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Short Gurnard - 1/72 scratchbuilt FINISHED


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How have I missed this????

 

My apologies for not commenting hitherto but I was wholly unaware of this most excellent build. Just up my street - unusual aircraft, strange shape with lots of struts/rigging/other bits hanging off, and a scratch build! What is there not to like?

 

On top of that first class scratch building with some very interesting techniques and ideas to steal copy and use on one of my projects. I am very impressed with the gun tube and exhaust stubs - two brilliant ideas.

 

Will be following more closely from now on.

 

P

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for the very generous comments, @Old Man and @pheonix, especially from such masters of the dark arts. Apologies for the delay; I've been somewhat distracted from modelling recently.

 

I've made a few small additions to the Gurnard, but they really are minor and I really ought to extract digit! Firstly I wrapped some thin fusewire round the top of the undercarriage legs and flooded the coils with Formula 560 glue to fill them, fix them and hopefully allow them to represent the shock absorber covers:

 

20200923_203946

 

I made a prop using a pair of blades from the spares box and the tip of a 1/48 drop tank as a spinner, then added my last piece of 0.8mm brass tube into a drilled hole at the spinner tip to represent the starter dog:

 

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I eventually decided that the wing float moulds I had made were as good as I could be bothered to get them, then used them to vacform some float halves from 40 thou card:

 

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These were quite rough (understatement!) and so are taking quite a bit of fettling. This is where I've got to with them so far:

 

20200923_204002

 

Hopefully I can get back to regular work on the Gurnard so that I can finish it before it starts to fossilise. I could do with the mindfulness aspect, especially after finishing a work shift with 2 fatalities (I'm part of a SAR team) followed immediately by having to have my faithful, stubborn and utterly gorgeous chocolate labrador put to sleep. Oh well.

 

Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to report some faster progress toward the finish line!

 

Jon

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I was saddened to read of the fatalities and on top of that the loss of a deeply loved pet. I do hope that time will help t heal some of those psychological blows. Personally I find modelling does help to distract the mind after the initial shock has worn off, even if it is only for short periods.

 

Your floats look good to me: if it is any consolation some of my larger moulds also start a bit rough, but it is surprising what a bit of filler and filing can do. I am certain that these will be well up to the mark in very little time.

 

Keep up this exciting build - I am now all eyes.

 

P

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7 hours ago, pheonix said:

I was saddened to read of the fatalities and on top of that the loss of a deeply loved pet

Cheers, P; the fatalities (in this case separate, unrelated and both completely avoidable) are part and parcel of the job, as they are for anyone who works in an emergency response role; we’re normally fairly well removed from the human impact of such events, something that ambulance crews and police have to manage routinely, but it’s impossible not to empathise. As for my hound, I have to confess that the effort of trying to maintain a traditional head-of-household, stiff-upper-lip reserve in front of family and veterinary staff yesterday left me pretty drained. Then again, my family has stayed healthy in the midst of a global pandemic, our other pets are healthy, I haven’t faced redundancy or a pay cut and my offspring are stepping up to interesting new phases in eduction and work. The glass is well over half-full!

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Can I just add my thoughts and sympathies as well, and say how sorry I was to read of your work and your lab.

There's not much else I can say, but keeping going with a hobby helps to focus a bit on things that redirect the mind and thought processes.

Kind regards,

Mark

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I'm getting really quite bored with float-fettling, but I'm nearly there. I made some main struts from scraped 60 thou card, cut them to size and cemented the port float into place:

 

20200927_221731

 

I'd cut slots into the float for the inboard struts which were cut from plastic strut stock that came, I think, with the Contrail Vildebeest that I completed a few months ago. Once the main struts were secure I added these inboard struts:

 

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...which makes the Gurnard look like this:

 

20200927_222316

 

The starboard float is ready for attaching, which is a job for tomorrow as I spent the rest of this evening's modelling time decalling the Swordfish in the background of the last pic.

 

I used Vallejo Model Air Light Grey to apply the Cerrux Grey to the Swordfish a couple of days ago; in the absence of any definitive colour reference I used the same colour for the Gurnard's nose panels, hence the masking. Nearly ready for silver paint!

 

Jon

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Firstly Jon sorry for the loss of you dog.  I hope you're okay fella and much respect to you for your job too. 

 

This has really progressed now and looks absolutely ace.  Fantastic work.  I love all the brass work.  And using Sprue lengths for struts is genius, never thought of that before and is abundant for us modellers,  going to have to tuck that away in the old memory bank. Great stuff thanks.

Chris

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Apologies for the rubbish photography; they’re just snaps from my smartphone which is struggling with the focus. 

 

Rather annoyingly*, the Swordfish in the background continues to be one of those builds in which nothing seems to go smoothly. Last night I applied the nicely understated HMS Eagle markings from the Xtradecal Swordfish Pt 2 sheet, using Micro Set and Sol to help some of the decals bed down over the surface detail. This morning one of the upper wing roundels was badly wrinkled, so it got another dose of Sol, but the wrinkles are still there. Later on, while out running, I had one of my exercise-induced modelling light bulb moments, except that this evening’s revelation was more like a painfully blinding spotlight than a traditional light bulb.

 

During my recent Contrail Vildebeest build I made the error of applying decals straight onto the Humbrol Polished Aluminium paint, only for the carrier film to show clearly through the subsequent flat coat. Removing the decals and glossing the aluminium finish before redecalling obviously fixed the issue - a schoolboy error which I told myself I wouldn’t make again.

