Darmstadt D.18 1929 Dujin 1/72 conversion

fjaweijfopi4j48 · November 6, 2018

A build from 2 years ago of a very elegant plane.

And so I don't have to repeat here what is written somewhere else:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmstadt_D-18

My luck dictates that many times fellow modelers gift me Dujin kits.

I accept them with a sigh of resignation.

Then I start having nightmares about building them.

I think I finally end up building them as a sort of exorcism.

But not all Dujin resin kits are created equal. And in this case, that is good!

The 1/72nd Darmstadt D.18 I got is a better kit than the Breda 33 that I previously built.

But whatever you could say about the (despicable) casting of the Dujin kits (and with good reason!) has to be balanced against the prolific output of this French manufacturer and the vast scope of his releases.

You can see in the accompanying photos that the casting in this kit is better, if not at all impeccable either. The web is very thick in parts and there are some bubbles. A particular annoyance are the pouring channels at the rudder, in the form of two slabs of resin that you will have to remove. I kept wondering why the fin/rudder was not made as a whole part attached to one fuselage side, or even a separate part.

The parts have detail and you can tell the original masters were good, but during casting some of the sharpness was lost, but nothing really bad.

In any case, after about 40 minutes or so the parts were removed form the casting web and given a cursory clean-up and preliminary sanding (wear mask or do it under running water, resin dust is toxic).

You get a brief historical note with color calls, a scaled 3-view, two sets of landing gear legs and two flattened metal wires that should serve as struts. It is very likely that I'll end up substituting the resin landing gear parts -including the tailskid- for sturdier and better home-made parts. Resin landing gears have very little mechanical strength.

You don't get any decals or assembly guide/drawings.

This is a good kit compared to bad resin kits, but so-so compared to the best examples of resin kits. The price is fair, though, and I deem it a good deal for what you get. The interior detail consists of a cockpit floor with two bucket seats, two instrument panels, and perhaps a joystick (not clear if a resin part is the joystick or some random accretion). Again, since there is no parts map, exploded view or similar device, it is hard to tell.

Beware! The engine is incorrect for any version of this model:

Now how screwed up is this:

The new landing gear legs are fabricated. Photos show shock absorbers of different lengths, depending on the time in the life of the one plane built, so two sets were made. The kit's copper strut material (way too soft) was replaced by airfoiled brass (once again, thanks Andrew):

Typical I will not fit interior:

The signature eccentric (not concentric) wheels:

Removing the abundance of blobs and excretions from the inner walls:

The fuselage halves are glued together. This is not a good fit, and if you align the nose, the tail will be off, and vice-versa. The offset can reach up to 2mm, huge for such small scale and model. You may have some re-contouring to do. Do not sand too much either to obtain flat fuselage halves gluing area, or you may end up with a too narrow fuselage girth. Needless to say putty will be needed at the seams.
Since I am building the later canopied version -as said before- the nose will have to be sawed-off and rotated 180 degrees to leave the single cylinder (now on top) at the bottom, and the seam thus created will need to be hidden too:

Creation of a master and vac copy to make the wanted conversion of this kit:

The nose as explained before has to the sawed-off and rotated 180 degrees. An alternate method would be to fill the five cylinder locating holes and drill new ones in the right positions.
So this is clear, the no-canopy earlier version depicted by the kit does not need these changes:

The superb decals from Mika Jernfors (Arctic Decals) arrived in the mail today. Bear in mind that, since these are Alps-printed decals, you have to cut and trim each subject separately (the carrier covers the whole sheet). You have to handle them properly too, if you do no problems will be encountered: