1:72 Hawker Persian Fury

[Possibly Apocryphal]

I don't really want to get into a blow by blow account of all this.  Suffice to say, after four days of careful painstaking work what I have is:  a biplane with no struts,

 

A fine collection of struts of various lengths, all of which were optimistically attached to the aforementioned biplane at some point,

 

And two carefully made, but completely useless strut-positioning jigs.

 

This was the first time I have made a jig for the struts.  There will NOT be a second time.  I had always suspected that jigs were a waste of time, and experience has confirmed my suspicion.  So, back to square one.  Why is this difficult?  It's difficult because the struts do so many different things, and they have to do all of them perfectly.  This is what the struts have to do:

- Set the distance between the upper and lower wing

- set the stagger of the upper wing

- centre the upper wing (i.e. keep the centerline of the upper wing precisely aligned with the centreline of the fuselage, when viewed from above.

- keep the upper wing's leading and trailing edges parallel with those of the lower wing, when viewed from above

- keep the upper wing level

- Set the angle of incidence of the upper wing.

 

With the exception of the angle of incidence, the leading pair of cabane struts determine all of these, so its critical to get them right  If I can get this

done perfectly, the rest will follow, but it's not perfect yet.  I got it close, but the centreline was a fraction off.  It has to be perfect, because any error will transmit itself somewhere else, and the further it is from the source of the error, the greater the discrepency will be.  In other words, if the wing is .5mm off center, there will be an error somewhere in the interplane struts that will be much greater than .5mm.  So that's where it's at right now.  I'll get there, but I can't say when yet.  Just remember this: a model you haven't sworn at repeatedly is a model you haven't put any effort into.

 

Cheers,

Adam

[CliffB]

Sorry to hear about your strut woes Adam.  If you are a regular biplane builder, I'd recommend the Aeroclub jig.

 

 

It allows you to rigidly clamp the upper and lower wings in any position relative to each other, before installing the struts.  It's brilliant.

 

The only problem is that I'm not sure of its availability nowadays.  It's worth keeping an eye open for though.

 

Good luck with your current mission.

[JWM]

1 hour ago, CliffB said:

The only problem is that I'm not sure of its availability nowadays.  It's worth keeping an eye open for though.

Nice construction. However It looks that one can do this by himself, just buying standard elements available in any metal shop (construction works shop? - I am not sure proper English name for it)

Regards

J-W

[Giorgio N]

Agree, such a moulding mismatch is very unusual for a Matchbox kit, particularly for their biplanes that were always their best.

I can see how attaching all struts right will be one of those jobs that require plenty of patience and will result in a lot of swearing... wishing you best of luck with this !

[Wez]

8 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

Agree, such a moulding mismatch is very unusual for a Matchbox kit, particularly for their biplanes that were always their best.

I can see how attaching all struts right will be one of those jobs that require plenty of patience and will result in a lot of swearing... wishing you best of luck with this !

Agreed but then, it is a much later boxing, one of the later Revell released Matchbox mouldings.

 

Good luck with those struts.

[Possibly Apocryphal]

Thanks for the encouragement everyone!  I stuck with it, and now its done.  I thought I had it at one point, it was all square and symmetrical, and looked good until I realized that the gap between the upper and lower wings was too small.  I confirmed that by trying to insert the kit interplane N-struts, and there wasn't enough room for them.  But that gave me the idea of attaching those kit struts temporarily, even though I was going to replace them later, just to hold the upper wing in the correct position while I made a new set of cabane struts, as you can see here:

 

 

When that was all set, I could then remove the kit struts and replace them with scratchbilt ones.

 

 

So, after I clean up the holes were the cabane struts emerge from the fuselage, I can get on with something else.  Which will be the undercarriage.

 

Cheers for now,

Adam

[Brandy]

Nicely done! These old kits (and vacs) always present a challenge but they're usually worth the effort.

 

Ian

[JWM]

If I may suggest something Adam, please just look at the Fury in takes like here:

 

there is not too much room between upper wing and top of fuselage. This makes aggressive look of the Fury!