 

Hmm. 

 

It was just as well that I was running on my own out in the fields when I realised that I’d made the same mistake again, as I found it necessary to go through my full Anglo-Saxon phrasebook. The decals will have to be removed, the airframe glossed and a decision made about which of the gaudier carrier schemes to apply instead. Will I never learn?

 

So, the Gurnard will be painted, GLOSSED, and then decalled (is that a word?). Honestly.

 

Jon

 

 

*Understatement.

Edited by Jonners
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Jon: first, my sympathies over the loss of your beloved pet.  That's really hard, especially in these times.

 

I'm glad you can maintain some professional detachment regarding the SAR job--you obviously are doing what you love, and that's important.

 

Regarding the model(s), I appreciate how important it is to keep chugging along with this.  Sorry about the decal mess!

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That looks very nice indeed sir!

 

Funny how phone photos distort the perspective (because they have a very wide angle of view?). I could have sworn the stbd float was twice the size of the port one a couple of photos back, now I'm convinced it's the other way around!

 

I hope you are feeling better after last week.

 

Regards,

Adrian

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17 hours ago, Jonners said:

I'm feeling quietly chuffed with how it's looking so far, considering that it started out as flat plastic sheet and is by far my most adventurous modelling project!

Yes that’s exactly why scratch building can be so great. I feel pretty much the same way about my Taube. 
 

looking wonderful btw.

Edited by Marklo
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1 hour ago, AdrianMF said:

I could have sworn the stbd float was twice the size of the port one a couple of photos back, now I'm convinced it's the other way around!

Definitely both the same size, Adrian, albeit the results of my fettling are probably a little wider than they should be:

 

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I had forgotten that the outboard wing float struts were mounted over the underwing roundel; when I spotted this ages ago I made a mental note to add the roundels beford the float struts. I don't know where that mental note disappeared to, but the photo that clearly shows the arrangement has been on the wall in front of me throughout the build! Muppet...

 

Anyway, the background Swordfish has be 'undecalled' and both models have been glossed with a couple of coats of Klear. Onward!

 

Jon

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3 minutes ago, Jonners said:

I don't know where that mental note disappeared to, but the photo that clearly shows the arrangement has been on the wall in front of me throughout the build! Muppet...

Well that’s the other side of scratchbuilding like the mirror image exhaust manifolds on my Sopwith pup :) 

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Just popped in for my scratch building fix, and as usual not disappointed, what a stunning job! Can't wait to see the next installment.

 

We lost our old dog earlier this year, she was the best co-pilot. (Not that sort, the ground based type!) They leave such a big hole don't they?

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2 hours ago, Quiet Mike said:

They leave such a big hole don't they?

Thanks, Mike, and everyone else for your kind comments. Yes, they do, but we're lucky to still have the daughter of the dog that we lost last week so the hole isn't as big as it might have been:

 

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(Mum on the right, daughter on the left.)

 

Back in the pretend world, the Gurnard is gaining a splash of colour:

 

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Thanks for looking in!

Jon

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Hi Jon 

Great photo of the two doggies.

The Gurnard looks amazing with the paint on and decals going on , I always love this part of a build  seeing the roundels going on, do you fly it round the room making aircraft noises too? Or is that just me ?  

Great work fella.

Chris

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Catching up having been away again. You have made tremendous progress with this one - it is really looking the part now.

 

With reference to your comment about bits of sheet plastic and strip: yes indeed, that is why I find scratch building satisfying in a way that building a kit is not for me. I am aware that scratch building is not for everyone, (it was not for me once), but for those of us that do so, it is a very rewarding experience.

 

P

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I'm a few steps closer to finishing the Gurnard, although there are still quite a number of detail jobs to complete.

 

Firstly I finished the decalling. I had intended to paint the tail stripes but needed to create small black serial numbers with white outlines against the red and blue rudder stripes. Eventually I tinkered around on the computer with Word and overlaid red and blue coloured stripes with some 11pt Arial Bold numbers in white (Arial was the closest font to the original that I could find).

 

I bought some white decal paper which completely failed to absorb the inkjet ink, so I printed the image onto clear decal paper then laid it onto the rudder after I painted it white. I also printed some black numbers in standard-width 11pt Arial in the hope that they would give a white outline on the bold white numbers, but it didn't quite work out as I'd hoped. The result isn't very satisfactory, but it's on the model:

 

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The propeller was painted and fitted and the whole airframe was given a light coat of Humbrol Matt Cote. The wheels were then fitted to the undercarriage legs and, to my surprise, I only managed to snap off one of the soldered vertical legs - superglue to the rescue:

 

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At this point, while looking again at photos, I noticed that the grey paint should have extended level with the centre-section fuselage strut attachments as far aft as the back of the cockpit. "Fiddlesticks", quoth I, or words to that effect. Taking these close-up pics has also highlighted lots of unsightly lumps, bumps and dents; I will have to decide how many I should tackle and how many I can live with. Hmm.

 

Next major job (after adding the missing grey) will be to work out how to add a gun ring to the rear cockpit. In the meantime, here is one of those 'working features' to partly make up for all the imperfections!

 

20201010_181825

 

As always, thanks for looking.

Jon

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