A Pfair of Pfalz. E.IV restoration + AZ Models E.I

[Hamden]

 

Nice progress with these the additional attention makes all the difference!

 

  Roger

[clive_t]

Excellent work Ian, as usual!

[pheonix]

I too think that this is a Triggers Broom - but it is markedly improved as a result. Both models will be more than restored when finished - rejuvenated would be a better description.

 

P

[Martian]

Great work but I am tending to agree with the member for Salisbury.

 

Martian 👽

[TheBaron]

Pfine Pfalzing Ian.

With the noise of Battle falling quiet I was a bit worried you were relaxing. Nice to see you've found something to keep you out of mischief! 

Lovely work.

[Brandy]

On 2/15/2019 at 11:15 AM, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

A Trigger’s Broom restoration, where we eventually end up with no original parts at all!  Lovely jubbly.

Welcome aboard Crisp! The E.IV will actually keep most of its parts, it's the E.I that is having major replacement surgery. Although the IV did go through quite a bit in its time.

 

On 2/15/2019 at 11:30 AM, Hamden said:

 

Nice progress with these the additional attention makes all the difference!

 

  Roger

Cheers Roger, I certainly hope so!

 

On 2/15/2019 at 12:45 PM, clive_t said:

Excellent work Ian, as usual!

Many thanks Clive, slowly but surely!

 

On 2/15/2019 at 9:44 PM, pheonix said:

I too think that this is a Triggers Broom - but it is markedly improved as a result. Both models will be more than restored when finished - rejuvenated would be a better description.

 

P

Thanks P. The E.IV was one of my first builds, and my first attempt at major correction surgery so it's far from perfect. I don't intend to redo too much of it, but I will repaint the prop as well as the entire airframe, and use thinner rigging. The wings need a little tidying up (see below) but I'm not going to scratchbuild new ones.

 

On 2/15/2019 at 10:38 PM, Martian Hale said:

Great work but I am tending to agree with the member for Salisbury.

 

Martian 👽

You would! (so would I actually, but that's not important!)

 

On 2/15/2019 at 11:20 PM, TheBaron said:

Pfine Pfalzing Ian.

With the noise of Battle falling quiet I was a bit worried you were relaxing. Nice to see you've found something to keep you out of mischief! 

Lovely work.

Welcome aboard Tony! The Battle is awaiting spares delivery from the UK via my dad (The H wanted over $60 to ship the PE and brass rod I ordered, so I had 4 or 5 different orders sent to the ole man and he will be sending the important stuff on to me. The rest I'll pick up when I'm home (well nearly home, she's in Guernsey) for baby sister's 50th in May. (THAT makes me feel old!). I'll be making a (big) list of stuff to buy when I'm over at Telford in Nov.!

 

Right, now where were we?

 

Ah yes, PAINT!

 

I decided yesterday that it was time to see just how bad everything looked with a coat of primer on, so it was all masked up and taken into the spray booth.

A first coat didn't look too bad, so it was left overnight and inspected this morning.

First, the E.IV wings. These were "modified" when I made the kit by extending and thinning them, I then attempted to add some rib details. That wasn't quite the success I'd hoped it would be (hence I haven't attempted it since) and the primer revealed some rough spots which could be cleaned up with a file/sanding.

 

 

Next, the E.I fuselage. Despite my best efforts the seams were still visible. I have no idea how, as I covered them in PPP then sanded them back, but there they were, clear as day (well, when the light was on them in the right way anyway)

 

 

 

There was also a seam visible on the underside of the E.IV

 

 

That made my tasks for today clear:

a) get rid of the seams and untidy bits on the wings and fuselages

b) drill all the holes for rudder, elevator, and wing-warping controls (the latter on the underside of the cockpit), and the air circulation hole under the rear edge of the starboard wing.

c) another coat of white

 

Here are the undersides with their holes drilled

 

 

The slot was drilled out with 4 or 5 drill holes, then the holes were drilled at an angle to join them up before finally cleaning up with a number 11 scalpel blade.

You can see the air circulation hole on this next pic just aft of the rear of the cockpit, toward the bottom, plus the holes for rudder and elevator control wires on the tail.

 

 

No more seam!

 

 

The front end and insides of the cowling and shoulder pieces also got a squirt of aluminium

 

 

 

The intention is to fit the cowling and shoulders before installing the engine, so I can paint all the black. The engine should slip in easily enough from underneath with a drop of gator Grip. On that note, I also cleaned up the kit engine and removed the push rods. They will be replaced with nickel silver rod. I may do the same for the E.IV but not sure yet as I'll have to remove the cowling to do that.

 The prop was also cleaned up (there's a lot of flash on this kit!) and the mounting hole in the rear was plugged with plastic rod. How could they make the mounting hole over twice the size of the little lug on the engine which it's supposed to fit onto?

