Back to the Mountains of Madness - Part 1 Complete!

[RidgeRunner]

She is coming along beautifully, Bill! I love your thoughts on weathering the wing. Very useful.

 

Martin

 

 

[billn53]

Decaling is now underway in earnest!

 

I must admit that the corrugations on this build gave me great pause. Normally, I use MicroSet, MicroSol, and occasionally stronger products for challenging subjects, but I was fearful of how my inkjet-printed decals might react to those products. Then, in just in time, I discovered this post by stevehnz and decided to give his method a try:

 

 

Long story short, I'm now a fan! Here's my Tri-motor fuselage all decaled-up:

 

 

 

and some detail pics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did experience some decals (especially, the smaller ones) that wanted to lift up along the edges, but a re-application of diluted Future and firm pressure from a q-tip brought the errant decals under control.

 

Next up, decaling the wing. Oh, I almost forgot...

 

Merry Christmas everyone! 

[stevehnz]

Nice one Bill, your decals have gone down a treat, nice decals too.  Pretty much the best affirmation of that decal bedding method I can imagine. I feel better about my Ford & couple of Ju 52s now.

Merry Christmas from down under to all.

Steve.

 

[CedB]

VERY good results there Bill - good job  

Season Greetings from me too 

[thorfinn]

Bill:

Words fail me to describe how much I am enjoying this build! The 'Marsh Air Charters' and 'Sumatra Queen' are brilliant...I only wish I had thought of them.

Extraordinary work all 'round, in every aspect; she's shaping into a real beauty!

 

If I might humbly suggest an additional 'refreshing beverage' to add to the carte des vins for the hard-pressed expedition members:

 

KM

 

Merry Christmas!!!

[billn53]

49 minutes ago, thorfinn said:

Bill:

Words fail me to describe how much I am enjoying this build! The 'Marsh Air Charters' and 'Sumatra Queen' are brilliant...I only wish I had thought of them.

I deeply appreciate your comments. After all, it is your excellent build that inspired me in the first place -- I'm just following in your footsteps. 

 

BTW I see you live in Towson. I have family in Reisterstown, perhaps next time I'm visiting we should get together. 

 

Hope you have a great New Year,

 

Bill

[billn53]

Another major milestone achieved! The wing is now mated to the fuselage. But, getting there was an effort.

 

Before I could install the wing, I had to remove the masking protecting the cabin. I decided to go ahead and remove all of the masking on the fuselage, and it was a good thing I did, because a few problems were uncovered. First off, the Tamiya tape had been in place for so long that its glue had hardened to the point where the glue stayed behind when I removed the tape. It was so petrified that it resisted all chemicals I dared to apply, even my usually trusty Goo Gone! Eventually, I got most of the glue removed, but had to do some touch-up around the passenger windows and fuselage nose. While I was at it, I painted the minuscule oil filler cap for the center engine, using some neat tools I found in the beauty supply shop:

 

 

   

 

I encountered a bigger problem caused by the sponges I had used to close off the passenger door and fuselage opening for the wing. I had used beauty-shop sponges, and they must have decided they liked the Tri-motor, because when I pulled them out, I found pieces of sponge had taken root into the paint. This, also, was correctable, except for the rear-most passenger windows which now have a bit of 'frosty' appearance. Oh well, it is the Antarctic, after all!

 

So, Santa, for future reference take these off your "nice" list:

 

 

(Not the knife, just the sponges).

 

Last thing I did before mating the wing was to finish off the cabin interior. I added a fire extinguisher beside the toilet door on the rear bulkhead, and added some cargo waiting to be unloaded:

 

   

 

(That big crate is in the wrong place, if anyone needs to go to the loo in a hurry!)

 

So, with some 5-minute epoxy and help from a couple of clamps, the Tri-motor's big wing is now in place!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I still have some minor putty & paint touch-up to do where the wing meets the fuselage (i.e., just behind the canopy and at the rear wing-fuselage join), but that should be a piece of cake (knock on wood!):

 

   

 

Stay tuned, there's still a lot more work to do!

 

Edited December 26, 2018 by billn53

[CedB]

Thanks for the warning about the sponges Bill - great recovery though, she's looking marvellous.

[Nick Belbin]

This looks fantastic - well done!!

 

Nick

[TheBaron]

Magnificent work on conforming those decals to such a complex set of surfaces Bill. Incredibly evocative looking in this guise now!

[Greg B]

On 23/12/2018 at 03:04, billn53 said:

 

 

 

That might be appropriate if I were building this:

 

 

 

But I'm not, so I needed to find another solution. 

 

 

-Bill

 

 

Is that the Trimotor in Port Moresby?  If so I was crawling around it just over a month ago, its a shame its just rotting away.

