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When 3 Become 1 - Converting an Italeri Ju52/3m to a Ju52/1m *** COMPLETED ***


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7 hours ago, Sturmovik said:

Is this a Greek or Argentinian plane? The cocades are virtually indistinguishable from each other.

Greek.  More photos and story here:

Cheers

J-W

 

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8 hours ago, busnproplinerfan said:

What kind of silicone? the paintable bathtub type? I guess you'd have to wash the area real good after.

Exactly, the silicone from plumber (or general use) tube. If the surface of plastic is not touched (no sanding, nor painting) after few days silicone goes out from styrene without any remains left. BTW - the resin parts unfortunatelly has better adhesion (or more rough surface) and you cannot copy resin part this way.

The epoxy glue should be not flexible (when fixed) - I am using Polish Distal (red/green tubes, 24 h fixating), certainly on your local market you can find some best one. For copytng small parts (DF bulb aerial, for example) I am using fast  epoxy glue. Some trials are needed to get experience in this (the slow fixation makes it moving under gravity force etc...).

Regards

J-W

 

 

Edited by JWM
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10 hours ago, JWM said:

Exactly, the silicone from plumber (or general use) tube. If the surface of plastic is not touched (no sanding, nor painting) after few days silicone goes out from styrene without any remains left. BTW - the resin parts unfortunatelly has better adhesion (or more rough surface) and you cannot copy resin part this way.

The epoxy glue should be not flexible (when fixed) - I am using Polish Distal (red/green tubes, 24 h fixating), certainly on your local market you can find some best one. For copytng small parts (DF bulb aerial, for example) I am using fast  epoxy glue. Some trials are needed to get experience in this (the slow fixation makes it moving under gravity force etc...).

Regards

J-W

 

 

I have what I guess is regular epoxy, the 5 min usa gold, meant to r/c planes. it does dry hard, should work to? or 24 hr one better/thinner to get the detail? This stuff is fairly gooey.

Just thought, what about mold rubber, but then I'd be casting the section of wing I guess. I do need to make a spare set of L-188 Electra nacelles to, so this idea might work on it also.

Edited by busnproplinerfan
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7 minutes ago, busnproplinerfan said:

I do need to make a spare set of L-188 Electra nacelles to, so this idea might work on it also.

Of course it will work. I made it several times. Send me PM if you more details on method,

I am apologize Clive, I did not wanted to steel the thread. I hope you will find the method it working.

Regards

J-W

 

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Minor progress today - I managed to tidy up the foil on the elevator:

 

XQMcyfu.jpg

 

Not sure if this is what I should be expecting, but it looks fairly ok to me.

 

I also cut out the engine nacelle off the port wing upper and lower halves:

 

WFuqfIu.jpg

 

Next step will be to glue some styrene shims to the inside around the edges of the cuts on each half, to support the replacement surface.

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21 hours ago, Orso said:

😍Love this.  Corrugated surface and use of a saw.  That's my kind of modelling.

Thanks Björn, however I don't possess a saw fine enough to make the cuts I wanted, so instead I resorted to using a panel scribing tool which seemed to do the job.

 

Here are the shims applied to the wing cuts:

 

43iHxuu.jpg

 

The styrene sheet I want to use is too thin for the depth of plastic on the wing itself, so I had to raise the level somewhat by applying thin strips of styrene on top of the shims:

 

ak3KfyE.jpg

 

Then I was able to put the outer skin on top:

 

3LYSeAk.jpg

 

Still have the lower half of this wing to do, but it's progress!

 

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Then this morning... aw, snap!

 

IZ27g7w.jpg

 

In my attempt to bend the styrene round the sharpest bend, it did that to me :(

 

I guess it's a risk you take when using old off-cuts of styrene that must be decades old, and therefore suffering from increased brittleness - a bit like me really. Ah well, I'll let that go off and hopefully fill and sand the crack when the time comes.

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Bit of a rescue job on this today - I filled the crack with liquid plastic, left it to dry then sanded it down:

 

jrKOp3A.jpg

 

It's a lot better than it was thankfully!

 

I am now in the process of repeating the exercise with the lower wing half.

 

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A bit of progress today - I made a start on the corrugations for the replacement wing panel:

 

wTK7Hub.jpg

 

I've used 0.3mm styrene rod as it looks fairly close to the required thickness, plus I don't currently own any 0.4mm!

 

I've also skinned the lower half, but it needs a bit of tidying up before I repeat the exercise there.

 

Thanks for watching :)

 

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A bit more progress here today - the top half of the port wing is now fully corrugated:

 

ZVoGUlw.jpg

 

Just a bit of a tidy-up needed there I think. I also skinned and corrugated the lower half of the port wing:

 

XjU8ka7.jpg

 

Well, almost - I left a gap where the corrugation is slightly higher than its neighbours, presumably where panels overlapped. I have some 0.4mm styrene rod on order so hopefully I can add that in when I get it.

 

Finally, I did a dry fit of the two halves:

 

iLmUpPe.jpg

 

Obviously a bit of a gap there, but I can plug that with some liquid plastic and hopefully I can then smooth it down.

 

So here's a question for you foiling experts - would you foil the two halves of this wing separately, or make the wing up first then foil the whole thing? Or wait 'til it was on the fuselage maybe?

