1/48 Lynx Danish Style

[Pappy]

G'day Martian,

 

Glad to see you back in the saddle, I have a couple of these so it will be good to watch someone else correct all the pitfalls first

 

cheers,

 

Pappy

[Martian]

1 hour ago, Pappy said:

, I have a couple of these so it will be good to watch someone else correct all the pitfalls first

Happy to be of service: I think. 

 

Martian 

[Martian]

Where to start? Quite bit has been going on today but perhaps we will begin by keeping @Pappy happy and highlight another potential pitfall in the kit. I will explain why I say "potential" in a bit as it will go a long way to explain why some people have problems with this kit and not others.

 

The nose assembly of the kit does not even begin to fit properly. This is due to the inside of the nose mouldings not matching the fuselage. There was clearly now way I was going to be able to fettle the nose to fit , so I decided that the mountain was going to have to come to Mohammed so to speak. I began by cementing some .30 x .30 'thou plastic strip around the lip of the fuselage where the nose is supposed to fit. When this was dry I sanded it to the fuselage contours and flush with the end of the fuselage. I the sanded the mating edge of the nose assembly on my vacform sanding board until it matched the fuselage. I added a couple of tabs from plastic card in order to pull the front of the fuselage level. This gave a much better and stronger, join, albeit a butt one. There will still be some filling to be done but not nearly as much as if one had gone down the route  advocated by the kit instructions. Detail is going to have to be re-instated on the nose and I am glad that I bought the Eduard exterior detail set for this kit.

 

I think that many of the issues surrounding this kit are due to Airfix trying to get too many variants out of a single set of mouldings, which leaves the parts vulnerable to warping, more so given the softish plastic Airfix have been using. The plastic is, of course, a bit of a double edged sword. Prone to warping as already discussed, but mush easier to carve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will that do Pappy?

 

A lot of detail had been lost in removing the runners from the cabin floor so I decided to get rid of it all and start again with a clean slate. It was then out plastic strip, plastic card and punch and die set and using the spare floor for the German version of the Lynx as template, the detail was duly re-instated.. The cabin light was removed from the roof and a mounting for a new light added from a punched disc of card. Finally I carved out the moulded grille on the nose in readiness for an etched brass replacement from the Eduard exterior set..

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Martian 

 

 

[Pappy]

On 27/01/2020 at 07:14, Martian Hale said:

Where to start? Quite bit has been going on today but perhaps we will begin by keeping @Pappy happy and highlight another potential pitfall in the kit. I will explain why I say "potential" in a bit as it will go a long way to explain why some people have problems with this kit and not others.

 

The nose assembly of the kit does not even begin to fit properly. This is due to the inside of the nose mouldings not matching the fuselage. There was clearly now way I was going to be able to fettle the nose to fit , so I decided that the mountain was going to have to come to Mohammed so to speak. I began by cementing some .30 x .30 'thou plastic strip around the lip of the fuselage where the nose is supposed to fit. When this was dry I sanded it to the fuselage contours and flush with the end of the fuselage. I the sanded the mating edge of the nose assembly on my vacform sanding board until it matched the fuselage. I added a couple of tabs from plastic card in order to pull the front of the fuselage level. This gave a much better and stronger, join, albeit a butt one. There will still be some filling to be done but not nearly as much as if one had gone down the route  advocated by the kit instructions. Detail is going to have to be re-instated on the nose and I am glad that I bought the Eduard exterior detail set for this kit.

 

I think that many of the issues surrounding this kit are due to Airfix trying to get too many variants out of a single set of mouldings, which leaves the parts vulnerable to warping, more so given the softish plastic Airfix have been using. The plastic is, of course, a bit of a double edged sword. Prone to warping as already discussed, but mush easier to carve.

 pointless repeated photos removed

 

Will that do Pappy?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, it will do for a start

 

Cheers Martian, you are doing a splendid job navigating the pitfalls. If I may ask. what is a vacuum sanding board?

It sounds like an interesting gadget!

[Martian]

 

28 minutes ago, Pappy said:

Well, it will do for a start

 

Cheers Martian, you are doing a splendid job navigating the pitfalls. If I may ask. what is a vacuum sanding board?

It sounds like an interesting gadget!

Thank you Earthling, We shall return the favour when next you post a build; I'm generous like that. 

 

A vacform board is just a flat piece of wood with wet and dry paper pinned to it. On mine I have a coarse grade paper on one side and a medium one on the other. When cutting out vacform parts, one leaves a margin around the part and uses the board to sand away at the edge of the part until the excess plastic is so thin that it peels away. The part is then ready for use. When life has settled down a bit, I might do a vacform tutorial thread.

 

Martian 

[Heather Kay]

15 minutes ago, Martian Hale said:

When life has settled down a bit, I might do a vacform tutorial thread.

Now, that would be very useful indeed, especially considering recent purchases in my life. 

[Martian]

3 minutes ago, Heather Kay said:

Now, that would be very useful indeed, especially considering recent purchases in my life. 

Better start thinking what kit to build then.