[Max Headroom]

This is looking rather splendid!

 

I take it the last three of the registration is on purpose?

 

Trevor

[billn53]

4 hours ago, Greg B said:

Is that the Trimotor in Port Moresby?  If so I was crawling around it just over a month ago, its a shame its just rotting away.

Yes, that's the one. But it looks like something I'd expect to see outside some good ol' boy's trailer, here in Alabama. 

[billn53]

2 hours ago, Max Headroom said:

This is looking rather splendid!

 

I take it the last three of the registration is on purpose?

 

Trevor

Thanks!

The registration # was thorfinn's idea.

 

-  Bill

[thorfinn]

On 12/25/2018 at 11:06 AM, billn53 said:

BTW I see you live in Towson. I have family in Reisterstown, perhaps next time I'm visiting we should get together. 

Sounds like a most excellent plan!

 

A question about your UV-resin lenses. Was that the '5-Second Fix' type of thing, or something a bit more industrial? Just curious.

(I use '5-Second Fix' all the time for small fill & repairs, and even the occasional window...but it never occurred to me to use it for lenses that way. Great idea!)

[billn53]

44 minutes ago, thorfinn said:

 

A question about your UV-resin lenses. Was that the '5-Second Fix' type of thing, or something a bit more industrial? Just curious.

(I use '5-Second Fix' all the time for small fill & repairs, and even the occasional window...but it never occurred to me to use it for lenses that way. Great idea!)

Same (or very similar) stuff as the 5-second fix, but I use it so much that I bought a couple bottles of the jel ( thick & thin) and a small UV flashlight off Amazon. 

[billn53]

Well, I didn't have a lot of free time today so there's not much to report. But, I'll give you an update with what little I have...

 

As promised, I filled in the gaps front & rear where the wing attaches to the fuselage, and finished up with some paint touch-up where needed:

 

 

 

The rear join looks rather ugly, but (trust me) it's quite representative of the actual aircraft.

 

   

 

I next turned my attention to the engine pods. This is what I have to start with:

 

 

Somehow, I have to turn those pig ears into something that looks a like this:

 

 

 

First step was to create a scale drawing to guide me:

 

 

First thing I noticed was that the kit's engine pods are too "pointy" at the rear. More careful inspection revealed the front-end of the pods needed to be extended a couple of millimeters. The rear was easily corrected with sanding sticks. For the front, I cut a spacer from 1/2-inch plastic tube. The tubing was a bit undersized, so I split it and added a piece of plastic strip to better fit the pod diameter:

 

 

 

Once the glue is fully dry, I'll cut the excess plastic from the strip and putty the seams with bondo.

 

Eventually, I will need to scratch build three engine manifolds.  The one Airfix provides won't do, as it is about 2mm too large in diameter for the Small Stuff engines.  Here's a photo of the kit item to give you an idea of the challenge facing me:

 

 

That's all for today, expect to see more progress tomorrow!

 

Edited December 28, 2018 by billn53

[billn53]

I've made good progress today on the Tri-motor's engine pods -- in fact, they are nearly done with only a few details remaining. I'm about ready to tackle the Small Stuff engines themselves, and then on to the dreaded manifolds. Here are some pics from today's work:

 

Recall that the Airfix pods needed to be lengthened at the front, and shortened at the rear. In my last post I showed how I did the front-end lengthening. Here's how I tackled the opposite end. To begin, I cut the pointy-end of the Airfix pod to match the photos I'm working to. That left an almost-circular, flat surface. But as you can see in the photos above, the rear of the pods is open. With help of a rotary grinder, I created a circular cavity in the rear of the pods, as can be seen in the photo below:

 

 

 

Not surprisingly, the Airfix pods weren't exactly circular in cross section, so I blackened the rim around my opening, and carefully sanded the outer surface until I achieved a circular shape.

 

My next task was to reshape the Airfix pod from it's almost teardrop profile, to one matching my photos. Those showed a tri-conic profile instead of a teardrop shape. I used a curved micro-saw to inscribe where the conic sections should meet, then I employed a small-bladed knife as a scraper to re-shape the each pod. In the pic below, the unmodified pod is on the right, and on the left is a pod in-process of re-shaping. Hopefully, you can see the difference.

 

 

 

After a couple hours of work, this is how my pods now look:

 

 

 

Much, much better than what Airfix gave me. I hope you'll agree:

 

 

 

All I have left is to add some final details (various screws around the pod's panels, the cooling vents on the sides, oil filler tubes & caps, and what looks like some kind of drain in my photos). Also, if anyone can identify that big cylinder hanging off the bottom-front of the pod pictured below, let me know!

 

 

 

Thanks!