The lower wings dihedral is something what has strong influence on then fit of main caban struts. If one make dihedral too large then the space between fuselage and wind increases. One can check dihedral in lower wing comparing to good drawings.

I wrote that because I constructed two Matchbox Furies (although both +40 years ago - one directly and second converting to Spanish Fury ) but I remember they fits well. Likely I was doing them opposide - namely glueing first caban struts to fuselage and then to upper wing and finally glueing lower wings. Now always I am doing like you - first glueing lower wings but check of dihedral is neccessairy in this method.  It is also good to check with slide calliper  the distance from bottom of lower wing and upper side of upper wing along the fuselage. If it match the drawing the failure was on Matchbox side indeed...

Regards

J-W

 

Edited July 22, 2018 by JWM

[Possibly Apocryphal]

Hi Jerzy,

 

When I look at that top photo, I think it's possible the gap between the fuselage and the upper wing might be a little too much on my model, but not enough for me to want to go back and change it!  I also made a Spanish Fury from the Matchbox kit, but mine was probably only a bit over 30 years ago.  The way the kit is engineered has the left and right cabane struts join together as a single unit that is then enclosed by the upper nose piece, but obviously, I didn't do it that way.  Maybe I should have.  I could have corrected the kit struts with some epoxy putty, and life would have been much simpler!

[Possibly Apocryphal]

Well, I got to work on the undercarriage, which turned out to be fairly simple, even though it's mostly scratchbuilt.  I thought the kit struts were a bit thin, and I also wanted to avoid the impression that it's a single piece.  Actually the thinner lower strut telescopes into the wider upper fairing that encloses a simple coil spring suspension system.  My first attempt did have the lower part slotting into the upper, but I couldn't get that to work - the plastic just got too thin, but in the final version, it is in two pieces, and will hopefully look so after it's painted.

 

 

Here is the complete unit.  You can see the wire pins that reinforce the join, so it's quite strong.

 

 

The kit wheels are quite nice, no need to replace them...

 

...although a little extra detail doesn't hurt.

 

And then they just pop onto the axle.

 

Starting to get somewhere now!

 

 

That's all for now.

 

Cheers,

Adam

 

[JWM]

Perhaps I am wrong that gap it too large - this is your kingdom and you are the king

 

Best regards

J-W

 

[Possibly Apocryphal]

On 7/23/2018 at 4:26 PM, JWM said:

Perhaps I am wrong that gap it too large - this is your kingdom and you are the king

 

Best regards

J-W

 

OK, I measured it.  It is to big, but the error is only .35mm, and I'm not going to try and correct that.  I think when the gunsight and windscreen are in place to fill the gap to some extent, it will look better.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

FWIW .35mm doesn't really count as an error in my book, I'd call that scale tolerance (or something else I made up on the spot). 

[Possibly Apocryphal]

17 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

FWIW .35mm doesn't really count as an error in my book, I'd call that scale tolerance (or something else I made up on the spot). 

Scale tolerance will do for me!

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Dude, you are working miracles on a kit that has a slot for a stand.....Bickering over fractions of a mil (or one scale inch if you prefer) seems a bit irrelevant all things considered! 

 

[JWM]

Of course, 0.35 mm is nothing. But very nice that you've measured it! 

Best regards

J-W

 

[Possibly Apocryphal]

21 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Dude, you are working miracles on a kit that has a slot for a stand.....Bickering over fractions of a mil seems a bit irrelevant all things considered! 

I don't think anyone is bickering.  I checked it because I wanted to be sure there wasn't a significant error.  The gap does actually look a little too large from some angles, but as I said earlier, I think that's an illusion due to the absence (for now) of the gunsight and windscreen, and also, I think, because the nose of the Mercury Fury slopes down more than the Kestrel version.

[Possibly Apocryphal]

I had a few unsuccessful attempts to build the engine cowling.  This is the one that worked (the fourth attempt).  I started with a disc of 1mm card the diameter of the inside of the cowl, and glued to that a strip of .5mm card 8mm wide.  I pre-curled the .5mm card before I attached it to the disc.

