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Wooden Lockheed Constellation Rework and Respray


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While filler was drying on the nacelles, I blasted the rest of the airframe with some primer to see what the sanded varnish finish was really like. The high shine varnish and wood grain hid a lot of small defects in the surface.

 

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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The wings weren't too bad but there were areas of wood grain showing where there wasn't enough varnish to fill the grain.

 

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The nacelles were sanded next and more primer applied.

 

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The detached tip tank was glued back on and both wings sanded and primed once again. This is where I'm up to at present. The nacelles still need their panel lines cutting back in and there are probably a few low spots that need some fine surface filler here and there. The model probably isn't too far away from a white top coat, but I've no idea when I'll have the time to get back to it. Right now, keeping my daughter educated and entertained is more important for the sanity of the whole family!!

 

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  • 1 month later...

How novel! Wifey had a half day off and took child out for the morning, so I had a half day off home schooling and got some work done! Over the past few weeks, I've managed the odd hour here and there, mostly filling, wet sanding and priming.

 

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I love the smell of primer in the morning!

 

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It was at this point I remembered the version I was copying was a Connie, not a Super Connie with tip tanks. So after lopping off the excess tankage with the band saw, the remains were sanded down to the rounded version of the wing tips. I soaked in a little thin cyano a couple of times, giving a light wet sand each time.

 

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This was followed by a thick brushed coat of primer, as I knew there would be more sanding and filling to do and it wasn't worth the effort of cleaning out the airbrush.

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So today, the fuselage and tailplane got a white top coat sprayed. The underside of the fuselage is silver with a red cheat line.

 

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The wings were given a silver undercoat. Knowing how silver shows up all sorts of small defects, I wanted a silver base coat to check the wings before going for the top coat. As it happened, there was a small area of wood grain showing on the underside of one aileron, so that was filled later in the day.

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I also gave the props a sprayed coat of silver. If it had been my model, I would have pulled a couple of props apart, as the blades aren't 120 degrees apart, but the customer just wanted them left as they were. That's all for now. Back to schooling little legs and not sure when my next session will be.

connie_041.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

The silver base coat showed up a few areas needing attention that didn't show clearly in primer, so these areas were filled and sanded once more. I don't mind working in wood, but it's a pain to finish. When I did large R/C aircraft, the balsa airframes were always skinned in 1/2 ounce fibreglass cloth, applied with epoxy resin. This gave a nice hard, smooth finish to represent the aircraft skin, needing only panels and rivets applying. Of course that took a lot of sanding too.....and with a much larger surface area to deal with.......acres of it!!

 

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Once all sanded, out came the Tamiya silver for another coat.

 

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After the white undercoat, the upper half of the fuselage was sprayed Tamiya white and left to harden. A few days later, the read cheat line was masked up and sprayed.

 

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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The red was given a while to go a little beyond the 'green' stage and then the masking was removed. The underside of the fuselage will be silver. There's also windows to mask and spray, plus the black nose. Most of the other markings will be inkjet decals.

 

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After further sanding, the props were sprayed once more.

 

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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This morning, I got the three fins masked to allow the tailplane to be sprayed silver. After that had a while to dry, I brought it all out to the garden for a few progress pictures. It's looking quite smart now and very different to the varnished wood, anhedral version I started with.

 

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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Some of today was spent working on the graphics for the markings. I'd previously traced the window positions, so that tracing was scanned and formed the background layer to plan out the sizes of the text. The wing tip and fins were also drawn around and those were scanned too, for the same reason.

 

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Wifey had daughter out again this morning, so I got a couple more hours in, masking and painting the cabin windows. I left the cockpit for another day, as that would be a bit more fiddly and wanted to leave the cabin windows to fully harden before starting to mess around masking up the front end for the cockpit and nose spraying. So step one was to cut a thin strip of tape to run parallel to, and above the red cheat line. A 3/16 inch strip of tape was laid down above and parallel to that piece of tape, giving the height of the windows. A further strip of tape was then applied above that, marking the top of the windows. Once done, the centre 3/16 inch strip was removed. I now had the top and bottom frames masked.

Stage two was attaching 3/16 inch strips of tape over the position of each window, as seen below. This gave a width for each window frame.

 

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Thin strips of tape were now laid down each side of the window, masking the sides of each window. By laying them flush up against the tape over the window position, I knew each would be parallel and the window should look square.

 

connie_053.jpg

Edited by Army_Air_Force
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With the sides of each window masked, the tape over the window could be removed and then the rest of the fuselage was masked up ready for spraying. The picture below shows the masking before a gentle burnish down.

 

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Several light coats of black were sprayed for the windows and before long, it was time to peel away the masking.

 

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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I always find unmasking an aircraft very satisfying. Many, many years ago, I worked at a light aviation maintenance company at Newcastle Airport. We did a few resprays of fullsize light aircraft and there was always a buzz in the hangar when it was time to remove the masking!

 

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Cabin windows complete! Next session, the cockpit glass and nose, then the silver underside.

 

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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I hadn't been looking forwards to this job - masking the cockpit windows! The shape of the carved wood was odd and not symmetrical and that was going to make masking up some even looking windows difficult. The frames were only around 1mm wide, so the masking tape was cut stuck to a piece of 6mm acrylic sheet and cut into thin strips. The top and bottom frames were masked with two pieces of tape, one cut to a convex curve while the other was concave. The 1mm frame strips were applied and everything burnished down gently. I sprayed them with multiple thin coats to minimise the chance of bleeding.

 

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The rest of the nose would be masked and sprayed in stages as it was going to be easier that way. After a while to dry ( about a coffee break long ) the masking was removed. I was quite pleased to see the result without the tape.

 

connie_059.jpg

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The nose radome came next. The rest of the fuselage was masked off with clingfilm. The red cheat line was rubbed down a little where it extended into the black nose.

 

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The nose was sprayed in multiple layers again and then left for a while to harden.

 

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Masking the de-icer boots on the tailplane and fins was fiddly. It took a few goes to get there and due to the amount of additional masking needed to prevent overspray, I just brush painted the boots. The small boots of the tailplane tips were left off at this stage and would be painted freehand due to how small the amount of tailplane there was to mask.

 

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By this time the nose had dried enough to remove the masking. Another good result.

 

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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The glare panel ahead of the pilots completed the painting on the nose. Just the silver underside to do on the fuselage now.

 

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Last job of the afternoon was those de-icer boots on the tips of the tailplanes.

 

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Terrific work!

 

What primer are you using? I note that you have used a lot of wet sanding. I’ve given up wet sanding over primed wood because I find the wood primer just sort of disintegrates and rolls-up into thin little stringy sausages when wet sanded. Is there some trick to this that I am missing? 

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