Bill

Edited December 28, 2018 by billn53

[CedB]

Nice work Bill, those pods look much better  

[Martian]

5 hours ago, billn53 said:

I' Also, if anyone can identify that big cylinder hanging off the bottom-front of the pod pictured below, let me know!

Oil cooler?

 

Martian 

[billn53]

There's only a couple of hours left in 2018, and I've clearly missed my goal of having my Ford Tri-motor completed before 2019. Let's see what I've been working on since my last report.

 

Engines, engines, engines! I'm still stuck on the Tri-motor's engines and engine pods. I have, in fact, finished the pods and most of yesterday evening and today I've been building up the Small Stuff Wasp Juniors. Here are the main pieces all ready for the spray booth:

 

 

Before I go any further, are you like me when it comes to airbrushing tiny parts? I've used alligator clips, cocktail sticks, and blu-tack to hold them in place while painting. Yesterday, I was in my local Dollar General store looking for double-sided tape to hold the Wasps' cylinders in place for painting. I found the tape, but I stumbled on this product and decided to try it out:

 

 

 

As you can see in the pics, the "Glue Dots" were exactly what I needed. For just $1.00 I got 30 dots. Later I found that you can buy then by the hundreds on Amazon for just a few dollars more.

 

The painting went smoothly, and once the paint was dry it was time to cut the engine hubs and cylinders away from their resin blocks. That's when I had a minor setback. I began by cutting the cylinders from their blocks, and I got pretty far along before I realized I was cutting them in the wrong place! Instead of cutting at the top of the casting block, I was cutting at the bottom of the cylinder. That meant I was cutting away the locating tab on the bottom of the cylinders. Grrrr....

 

My recovery plan was to insert a locating pin in the bottom of the cylinders, and drill matching holes in their mounting locations. Here you can see all of the cylinders with pins in place. The mis-cut cylinders are the last six in the bottom row, if you're curious.

 

 

 

I glued the cylinders in place using Gator Glue, which gave me plenty of time to get the cylinders properly aligned. Working one or two cylinders at a time, it took most of the day to get them all assembled. Once the Gator Glue was dry, I strengthened the joins with a small dab of super thin CA:

 

 

 

And, since I haven't shown you my completed engine pods yet, here are a few pics with one of my Wasp Junior's temporarily mounted:

 

    

 

    

 

   

 

There's still a lot to do on the engines (83 fiddly little resin pieces, per engine, still to install), not to mention the exhaust manifolds that I'll have to scratch build. But, that's it for 2018. See you next year

 

Happy New Years everyone!

Edited January 1, 2019 by billn53

[CedB]

Happy New Year Bill!

Those engines are looking marvellous  

[billn53]

30 minutes ago, CedB said:

Happy New Year Bill!

Those engines are looking marvellous  

 

Truth is, I woke up this morning and thought to myself, "I could do better..." Those screw-heads on the engine pod panels were just too big. So, I stripped off all the paint

 

 

 

and spent the better part of the day re-painting.  Here they are as they now stand. Could be better, but as the saying goes, "Better is the enemy of good enough". Excuse the poor lighting:

 

 

 

But wait! What madness is this???

 

 

Stay tuned, More will be revealed...

[billn53]

Today's post is a short one, and will explain the "teaser" pic at the end of my last update.

 

A couple of weeks ago I asked for tips in the Scratchbuilding forum about how to build exhaust manifolds for my Tri-motor.

 

 

I got some good suggestions (God, I love the good people in this forum!). One of which was to build a jig. So, here's my jig plus another helpful tool I scratched up:

 

 

On the left is a resin cast I made of the back end from one of my Wasp Junior engines. Note that I've drilled-out the exhaust ports where the manifold would attach. The little device on the right is a cutting jig to help me make the 27 small (1/8" long, 0.025" diameter) exhaust pipes I will need. The spacer part on the lower right is cut to be exactly 1/8-inch shorter than the slot - I kept it removable in case I end up needing a different length. The rest I'm sure you can figure out. 

 

Here's a pic with the exhaust pipes cut and installed in the assembly jig:

 

 

The next step would be to glue the manifold ring on top of the pipes, and extract the assembly from the jig. To create the needed manifold rings, I took advantage of another tip I had received, which was to heat plastic rod (0.040" dia) in boiling water and wrap it around a dowel. That turned out to be easier said than done, but after a number of trials to build up my learning curve, I finally achieved what I hope will work:

 

 

Hopefully, I now have the major piece parts to build the three exhaust manifolds I need.

 

Not bad for a day's work!

Edited January 5, 2019 by billn53

[Brandy]

Beautiful work on the pods and engines. I just caught up with this and was about to mention the size of the fasteners, but you beat me to it, so I won't. 

 This is turning into a real cracker. Happy New Year!

 

Ian