, all was looking encouraging.

 

 

One real oddity I only spotted after priming was that the underside of the top wing had lots of pinholes in, like resin castings sometimes do. A bit of Milliput sorted that out, but it is a new one on me in injection moulded plastic.

Painting is under way, I decided to fit the struts to the middle wings as a bit of filling was needed around them, and paint everything up as a series of sub assemblies.

 

 

 

 

I hope this helps anyone out there contemplating building one of these. They are not to Wingnut Wings Standard, but do build into nice models. The 6 mm extension may not sound like much, but to me it makes a big difference to the look of the model and is well worth doing.

Get the wings on and rig it next!

Cheers

John

Edited January 3, 2018 by Viking
Replace PB photo links

[woody37]

You have a knack of making these string bags look easy John! Lovely progress

[stevej60]

Enjoying this excellent thread John,superb work so far look forward to the rest.

[Darby]

Am I right in thinking this is from a certain famous RNAS squadron? If so then 6mm does matter. Looks like a lovely build you're doing. That belt looks like leather.

[Brandy]

Very nice work!

6mm is a LOT of error, I added 1.5mm to my Airfix Roland and that made a big difference! Always worth checking a kit against a good set of drawings....

Ian

[Martian]

Very neat and impressive work!

Martin

[DMC]

A very clean build. Excellent photographs also.

[Viking]

Thanks for the comments guys.

On 4/2/2016 at 11:01 PM, Darby said:

Am I right in thinking this is from a certain famous RNAS squadron?

Certainly is! I was very tempted by the French one, but in the end went for the obvious 'Naval' 10' Collishaw mount.

With the wings on, it was rigged with 2.5lb Maxima Chameleon fishing line pulled up through the top wing, cyano'd, , and trimmed. off. Turnbuckles were short sections id cotton bud tubing heated over a candle and formed into fine tubing by stretching when it began to melt.

Rigging lines were then trimmed off flush, holes neatend up with Milliput and all made good.

Masked and sprayed with Halfords rattle can primer

and then sprayed with my PC10 mix.

 

Finally decals went on, and for Roden decals they were very good, none of the horrors I have experienced in the past. They have improved a lot.

Side view to show how the extended fuselage looks. But I really need an unmodified one for comparison!

 

 

Hope all this helps anyone wanting to build one of these. It is a very nice kit and well worth building in the absence of the Wingnut Wings version.

Now posted in Ready For Inspection

Cheers

John

Edited January 3, 2018 by Viking
Replace PB photo links

[Robin-42]

I have the WnW kit in the stash waiting patiently for me-no, you can't have it! With the dawn of WNW, some people seem to discount the Roden efforts. Thanks for putting this up. It shows they will hold their own beside WNW with just a little more work.

[Brandy]

Very nice, well worth the extra effort!

Ian

[stringbag]

Nicely executed young man.

Well worth the extra effort.

Chris.