 

 

After that had set properly I wrapped it tightly, gluing it in stages as I went, until I had built up a thickness of about 1.5mm.

 

 

That needed plenty of time to set because I used a lot of glue.  When it was ready I thinned it down to about 1mm and sanded in the correct profile - rounded at the leading edge, and tapered to a fine edge at the trailing edge.  Then I added the tubes for the machine bullets to pass through.  (I was a bit surprised the original aircraft didn't have blast tubes.)

 

[Col.]

Nice work on the cowling - as with everything you've done so far on this one

[JWM]

Interesting way to construct and great result with cowling. I never did it this way.,,, Inspiring

Regards

J-W

 

[Possibly Apocryphal]

The next step was the propeller, which I carved from wood because that's by far the most convincing way to ensure that something on the model actually looks like it's made from wood.  I'm going to describe the process in detail, because I want to encourage you to try this.  It's not nearly as difficult as you might think.

 

The wood I use is thin strips that ship modellers use.  Years ago I bought two packs (one blonde, one reddish).  The strips are 7mm wide, about .5mm thick and 1 metre long.  When I bought them each pack of 20 strips cost $8, which was an absolute bargain. 

I start by cutting off a few strips and laminating them together using PVA glue.  You can, of course, use a solid block.  Something soft like pine works well, and you can stain it to whatever shade you want,  Shoe polish works well for this.  But there are some advantages to the laminate approach.  Firstly, it's how real wooden propellers are made, and if you're making those alternating light/dark props the Germans used in WW I, nothing works better, especially in 1:48 scale.  Secondly, its very easy to get the right thickness.  The wood typically compresses a little when you glue it, because it's important to clamp it or put a lot of weight on it as it dries.  If it ends up being not thick enough, just add more strips til it's right.

 

Start by tracing the outline of the prop onto the wood with a pencil.  If you're working from a scale drawing you can print it or photocopy it, and then cut out the shape of the prop and glue it directly to the wood.

 

 

Next, use a hobby knife to roughly cut out the shape of the prop.  Don't go right up to the outline, but leave a small margin.  If you remove too much, you'll have to start again.

 

 

Then use fairly coarse wet & dry paper to refine the outline.  A round section file is also useful for the indentations near the hub.

 

 

After that, you need to taper the blades.  Depending on the design of the prop, they will taper towards the middle or the leading or trailing edge.  The Watts prop tapers to the middle.  As with every stage of making a propeller, symmetry is extremely important.

 

 

Then with your hobby knife again, carve out the corners of each edge to give the prop its pitch.  As with the outline this stage is done roughly at first with the knife.

 

 

And then refined and smoothed with the wet & dry paper.

 

 

And then, when you realize that the Mercury turns in the opposite direction from the Kestrel, repeat the process in reverse!

 

 

After that, it's just a matter of adding the hub detail from a small disc of plastic, with some rod sliced for the bolts.

 

 

As I said earlier, it's much easier than you might think.  And probably quicker too.  I timed my second one, and from the time I started cutting the outline to finishing smoothing the final shape was only just over 30 minutes.  So give it a try!

 

Cheers,

Adam

 

[Wez]

Adam,

 

A "Like" in response to how you've made the propeller and cowling just doesn't seem enough compared to what you've done, what's more, you make it looks so damned easy!  Brilliant and as Jerzy said, inspiring!

[Giorgio N]

I had missed a few posts in this thread and what I saw today was fantastic. Scratchbuilt struts, wooden propellers, new cowling... this build is a continuous surprise and I love it

[Davek72]

Adam

 

I am only just catching up with this and all I can say is wow.   Amazing work.  Simply inspiring.   Not that my stubby fingers could come close.

 

Following with interest.

 

Dave

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Thanks for the step by step with the prop, suspect it's a bit outside my league (TBH they aren't all that common on tanks.   ), but it's an interesting alternative to oils and definitely the way forward for the more obviously laminated props.