 I then threw some paint onto the engine to see how it looks. I'll dry brush steel over the black to tone it down a bit.

 

 

 

Well that's it for today. Back to work tomorrow so i may not get back onto it until the weekend but that should leave plenty of time for the paint to harden. The E.I will stay white so if it's ok that will be the final coat. The E.IV will be linen so will another coat anyway.

 

Thanks for looking in!

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Ian

 

 

[Marklo]

Lovely work.  It does go to show, renovating can be way trickier than building new.  Running in to the same kind of  issues on my Pup resurrection

[pheonix]

Very good update Ian. As Marklow has written, restotation work can be as time consuming as assembling and correcting a kiy....which is one reason why I scratch build!

 

P

[Brandy]

It would appear that I'm destined to finish nothing in the near future.

I opened my bottle of Misterkit German CDL with the aim of painting the E.IV and found it rock solid. An order was put in to Misterkit for a new bottle plus quite a few others, but I never received an acknowledgment. I contacted @giemme to see if he could get in touch with them for me and he did, via a friend. Thanks a million for your help Giorgio!

However, some of the paints I ordered were not in stock. Unfortunately, to add to that the owner's father recently passed away -  my sincere condolences to his family. Obviously, my paint order will have to be put on hold while family matters are sorted out, and that of course is never easy in such circumstances.

 As a result, this thread is on hold, along with others (parts for the Battle are winging their way from the UK as we speak type so hopefully that will be resurrected soon.

In the meantime, I'm heading over to the dark side to continue my Matchbox Mercedes-Benz SSKL.

 

See you soon!

 

Ian

[Brandy]

I just received an email from Misterkit telling me my order has been sent! 😁

Many, many, thanks Giorgio @giemmefor your help!

Shouldn't be too long then, hopefully! In the meantime. I'm hiding over here.

 

Ian

Edited April 6, 2019 by limeypilot

[Brandy]

Well folks, I got a text from the Post Office on Wednesday and went in to pick up my parcel on Thursday morning. I nice box full of Misterkit paints! 

 

Needless to say it wasn't long before I gave the E.IV a coat of German CDL.

 

 

Then I looked at the wings and realised that they weren't up to scratch. I had added "rib detail" the first time around and it didn't look good at all, so I sanded the upper surfaces back to get rid of it all.

 

 

There was also something niggling me about the forward fuselage. It just didn't look right. I put it up against the drawings and realised that the underside of the nose was too flat. Not by much, but enough that the curve wasn't there. A piece of .030" card was added, sanded flush at the rear edge and blended in at the front with PPP. The start of the lower fuselage , where it curves, should be level with the bottom edge of the cowling, and it was also too low, so that too was corrected. After all that it now "looks right"!

 

 

 

As far s the E.I goes, I added the cowling and cheek fairings to get it ready for masking and spraying the black. (I'll do them both at the same time, so it won't be done just yet).

 

Needless to say, they were a little fiddly. The cowling was attached first, just along the upper edge, then the cheeks were added and the positions tweeked.

 

 

 

After they were properly dry, I added a little PPP where needed (mostly at the rear edge to get the smooth curve right) and gently dressed the joins with a jewellers file to get it all nice and smooth.

 

 

 

 

Both fuselages have now been given another shot of white to check for any other work that is needed before the final painting starts.

 

It's nice to get back onto these, hopefully I'll be able to make good progress now!

 

Thanks for looking in,

 

Ian

[clive_t]

Good to see this back up and running!

[Courageous]

8 hours ago, clive_t said:

Good to see this back up and running!

 

Stuart

[pheonix]

Agreed that this is good news that they are back on track. When I look at all the corrections and modifications, I still wonder why you do not just strat from scratch and build your own!!

 

P

[Brandy]

9 hours ago, pheonix said:

Agreed that this is good news that they are back on track. When I look at all the corrections and modifications, I still wonder why you do not just strat from scratch and build your own!!

 

P

Thanks P,

I just love putting these inaccurate models right. I get more satisfaction from that than I do from scratchbuilding the whole thing.

I know. I'm weird. 😁

 

Ian

[Brandy]

Right, I have finally managed to access more than just the first site page from home, so a little bit of an update is now overdue!

 

First, the fuselages were given their base colours. The E.I white and the E.IV CDL.

 

 

Then it was a masking marathon. I had to mask the wings and fuselages as the Pfalz aircraft had the wing and fuselage edges wrapped in black tape. My  modus operandi for this is to attach the masking tape, overhanging the edges, then trim it back and reposition it slightly inboard. For the wings it's easier to do the leading and trailing edges including the curve at the tip, then the tip separately, as this removes the errors of having two curves to reduce at the same time.

