Back to the Mountains of Madness - Part 1 Complete!

[billn53]

With a nod to TheBaron...

 

I flew back today from the dark realm known as LaLa land, on the Left Coast, and in my newly re-energized state had some time this evening to work on my Tri-motor. First up, before I glue the canopy in place I felt it wise to get the nose finished. For this, I gave the seam forward of the canopy a good coat of Mr Surfacer 500:

 

 

 

The bottom of the nose needs more serious attention to fill in a step at the belly pan join. Here, I applied a generous layer of Bondo:

 

 

 

The wing is the next major assembly to be tackled. The wing consists of five pieces, three for the upper surface and two for the lower. I thought the best course of action would be to assemble the upper pieces first -- this allowed me to firmly clamp the sections together and minimize any gap at the join between the center and outer wing pieces. To facilitate clamping, the tabs on the outer wing pieces first needed to be cut back:

 

 

 

With the tabs cut back, I was able to get clamps all along the join, as can be seen below:

 

 

 

Those little blue clamps, by the way, are surprisingly strong! If I recall correctly, I purchased them from MikroMark.

 

While the wings were drying, I decided to see if I could do something about the wing's overly thick trailing edge. Here's what I'm talking about (using the wing from my spare Airfix kit to illustrate):

 

 

 

The wings on the actual Tri-motor have much sharper trailing edges:

 

 

 

So, using the wing from my spare Airfix kit as my guinea pig, I set about grinding and sanding the trailing edge to see if I could get something more acceptable.

 

The pic below is of the upper wing center section. The left side shows the trailing edge after sanding, on the right is the unaltered trailing edge. This looks promising!

 

 

 

Here's the entire left wing after thinning... maybe not as nice as the actual aircraft...

 

 

 

But definitely an improvement over the original kit wing:

 

 

 

I'm calling this experiment a success, so as soon as the glue on my build's wings is completely set, I will begin the grinding & sanding process all over again. Cross your fingers, and wish me luck!

 

[CedB]

1 hour ago, billn53 said:

Cross your fingers, and wish me luck!

Good luck Bill  

Good work on the wings.

[Marklo]

Yes good luck, the thinning process looks very effective. I have a Junkers DI in my stash and I'm looking forward/dreading building it in equal measure owing to the thought of tackling the corrugations. One reason why I've wanted to but never built a Ju52.

[billn53]

10 hours ago, Marklo said:

Yes good luck, the thinning process looks very effective. I have a Junkers DI in my stash and I'm looking forward/dreading building it in equal measure owing to the thought of tackling the corrugations. One reason why I've wanted to but never built a Ju52.

Thanks!

It's too bad the rudder & elevator are molded as single pieces (and included with the vert & horizontal stabs), they could stand to be thinned down as well. :-(

[TheBaron]

That wing's looking looking much sharper now after your tender ministrations Bill.

Best o' luck with the next phase!

[RidgeRunner]

She's coming together nicely, Bill. It's a kit I remember from my s holds us but never attempted, being drawn by jets and WW2 fighters ;).... Keep going and she'll be great.

 

Martin

[billn53]

Today being Saturday I was able to get a fair number of hours working on the Tri-motor. Most of my time, as you might imagine, was spent thinning down the trailing edge of the wing. After creating a large amount of styrene shavings & dust, I finally was at the point where I could glue the wings together. I had to do this a little bit at a time, with plenty of clamps to encourage the trailing edges to close:

 

 

 

I almost forgot to mention... Before assembling the wings, I had to decide what to do about the hinged luggage doors on the lower wings. I was tempted to leave at least one open for my diorama, but in the end decided to glue them shut instead. This was for a couple of reasons. First, aesthetically, having the doors open would spoil the Tri-motor's classic lines. On a practical note, closing them up simplifies kit assembly, painting, decaling, etc. What finally persuaded me to close them was when I discovered the Airfix doors are too large -- correcting them would be more trouble than I'm willing to take.

 

Here's a pic of the closed door on the bottom of the left wing:

 

 

 

Compare its size to the actual door:

 

 

 

While waiting for the glue to set on the wings, I turned my attention to the empennage.  I want to put the rudder at an angle and droop the elevators, like this:

 

    

 

I carefully cut away the rudder and elevator pieces, and installed half-round rod in appropriate locations. I also cut away the kit's ugly, oversized horns for the control lines (these I will later replace with something better, perhaps thin brass? I'm soliciting ideas...)

