Nieuport 12 - 1/32 scratchbuild

[Ted]

I've scratchbuilt a few armoured cars but this is my first airplane. The Nieuport 12 seems like a good first attempt, interesting enough and relatively simple (as in, relative to other WW1 airplanes ). The fuselage is rectangular on three sides at least. This will also be my first two-seater WW1 airplane.

 

Also, it isn't likely to be released as a kit anytime soon. I was burned a few years ago; within a few months of scratchbuilding three 1/35 Humber scout cars, two model companies announced plastic kits of them. In fact, the other two models I scratchbuilt were eventually released in plastic.

 

From Wikepedia:

 

 

The plan:

 

 

The reference, along with many internet photos:

 

 

I need to go shopping for styrene and brass, but I had enough skinny plastic to at least start on the cowling.

 

 

And after some gluing, reinforcing and sanding...still have to fill in the rounded corner from the back and sand the radius bigger.

 

 

There are still a few details I need to sort out, it isn't a super-famous airplane so there aren't many references that I can find. I am lucky, though, that there is a real one at the aviation museum in Ottawa, about a three hour drive from me. So when it comes time to figure out the wacky Eteve mount for the Lewis gun I'll have to make the trip and take some pictures.

 

[tomthounaojam]

Wow!!! looking forward to the build and subscribed to the thread.

[Courageous]

Got my chair .

Not my scale but the  scratch building and the subject are all of interest. Always wondered about rounding sharp corners...see, learnt something already. 

[Brandy]

I'm in!

That's an interesting way of doing the cowling, I've only ever seen vac/crash moulding used for similar parts. Obviously the glue is strong enough to hold it all together without it trying to straighten out!

 I hope you'll post any reference pics on this site, they could be very useful!

 

Ian

[Ted]

11 minutes ago, limeypilot said:

I'm in!

That's an interesting way of doing the cowling, I've only ever seen vac/crash moulding used for similar parts. Obviously the glue is strong enough to hold it all together without it trying to straighten out!

 I hope you'll post any reference pics on this site, they could be very useful!

 

Ian

Thanks Ian. Vacuform would have been the best way to make the cowling, and could make multiples but I was too impatient. I would have had to book time on a lathe to turn the mould to make a nice cylindrical part.

 

I've made a couple vacuform moulds before, a 1/35 Ram tank hull and International Harvester halftrack fenders, but those were carved blocks of wood, no special machining required.

[clive_t]

Oo, like the look of this! Following... 

[Ted]

I have to wait until tomorrow to get some raw materials for this build, but I puttered away at a couple little things. I robbed the engine from a Hobbycraft Camel kit. It seems that many Nieuport 12s were built with a Clerget 110 hp engine, but some with Le Rhone. The airplane in Ottawa has a Le Rhone engine and, from this period photo, looks like it was delivered that way in 1918.

 

I can see from the photo that I have a bit of cleanup to do on the engine.

 

I also fabricated the pilot seat. I haven't found any pictures of the interior yet, just replicated the type of seat used in early Nieuport scouts.

 

 

 

[Ted]

Got some plastic and went to work on the wings.

 

 

The upper wing has a wide chord, rather than carve and file away tons of plastic I tried bending the wings with heat. First I planed a curve into a chunk of wood to act as a form. Clamped one edge to the form and put it in the oven

 

 

When the plastic softened I clamped the other edge down and waited for it to cool.

 

 

It's curved.

 

 

The lower wings material is thick enough (.08") but the upper wing needed to be built up with .02" sheet and lots of green cap cement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ted]

Then began the process of filing, filling and sanding.

 

 

 

Funny thing, though. The wings shrunk in length when they were heated. The paper underneath is the pattern I used to cut out the plastic pieces, the wings shrunk by about 3 mm.

 

 

I glued on some end strips to correct the length and eventually finished one upper and one lower wing. Probably took about 4 hours from start to finish. After I get the other wings and the upper mid section to this stage I'll start sculpting the wing surfaces to represent stretched, doped linen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bandsaw Steve]

These look good. 

 

First of many ideas I’m going to steal from you!

[John Masters]

The N.12 is one of my favourite unsung heroes.  This is shaping up (no pun intended!) to be a lovely build!  I'll pull up a chair...

[Ted]

Thanks guys.

 

I used pins to align the fuselage side frames to the pattern. It worked out OK but there is still some tension from the curved sections that warps the frames slightly, something to fix once I glue them to the "linen" sheets.

 

 

 

Next I'll drill holes for the rigging and figure out the steps to put the fuselage together. I'll probably fabricate some of the cockpit parts and bulkheads to stall for time.