 

Martian 

[Pappy]

10 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

 

Thank you Earthling, We shall return the favour when next you post a build; I'm generous like that. 

 

A vacform board is just a flat piece of wood with wet and dry paper pinned to it. On mine I have a coarse grade paper on one side and a medium one on the other. When cutting out vacform parts, one leaves a margin around the part and uses the board to sand away at the edge of the part until the excess plastic is so thin that it peels away. The part is then ready for use. When life has settled down a bit, I might do a vacform tutorial thread.

 

Martian 

Ahhh, advanced Martian tech, I should have known

 

 

cheers,

 

 

Pappy 

[Martian]

13 hours ago, Pappy said:

Ahhh, advanced Martian tech, I should have known

 

 

cheers,

 

 

Pappy 

Just as long as I'm not blinding you with science.

 

Martian 

[Pappy]

6 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

Just as long as I'm not blinding you with science.

 

Martian 

Or baffling me with bullsh.....erm all the same, it is never too late to learn something new.

 

I keep telling myself that vacform kits are not the devil's playthings and that perfectly decent people build them, I even have a couple of vacform conversion kits. I think I was hoping that the mere act of owning such contrivances would result in the likes of messrs Tamiya and Hasegawa releasing injected versions of the desired variants but it seems that I may have to commit knife to styrene for that minor miracle to occur ( well it partially happened as we now have a very nice two seat 1/48 Harrier kit) so one day......

 

 

Pappy

[Martian]

6 hours ago, Pappy said:

Or baffling me with bullsh.....erm all the same, it is never too late to learn something new.

 

I keep telling myself that vacform kits are not the devil's playthings and that perfectly decent people build them, I even have a couple of vacform conversion kits. I think I was hoping that the mere act of owning such contrivances would result in the likes of messrs Tamiya and Hasegawa releasing injected versions of the desired variants but it seems that I may have to commit knife to styrene for that minor miracle to occur ( well it partially happened as we now have a very nice two seat 1/48 Harrier kit) so one day......

 

 

Pappy

Same difference!

 

On a more serious note, the idea that vacforms are difficult is a bit of a fallacy.  Once the parts are cut out and trimmed, and that just takes a bit of patience,  they are not much harder than some limited run injection kits. Yes you have to make some bulkheads and spars but sometimes we have to make these anyway. One great advantage of the vacform is that the thickness of the parts is a lot closer to the real thing which helps if one decides to open things up. One is also a lot less constrained by the way the kit has been designed as we are basically dealing with a shell which we can fit out as we see fit. OK, when things stabilize for me, I commit myself to doing a tutorial.

 

Martian 

[LorenSharp]

Amen and Thank you O Mischievous Mayfly of Mars! THis will be most welcome!

[perdu]

Looking forward to that Martian

This is the only vac form kit I was ever successful with but in spite of often  trying I have been lacking in success since

 

(Had to be a helicopter didn't it, from me)

 

I have a two seat Lightning I would love to get past the starting gate, just because someone now makes such as a kit is no reason to discard a long term wish is it?

[Marklo]

Funnily enough I’ve never been a huge vac form fan even though I do quite a bit of my own moulding, I have built a few in my day I seem to remember a cutlass, a halberstadt and a pfalz DIii, maybe it my enormous contrail Zepplin Stakken ( still in its box after thirty odd years btw) leering down at me from the top of my stash that is putting me off them. Also nowadays you seem to be able to get an awful lot of kits that just weren’t out there in the olden days (1980’s)

Edited January 28, 2020 by Marklo

[Martian]

2 hours ago, perdu said:

Looking forward to that Martian

This is the only vac form kit I was ever successful with but in spite of often  trying I have been lacking in success since

 

(Had to be a helicopter didn't it, from me)

 

I have a two seat Lightning I would love to get past the starting gate, just because someone now makes such as a kit is no reason to discard a long term wish is it?

That's a fine effort Bill.

1 hour ago, Marklo said:

Funnily enough I’ve never been a huge vac form fan even though I do quite a bit of my old moulding, I have built a few in my day I seem to remember a cutlass, a halberstadt and a offals, maybe it my enormous contrail Zepplin Stakken ( still in its box after thirty odd years btw) leering down at me from the top of my stash that is putting me off them. Also nowadays you seem to be able to get an awful lot of kits that just weren’t out there in the olden days (1980’s)

I think its the inter-war years where the vacform, when you can get them, still rules the roost. I also enjoy the sense of freedom that I get from the genre.

 

Martian 

[Marklo]

Funnily enough (I’m starting a lot of posts like that lately) I did do 4 interwar builds last year but three were obscure old kits ( a fury, a bulldog and a flycatcher) and one a scratchbuild ( a gamecock ( wahey)) now I’d love a Siskin and a nightjar oh and a Blackburn Dart ( so ugly it’s cool) and possibly a bison and a sidestrand, oh all in 1/48 if possible, must start looking to see if there are vac forms out there.