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That's fantastic work on that corrugation panel. I can't see the 0.1mm difference between the old and the new, only a paint job will tell. :yes:  

Sorry, can't help you with the foil but I think you'll have trouble getting it to form around so many curves with the wings joined.

 

Stuart

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On 4/6/2019 at 7:06 PM, Courageous said:

That's fantastic work on that corrugation panel. I can't see the 0.1mm difference between the old and the new, only a paint job will tell. :yes:  

Sorry, can't help you with the foil but I think you'll have trouble getting it to form around so many curves with the wings joined.

 

Stuart

Thanks Stuart, I think I am in a bit of a quandary with this, as I don't think I'm going to be able to clean up any filling properly until I join the two halves together, which means I may have to foil the leading edge separately - interesting dilemma!

 

On 4/7/2019 at 9:42 AM, Orso said:

Great work.

Many thanks Björn.

 

Whilst I am pondering what to do about the wing, I thought I would have a go at making up a 'nose'. Suffice it to say this is my second attempt:

 

QI7djZ1.jpg

 

The apertures in the 'floor' plate are for what appears to be ventilation slats. Whatever they actually are, I decided I would try and model them with some thin strips of styrene:

 

1yLco3Q.jpg

 

bJhhLuf.jpg

 

Not finished yet, I need to let this go off so that I don't disturb the strips I've already put in when I add more.

 

From looking at a couple of reference pics I noticed that there appear to be 3 access hatch covers along the top of the cheek pieces. I think I shall scribe those and put something in place to suggest hinges etc. I suspect it will be easier to add these before assembling the nose!

 

Thanks for stopping by! :)

 

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1 hour ago, clive_t said:

I think I am in a bit of a quandary with this, as I don't think I'm going to be able to clean up any filling properly until I join the two halves together, which means I may have to foil the leading edge separately - interesting dilemma!

Their must be modelers who have done this before, I pretty sure that I've whole aircraft in foil...must be a knack.

 

Stuart

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On 4/8/2019 at 6:20 PM, Courageous said:

Their must be modelers who have done this before, I pretty sure that I've whole aircraft in foil...must be a knack.

 

Stuart

I am toying with the idea of doing a parallel build of something just to get my eye in with foiling before I get down to business proper on this build.

 

Anyway, whilst doing the slats on the front grille bit by bit and waiting for it to dry, I decided to enlarge the aperture on the port side - effectively the door arrangement appears to have been reversed from the original 1m version to the later 3m version! So hopefully I can minimise the pain by carefully cutting out the excess on the port side and keeping it for fitting on the starboard side:

 

5PHKy5k.jpg?1

 

OK a minor bit of damage, but other than that I am happy with that!

 

Finally the last of the slats were fixed in place, and the separate nose pieces fitted together:

 

E9ToMm5.jpg

 

Here's a rough dry fit of the new nose to the fuselage:

 

eWZxBIR.jpg

 

Still a lot of work to do, but it's starting to take shape!

 

Thanks for watching :)

 

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My 0.4mm styrene rod arrived through the post today, so I was able to complete the corrugations on the lower wing half:

 

bKvaLiL.jpg

 

Next up, I found some more offcuts of styrene sheet and glued 4 bits together, with a view to carving a nose:

 

9bkkNvh.jpg

 

Two scalpel blades and a sanding stick later, it doesn't look too shabby:

 

ohPovoR.jpg

 

Amazingly, no traces of blood adorn it either! I did count my fingers afterwards though, old habits dying as hard as they do...

 

:)

 

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A bit of filling in on the nose using my own concoction of liquid plastic, followed by a bit of a clean up:

 

xjHH4Td.jpg

 

I started to look at the tail, and what I might do to achieve the required shape. I looked at several of the reference photos and was surprised to see that in some of them the rudder shape was different: rather like a Mustang rudder shape, only larger. I've modified the original diagram shown previously to illustrate what I think I saw:

 

XElhr8f.jpg

 

I need to think about this a bit more before I commit to butchering the kit tail!

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g24_2.jpg

I had the same problem with the Junkers G24. I wanted another fin than in the kit so I built one in plastic card and made the corrugation with plastic rods.

So you might build the new fin first and decide if you want to use it before removing the kit fin.

Your new nose is looking real good.

Edited by Orso
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Thanks Björn, that could be a possibility. I am trying to work out if there was a specific point in time when this change occurred; from the photos you sent it seems to coincide with the aircraft livery changing from plain white (?)/NMF, to red stripes on the wings and fuselage. Or was it a different aircraft?

 

As if this undertaking was not complicated enough, I've decided I quite like the look of the 'ski plane' version... Yes, I am obviously afflicted with some kind of madness!

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I hope that this is not too late to be of help, but there is an illustrated article on the Ju52 together with a 3-view of the machine with the enlarged rudder to be found here:

 

https://adl-luftfahrthistorik.de/dok/Ju52_1m.pdf

 

Mike

 

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14 minutes ago, Michou said:

I hope that this is not too late to be of help, but there is an illustrated article on the Ju52 together with a 3-view of the machine with the enlarged rudder to be found here:

 

https://adl-luftfahrthistorik.de/dok/Ju52_1m.pdf 

 

Mike

 

Hi Mike, thanks for your reply - I appear to have this document already, but I appreciate you reminding me that I already had it!

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