 

[Courageous]

Scratch building at its best. 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Unsung hero indeed; it was a descendent of the Nieuport 10, as in Richard Bell-Davies (the first RNAS VC, and one of my great heroes). [here, if you're interested]

[malpaso]

This looks great.  Should be great when built.  I see you’re using a plan for a flying model.  You might want to bear in mind that traditionally the flying plans have overscale tail surfaces for stability in free flight.  Maybe worth a check if you haven’t already.

Good luck with the build.

Cheers

Will

[Ted]

21 hours ago, Courageous said:

Scratch building at its best. 

That's very generous, thanks.

21 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Unsung hero indeed; it was a descendent of the Nieuport 10, as in Richard Bell-Davies (the first RNAS VC, and one of my great heroes). [here, if you're interested]

Wow, his Victoria Cross action was a daring rescue. Thanks for the link.

19 hours ago, malpaso said:

This looks great.  Should be great when built.  I see you’re using a plan for a flying model.  You might want to bear in mind that traditionally the flying plans have overscale tail surfaces for stability in free flight.  Maybe worth a check if you haven’t already.

Good luck with the build.

Cheers

Will

Thanks for the heads-up Will, it hadn't occurred to me. I'll do some more research before cutting the tail parts. I measured the wingspan and wing area and luckily they both line up to the published dimensions for an N.12.

[Bandsaw Steve]

Just beware Ted - I steal some more of your intellectual property every time there’s an update on this thread. 👍

[Ted]

12 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

Just beware Ted - I steal some more of your intellectual property every time there’s an update on this thread. 👍

That's funny Steve, I just read your Mig build and am tempted to make the next airplane out of wood.

[Bandsaw Steve]

Let’s see how the Avro works out first Eh! 😀

[clive_t]

Fascinating stuff going on here

[Ted]

Thanks Clive, it's still a fun project so far.

 

Glued .01" sheet to the fuselage frames and sanded them together so they're roughly the same size. It would have been easier to paint if I'd left them separate but I would have made messed up the paint job with glue. Then drilled tiny holes for the cables.

 

 

 

Last little job for the night was the engine mount. Drilling a centre hole in the cowling when I made it was helpful for aligning these pieces.

 

 

Next up is the cockpit floor, I really need to dig up some interior photos of a Nieuport 12.

 

 

 

Edited April 12, 2018 by Ted

[Ted]

I was digging through my AModel Nieuport 16 kit looking for parts I could copy for the interior. First thing I discovered was that AModel supplied an extra engine cowling.

I could have used it instead of making one from scratch, I guess I'll have to scratchbuild some other airplane with that extra cowling.

 

 

 

I figured I'd procrastinate on the tricky cockpit business and work on something fun instead. I got this reusable casting plastic called Oyamaru. It was pretty cheap and looked like just the stuff for simple, semi-flexible moulds. Perfect for making some wheels.

 

 

 

I had a couple kits to scavenge for masters, either the Hobbycraft Camel

 

 

or the aforementioned Nieuport. Decided that the Nieuport wheels would be easiest to cast, I'll glue two halves together and use o-rings for tires.

 

 

 

After cutting the two outer wheel bits off the sprue I stuck them to a thick piece of styrene. I have double sided tape but used a trick I learned from a youtube guitar builder. Pieces of masking tape stuck to each part, put CA glue on one piece of tape, accelerator on the mating piece of tape and stick them together. I'm not explaining it well but the result is double sided tape that is holds the parts together well side-to-side but releases easily when pried apart.

 

 

I'm looking forward to building the Nieuport 16 kit. The detail is rough in spots but there is some clever molding (like the way they've dealt with the tire inflation access hole).

 

[Ted]

Then I heated the Oyumaru in water and shmushed it onto the master...

 

 

 

When it cooled I pried it off and was happy

 

 

 

I figured I'd try Sculpey modelling clay first (similar to Fimo). Apparently resin works well in the Oyamaru but I don't have any and am too cheap to get set up with Silicone and resin. If this didn't work I was going to try green stuff epoxy. Spoiler, the Sculpey works. My main concern was that the Sculpey would be too soft to remove from the mould without distortion.

 

 

 

But with some careful prying and cajoling the soft Sculpey came out without too much deformation (I put the parts in the freezer to help solidify the soft parts - might have helped a bit). I sintered the parts in the oven per instructions on the package and now have a decent set of wheels, some assembly, trimming and filling required.

 

 

 

 

 

[Bandsaw Steve]

This is great!

 

Really useful tips here - beware more gross intellectual property theft is under-way!

 

[clive_t]

Great stuff!

 

Re interiors, I guess there would have been some differences with the later N17, but for what it's worth there is a good set of 'cutaway' type drawings here: http://mwmiller.theaerodrome.com/n17/index.html