Classic Airframes 1/48 De Havilland Sea Hornet (F.20)

[Kenny J]

OK, so my plans to build a Phantom as my first WIP on here have been put on hold, so I've delved back into the stash, and found something completely different - Classic Airframes' Sea Hornet.

 

 

I bought this shortly after I re-started building kits - I'd done a Mosquito, Lightning and Tigercat, all in 1/48 scale, and it seemed like the logical next step. But then something shinier caught my eye, and to be honest I was a bit daunted by the short-run aspects - resin and a lack of locating pins.

 

I will be going with the silver dope F.20 option, as the radar on the NF.21 completely distracts from those elegant DeHavilland lines, IMO. Also, I'll be portraying it in flight, mainly to show of the aforementioned elegant lines, but also because I gather that a fair bit of fiddling is needed to get the undercarriage right. I'll be taking inspiration from the various very informative WIP threads on this site, and heeding the advice of all who have tackled this kit before, especially David A Collins, who I understand has gone a bit further than just tackling a mere kit of the aircraft.

 

So, first questions: As it will be displayed in flight, it'll need a pilot. I've got a couple of candidates, but what would a Fleet Air Arm pilot in Malta in 1954 be wearing whilst flying a Sea Hornet? Leather helmet or Bone Dome? What colour of flying suit?

 

[Kenny J]

First order of the day - check all the bits are there!

 

Then some toxic dust creation as I free the resin parts from their stubs:

 

Next up, rising and priming (and maybe painting a pilot).

[Kenny J]

Progress: I've separated the resin parts and primed them (Halfords spray primer). Unfortunately the control column cracked, but since there's going to be a pilot, it's not too big a deal - I've faked something up with wire and plastic card, Glued the side panels to the fuselage, painted and dry-brushed the cockpit parts.

 

Primed:

 

Painted - matt black with a dry-brush coat of Extra Dark Sea Grey - not particularly subtle, in an attempt to make it not look like an indistinguishable black hole:

 

Instrument panel roughly detailed (it won't be particularly visible). Added the headrest damper from a bit of wire (slightly heavy-handed with the dry-brushing, but it'll be painted black before the lid goes on:

 

The pilot figure needed a bit of surgery (and completely new arms) to fit. Don't worry though - he's not lost his head, he was never attached to it in the first place. During a test-fitting, I realised I've misaligned the side instrument panels, pushing everything too far back. You can see the big gap ahead of the instrument panel. I've managed to separate them from the fuselage walls, and will reposition them so that everything lines up better when I glue it all together for real. In the meantime it looks like this:

 

I've decided that the pilot is going to have a silver bone-dome. The photos I've seen aren't overly clear, but it looks like at least some of the pilots had bone domes, some had leather helmets. I figure that for a prop-driven aircraft from the beginning of the jet age, it's appropriate to show the transition from the old to the new. If I remember right, the pilot is from an Academy F86:

 

Next I'll be painting the pilot, and assembling the fuselage, and trying to remember to add the vac-formed rear side windows before I seal it up!

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by Kenny J

[Christer A]

Ooooh, a Hornet 

I'm guessing you aren't going to extend the fuselage, move the gear bays and all the other stuff that "needs" to be done?

 

In any case, I like the cockpit!

[Kenny J]

Thanks Christer,

It's going to be displayed in-flight, so the gear bays aren't much of an issue. I'm still deciding about the fuselage extension - thinking about maybe making the cut at the tail section, as per David Collins' marvellous build:

The thought of having to re-do the tailplane fillets is a bit daunting, but what I might do is to take a mould of the rear section with thermoplastic and cast a duplicate from Milliput, then fettle that into place.

[HOUSTON]

Hello Kenny J.

 

 

NEAT  start . 

Look forward to this . 

Following with much interest abd enthusiasm!

[SteveMc]

Nice choice Kenny. The late, great test pilot Eric Brown described the Sea Hornet as one of the finest aircraft of the 400+ he flew.

[ththtttu7]

Hi Kenny,

I look forward to seeing this build progress 👍

[Kenny J]

Thanks everyone!

A bit of progress to report: I sorted out the side panels, and completed painting the pilot to the best of my limited abilities, I've strapped him in (with wine-bottle foil straps), and have got the fuselage together, with a bit of fettling to sort out the seams.

 

I chickened opted out of lengthening the fuselage, on the grounds that the only people likely to see it in person are not going to notice the inaccuracy. The tailplanes and fin are on. Next up, the wings, engines and props.

 

It's always a contentious issue, but since this will be displayed in-flight, I'm thinking about simulating prop blur. My plan by using discs of transparent plastic a couple of mm thick, tapered at the edges and near the centre, lightly sprayed with Tamiya Smoke and a bit of yellow on the tips. I think it should give the illusion of movement. In ordinary circumstances, I would be on the lookout for a couple of the kind of reasonably heavyweight plastic pint glasses you get at gigs where they're a bit worried about the punters chucking glasses around (but not worried enough to give them the really flimsy ones). As it is, I have no gigs to go to, so I'm eyeing up alternatives - if I can't get something already circular, I'll cut up some old CD cases.

 

 

[HOUSTON]

Coming along SPLENDIDLY!

 

[Kenny J]

I mentioned that I was going to attempt to portray spinning props using transparent discs, so I thought I might share my progress with this - it's been a bit of an interesting experiment.