 

    

 

More to be done here before I can reinstall the rudder & elevator, but I think this is going to work!

 

That's all for today. I'll be able to get some more work in tomorrow, and then I'm off to Boston for a few days.

[bigbadbadge]

Looking very nice indeed.

Great work so far.

All the best

Chris

[billn53]

Continuing where I left off --

 

I carefully ground out the rear edges of the horizontal and vertical stabs where the elevators and rudder attach:

 

 

 

I also drilled out holes for the bracing wires that run between the horizontal & vertical stabs, and cut slots in the rudder & elevator for the control horns (wires & horns will be installed later):

 

    

 

by 

 

Here's the empennage with the various parts tacked roughly in place:

 

 

 

I finally completed gluing the wing pieces together. I'm really pumped about how well the thinning (which took hours of work) improved the look of the trailing edge. Below is a comparison with the un-altered Airfix wing from my spare parts kit:

 

 

 

Next, in anticipation of attaching the wing to the fuselage, I carefully glued the canopy in place, using my most gentle clamps in fear of cracking the brittle clear plastic:

 

 

 

The temptation to dry fit everything together was irresistible! So, for your viewing pleasure, this is where everything stands on the cusp of tomorrow's trip away from home. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

This is starting to look like an airplane!

 

 

Edited December 2, 2018 by billn53

[CedB]

Very nice work on the trailing edge, luggage doors and empennage Bill - she's looking very much a Tri-motor  

[AdrianMF]

Gosh, splendid stuff! It's like a scratch build starting off with some unrelated lumps of plastic. In other words, a "classic Airfix" build...

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Matt_]

On 11/25/2018 at 12:35 AM, billn53 said:

... the nightmare, plastic column of fetid black iridescence

 

...a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles

 

That's a bit harsh. I thought it was starting to look like quite a good build.

 

 

[Troy Smith]

On 30/11/2018 at 05:56, billn53 said:

I set about grinding and sanding the trailing edge to see if I could get something more acceptable.

 

HI Bill

 

a very handy tool for thinning trailing edges is a scraper, I use a gooseneck one

see for more on this 

 

Available on ebay UK,

https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/Proops-Wood-Cabinet-Carbon-Steel-Goose-Neck-Scraper-180mm-4-5-UK-Made-W3340/1959380193

but I doubt the post to the US will be too much

 

HTH

[billn53]

1 hour ago, Troy Smith said:

HI Bill

 

a very handy tool for thinning trailing edges is a scraper

Oh boy! Something new for my modeling toolbox!

 

I did a search for scrapers and found this, which I think will be perfect:

 

"Lynx Mini Cabinet Scraper Set"

 

 

 

Available on eBay, Amazon, and many other places online.

 

Thanks for the tip, this is why I love Britmodeller 🙂

[Troy Smith]

Neat Bill

the Lynx are not one I'd seen, I may well have to get some of those! Thanks.

 

The Proops one I linked it pretty big, and thus is easy to handle, the one you link are look like they be really good for fine work, note on rectangular one that it has two curved notches, these are handy for circular items, scraping seams of UC legs or tank gun barrels for example.

 

Also, you need a burnisher, though I have not had to do this to my  scraper.   info here.

cheers

T

[Marklo]

Darn, You're just feeding my ebay addiction  still looks far too usefull and cheap to miss out on.

[billn53]

I'm back home at last, and back to work!

 

First off, I take back my statement about Airfix's underwing luggage doors being too large. I found this pic that shows, for at least some variants of the Tri-motor, that Airfix got it right:

 

 

 

That said, I've spent a few hours at the hobby bench since returning from my latest business trip, but not much to show for my efforts. Nonetheless, let me bring everyone up to speed. Most of my work has been on detailing the wing. For starters, I scribed in the forward hatch that allows access to the upper wing, and punched out thin disks to represent the filler caps for the three fuel tank:

 

   

 

I also drilled out various holes for the control cabling, which I plan to add near the end of the build. Here's an example:

 

 

 

On the Tri-motor, the cables for the elevator and rudder run externally from control horns on either side of the nose, up to the wing, then exit the upper-rear of the wing where they then run down the fuselage side to the tail:

 

   

 

   

 

There are also a set of cables that run internally through the wing for the ailerons. They then exit the wing's upper and lower surfaces, where they attach to control horns on the ailerons.