 

 

 

 

The fuselages were done by placing a single strip on each facet, then trimming it back with a sharp #11 blade. The masks were then removed and carefully reduced freehand, trying to stay parallel to the edges. A piece of thin tape was added up front to ensure that all the masks were lined up.

 

 

 

 

 

Then on with the paint!

 

 

I left that for a couple of days before removing the masking...

 

There are a couple of small patches that pulled off on the E.IV wings, and the clamps left marks on the E.I fuselage which will need to be sanded down and resprayed. Annoying, but not too difficult to fix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm very happy with that, although with hindsight I have a horrible feeling that I should have done all the undercarriage and rigging struts first, drilled the locating holes, and fitted it all before spraying the black. However, it's done, and I'll have to adjust to get it all fitted neatly.

 

We'll see how that works out!

 

Thanks for looking in!

 

Ian

[Courageous]

An excellent bit of masking, looks 'pucker'.

 

Stuart

[pheonix]

Gree with Courageous that looks really good Ian. I an sure that the undercarriage and struts will not be too big a problem. These will look much better when you finish them.

 

P

[John Masters]

Nice masking.  Those 1/72nd scale black lines always gave me the shivers.

[hendie]

wow!  beautiful masking job and very nice result Ian

[clive_t]

Looking very smart, the pair of them

[AdrianMF]

It’s all looking very sharp. Glad to see you back at the bench, even if all your supplies are in the UK!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Brandy]

Thanks all! 

Back now from my hols, supplies collected and ready to go! I also went up into my father's loft while I was home and dug out all the boxes of kits that I'd stuck up there back in 1983. I know that by the date on the newspapers I used to pack them! After pulling them all out I decided it was probably time to do what should have been done years ago, namely, bin them! They were surprisingly horrible, even the ones I'd done later in my youth, so they are now no more.

 

 

 

As far as the Pfalzen are concerned, I repaired the wing where the paint pulled off, and started to look at the undercarriage.

 

 

Those are unusable, even if one hadn't been short shot! The E.IV wasn't as good as it could be either, so I decided to build new undercarriage from scratch for both. I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon trying to work out how to do it, bearing in mind they have to be strong enough, the correct shape, and have the axle mounted correctly. I will add the bungees to secure the axle to the legs as per the original as the extra thickness at the wheel end is very noticeable. Finally this morning decided that I would use brass rod and add plastic card to get the final shape. It's a little awkward because the legs aren't very wide. I had thought of trying to use brass tube and squeezing it flat, but I didn't have any of the size needed so have to resort to adding thin strip and shaping it. That is my normal method, but the legs usually have wider fairings which makes it a little easier. Here's the starting point, although this took the best part of the afternoon today. All four legs bent to shape and sitting with the E.IV legs so you can see what I mean about the awkward shape.

 

 

After that was done I spent the rest of the afternoon roughly cutting out the plastic card additions which will shape the rear of the aft leg, and the lower portion where the axle is mounted, and then stuck them on with CA. A quick coat of PPP over the joints should hide them.

 

 

As you can see they are VERY roughly cut to shape as I want to make sure they are big enough. Tomorrow I'll trim and sand them to shape and add the small strips need on the rear of the forward struts.

 

Making the whole of the rear extension and the lower axle mounting all one piece should give me the strength I need for the whole assembly. We'll see....

 

That's it for tonight, off for a quick bevy!

 

Have a good evening, and thanks for looking in!

 

Ian

[Hamden]

 

Nice to see you back to working your magic on these

 

    Roger

Edited June 6, 2019 by Hamden

[Brandy]

21 hours ago, Hamden said:

 

Nice to see you back to working your magic on these

 

    Roger

Thanks Roger, it's been a while but it's good to get back to them.

 

More progress on the undercarriage today, but unfortunately my camera has eaten some of the progress pics. I started off by sanding down the PPP on all 4 struts, then took a sanding stick to the rear edges to thin them down. Here's a before and after of the first one

 

 

The front edge was then cut back to be parallel to, but slightly forwards of, the front strut, and I added strips of .020" x .030" to the rear of the front struts to widen them. More PPP!

 

 

The comparison shot of the first fully shaped leg has gone, so here's the whole lot after sanding them down. After the first one was done, the others were carefully matched to it to ensure that they were as close as possible to identical.

 

 

All that was left after that was to chamfer the rear edges, which I did by scraping with a scalpel blade followed by a light sanding to clean up, then drill out the slots for the axles.

 

20190607_165500 by bevl78, on Flickr

 

It all sounds so much easier reading it quickly, but it's been a two full afternoons work! Now onto the centre struts.

 

Thanks for looking in, have a great evening!

 

Ian