 

 

just looking at my post and my (damn you autocorrect) awful spooling. It should say own not old and pfalz DIII not offal ( it wasn’t that bad)

Edited January 28, 2020 by Marklo

[Martian]

4 hours ago, LorenSharp said:

Amen and Thank you O Mischievous Mayfly of Mars! THis will be most welcome!

Looks like I have put my size 11 tentacle in it again!

1 hour ago, Marklo said:

Funnily enough (I’m starting a lot of posts like that lately) I did do 4 interwar builds last year but three were obscure old kits ( a fury, a bulldog and a flycatcher) and one a scratchbuild ( a gamecock ( wahey)) now I’d love a Siskin and a nightjar oh and a Blackburn Dart ( so ugly it’s cool) and possibly a bison and a sidestrand, oh all in 1/48 if possible, must start looking to see if there are vac forms out there.

 

 

just looking at my post and my (damn you autocorrect) awful spooling. It should say own not old and pfalz DIII not offal ( it wasn’t that bad)

The Dart, Bison and Sidestrand have all been covered in vacforms, along with the sexy looking Backburn Blackburn, they are all in 1/72 though.

 

Martian 

 

[Marklo]

I'll keep looking.

 

Just to contradict myself further vis a vis not liking helicopters. , I went and bought a Mil 24 Hind in 1/48 scale this morning.

Edited January 29, 2020 by Marklo

[heloman1]

Looking good Martin, good to see Jens here too ( hello Jens). Are the pill boxes from a diorama or is the Lynx self medicatiing?

 

Colin

[Martian]

9 hours ago, Marklo said:

I'll keep looking.

 

Just to contradict myself further vis a vis not liking helicopters. , I went and bought a Mil 24 Hind in 1/48 scale this morning.

Clearly you only think you don't like helicopters but deep down you are a closet fan of them.

5 hours ago, heloman1 said:

Looking good Martin, good to see Jens here too ( hello Jens). Are the pill boxes from a diorama or is the Lynx self medicatiing?

 

Colin

Cheers Colin. The pill boxes contain the medication that Mrs Martian uses to keep me "sane". Or should that be sedated?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0L0jVe0duc

 

Martian 

[Marklo]

1 hour ago, Martian Hale said:

Clearly you only think you don't like helicopters but deep down you are a closet fan of them.

Or maybe I'm just being my usually consistently inconsistent self.

[Martian]

The next heads up on this kit is the lower fuselage. Firstly the panel concerned is too short at the front. This was remedied by adding a strip of plastic card to the panel. I then noticed that there was a marked degree of flexing in the lower panel and clearly, the join was always going to be at risk of opening up later down the line. To get round this problem, I glued supporting strips of card around the inside of the opening in the fuselage. This has made things a lot stronger.

 

I next took a look at the tail boom. The starboard side of the rotor pylon needs some filling but, other than that. things were no too bad, even the fit to the fuselage looks to be reasonable.

 

One thing one is going to have to address is the issue of the riveting on the fuselage. A certain amount of this detail is inevitably going to be lost in cleaning up some of corrected fit issues and one is going to have to choose between reinstating the detail a la @Ex-FAAWAFU or to lose the rivets altogether. To Crispinate or not to Crispinate? That is the question. Well, its a matter of personal taste really and I have yet to decide which way I am going to go.

 

My apologies if the thread seems a bit boring at the moment but it seems to me that it is better to get on top of these issues now,  rather than further on in the build, when they will be much harder to fix. At least @Pappy will be happy.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Martian 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheBaron]

On 1/26/2020 at 8:14 PM, Martian Hale said:

The nose assembly of the kit does not even begin to fit properly.

It occurred to me reading this Martian that modelling must be one of those few consumer transactions nowadays where if we subsequently discover that our purchase actually doesn't work properly, we don't take it back to the shop for a refund but simply shrug fatalistically and correct it ourselves.

 

This is known as The Morris Marina Theory of Economics...

 

8 minutes ago, Martian Hale said:

To Crispinate or not to Crispinate?

I'm guessing that we'll all unanimously nominate the former, knowing the strain that this will put on at least five of your available eyes.

 

Like the sense of purpose developing here very much - that cabin floor particularly!

 

[Martian]

6 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

It occurred to me reading this Martian that modelling must be one of those few consumer transactions nowadays where if we subsequently discover that our purchase actually doesn't work properly, we don't take it back to the shop for a refund but simply shrug fatalistically and correct it ourselves.

 

This is known as The Morris Marina Theory of Economics...

 

I'm guessing that we'll all unanimously nominate the former, knowing the strain that this will put on at least five of your available eyes.

 

Like the sense of purpose developing here very much - that cabin floor particularly!

 

Or modelmaking!

 

I genuinely haven't decided which way to go with the rivets. There's a lot of extra work either way.

 

Martian 

[moaning dolphin]

Nice work so far and quite a pace as well, another few items added and you'll be shooting past my progress and I started months ago! Airfix have spent a lot of effort on the rivet detail and for once it looks well represented, correct and not just plastered all over the place. My vote would be to keep as many bumps as possible and just replace what you have to.

Keep up the smashing work!

Bob