 

First I started with a clear plastic disposable picnic plate:

 

 

 

I made a compass cutter by attaching a scalpel blade to my old bow compass from when I did technical drawing, using a secure combination of superglue and zip ties, and attempted to scribe out a circle:

 

 

 

It wasn't particularly neat, due to the blade wobbling around, and it would take AGES to cut through the plastic, so after a few attempts which didn't go well, I decided I needed another approach. I needed something which could create an accurate circle in 2mm thick plastic, like a cookie cutter or something... That something turned out to be an empty tin of beans. I heated the tin with a blowtorch, and (wearing oven mitts) used it to cut out two discs from plates:

 

 

Not bad, huh? They were a bit off centre, and there was an rim round the edge, so I clamped them into my Dremel, and attempted to sand them down, The intention was that after clearing up the edges, I'd slim down the tips and centre, to simulate the shape of a propeller. After about an hour of sanding, I'd got them to this state:

 

You can't really see, but while I'd sanded off the rim OK, my attempts to sand in a profile had barely made a dent in the plastic. Still, was confident they'd polish out...

 

Eventually, after a lot of sanding and polishing, I ended up with these:

 

Crystal clear, perfectly circular, with a hole exactly the right size for the prop boss, in the exact centre of the disc. How did I get them to this stage? Simple: after hours of getting nowhere with my sanding and polishing, I binned the accursed picnic plate discs and went on eBay, where I found a man in Lockerbie who would laser-cut me two acrylic discs to my specifications for just over 2 quid.

 

I feel there's some kind of important lesson to be learned there.

 

Anyway, here's a picture of the Sea Hornet - everything's assembled, and I'm currently priming, using Vallejo surface primer, which has revealed a multitude of sins I need to attempt to deal with:

 

I thought I'd filled various joints and the extraneous panel lines sufficiently well, but evidently not. I'm using Deluxe Materials "Perfect Plastic Putty", but even if I leave it until the next day, water still dissolves it, which is a bit annoying when wet-sanding. I like the convenience of just squeezing it out of a tube, but I might have to go back to Milliput Superfine...

[gunzo]

Lovely build and good to see one 'in-flight'.

 

Since you mentioned the fuselage length, with David Collins' assistance the CA Hornet 'getting- it- spot- on' mods I've been engaged with (for shear bloody mindedness) include;

 

- extended fuselage

- reshaped, repositioned and re-aligned rudder and fairing

-  spinners and nacelles ahead of leading edge skinned  all round  and lengthened by 30 thou together with modified bay doors

- mid section belly skinned 30 thou

- nose reshaped  to give a slightly higher apex

 

As a work in (seemingly endless) progress, I doubt it will look any better than yours!

 

FWIW, the Dynavector I have seems to have the same  basic dimensions as the CA.

 

les

[bigbadbadge]

Good to see this together and quite quickly too. Great work likectge clear props too.  With PPP if you go over it with a damp cotton bud you will be able to smooth out negating the need for lots of rubbing down.  Hope that helps 

Chris

[Kenny J]

Bit of an update on this - I've got the paint on - Vallejo metal color, with the Vallejo metal varnish to seal it. I've found that this takes quite a while to fully dry, and I've had disasters in the past when trying to handle/weather kits too soon. I've got the prop spinners painted up as well - I read a tip on here about undercoating in orange to get a good shade of yellow, and it seems to have worked. I used Xtracrylic Trainer Yellow. For the propellors, I've misted the clear discs with black, to give a prop-like effect. I did this by mounting them in a Dremel and spraying onto them while spinning. It worked well on one, but on the other I let the paint get a bit wet and there is an interesting streaking effect as the paint was forced to the edges. Interesting experiment. I've also tried to simulate the yellow prop tips, but I'm not overly happy with the results - hoping that a light sanding leads to a better effect.

 

Anyway - photos:

 

 

 

[Kenny J]

(And yes, that is a paint-streaked jam jar lid with a metal rod in it as a stand. I'm aiming to have a slightly nicer jam jar lid as the final stand.)

[Kenny J]

Some progress to report - I've had issues in the past with Vallejo's metal color varnish not curing properly, and gumming up when I attempted to do panel washes. Previously, I've just been making my own washes with ordinary white spirit and either Humbrol enamel or artist's oil paint, which may or may not have been a factor. This time, I gave it a good three weeks to cure after the decals went on, and then used Mig and Alclad washes. I didn't hit any problems, and other than waiting for the (very subtle) panel wash to cure, I'm pretty much done with it - a final coat of varnish to seal everything, and glueing down the canopy and propellers. Oh, and sorting out a nicer base than the paint-streaked jam jar lid.

 

Some photos:

Port side (the rear fuselage windows are too large, and I've knocked the transparencies into the fuselage while masking - if I was building it again, I think I'd just drill them out later and glaze them with a film of Clear-Fix)

 

Starboard side - the canopy is not yet attached. I totally forgot to attempt the "pen nib" at the back, and I'm not sure about where the windscreen sits in relationship to the nose (although I see David Collins has just shared a fantastic photo which illustrates this nicely).

 

Head on. The prop discs look better from a distance, honest!

 

[(ex)Sgtrafman]

That’s proper cool, I like that 😎👍

 

Iain

[ththtttu7]

Love it!

[Kenny J]

I'm calling it done. Ready for Inspection thread here.

 

The last bit of construction was the base - the paint-splattered jam jar lid was binned in favour of a shiny black plastic hair gel tub lid, with a section of wine cork glued to the underside to hold the support column, and a de Havilland logo for decoration:

 

 

Edited November 23, 2020 by Kenny J