 

 

 

All in all, that amounts to sixteen holes in the wing for the control cables. Each cable, of course, attaches to a control horn. Airfix's control horns are crudely represented, so I cut away what was provided and now must decide how to scratch new ones. My options for material are plastic, brass, or wood. Here is the result of a quick experiment with plastic and brass:

 

 

 

I'm tempted to go with brass, because of its superior strength. But first I'll see if I can shape a reasonable control horn from bamboo -- my set of scrapers have arrived and I'm itching to try them out!

 

One more thing on the wing, and this is one I'm definitely not going to try fixing... As you know, the Tri-motor's skin is corrugated metal. Airfix has done a good representation of the corrugations everywhere except the wing leading edge. Compare the leading edge of the real aircraft with Airfix's version:

 

   

 

As I have no idea for how to fix this, I'm simply going to leave it as it is.

 

Before I sign off, I've learned a lot about the Ford Tri-motor's history and thought I'd share a little bit with you. In 1922, Ford bought the Stout Metal Airplane Company, founded by William Stout.

 

 

 

At that time, Stout was developing this beauty, which Henry Ford promoted as the airplane of the future:

 

 

 

However, the 3-AT was so under-powered that test pilot Rudolf "Shorty" Schroeder could barely take off on its maiden flight, and after circling the field once refused to fly it again. After the test, Ford told his Chief Engineer and head of the Ford Airplane Division, ""This plane is a mechanical monstrosity and an aerodynamic absurdity. From now on keep Stout out of the design room."

 

You have to admit, though, that it does have a perverted kind of beauty it is so ugly! Anyone up for scratch-building one?

 

 

 

Edited December 8, 2018 by billn53

[matti64]

On 12/3/2018 at 1:28 PM, billn53 said:

Oh boy! Something new for my modeling toolbox!

 

I did a search for scrapers and found this, which I think will be perfect:

 

"Lynx Mini Cabinet Scraper Set"

 

 

 

Available on eBay, Amazon, and many other places online.

 

Thanks for the tip, this is why I love Britmodeller 🙂

I'd still go with a large scraper like the proops one, it's surprising how  gentle a curve i.e. large radius you'll  need.  I'd also check out  how to go about sharpening scrapers too. It seems an  unecessary lenght to go to, but it really makes a big difference.

[thorfinn]

15 minutes ago, billn53 said:

Anyone up for scratch-building one?

Me'thinks that would be a project for our friend Moa....

Great work on the big wing!

[Kitchen Modeller]

Great work again. It’s going to look amazing once you’ve got all the cables in place. I don’t think the leading edge of the wing looks too bad as is.

[billn53]

It's cold and rainy all weekend, so I've stayed home and continued experimenting on building the control horns I will need. This evening I explored using styrene strip for the larger control horns beneath the cockpit.

 

Here's my "best effort" thus far for the elevator horn:

 

 

 

I also used styrene strip for the rudder control horn on the nose. The below pic shows both nose horns dry-fitted to the fuselage:

 

    

 

Not too shabby, although I had to make the rudder control horn wider than its real-life counterpart so that I could drill a hole (#80 bit, my smallest) for the control cable (I intend to use invisible thread for those).

 

Tomorrow I'll try building horns for the rudder/elevator/ailerons, probably from very thin brass sheet. If that works out, I might re-do the rudder control horn on the nose from brass, as well.

 

Stay tuned!

[AdrianMF]

The horns look good. I’d possibly be tempted to use ezline or similar for cotrol runs so there isn’t too much tension on small sticky-out bits. Or maybe I always pull my nylon thread too tight...

 

PS I see the eBay supplier for the Lynx scrapers is now down to three (two after me)!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Martian]

This is coming on in leaps and bounds. The effort on thinning the trailing edges of the wings has clearly paid ample dividends.

 

Martian 👽

[billn53]

8 hours ago, AdrianMF said:

The horns look good. I’d possibly be tempted to use ezline or similar for cotrol runs so there isn’t too much tension on small sticky-out bits. Or maybe I always pull my nylon thread too tight...

 

Yes, EZ Line is probably a better choice, fortunately I have some in my supply cabinet. 

[billn53]

19 hours ago, matti64 said:

I'd still go with a large scraper like the proops one, it's surprising how  gentle a curve i.e. large radius you'll  need.  I'd also check out  how to go about sharpening scrapers too. It seems an  unecessary lenght to go to, but it really makes a big difference.

Thanks for the advice. I'll order the larger scraper and look into a sharpening tool.