1/72 Airfix Avro Lancaster Biplane and Avro Anson Little Brother

[Head in the clouds.]

Welcome folks, well a new year starts and I continue with my two builds and to start 2022 I am going to give 'Faithful Annie' some love and attention.

 

I hope you all had as good a New Years celebrations as your local rules permitted, the wife  and I spent the night in the banquet hall of a 13th century Inn listening to a 1920's singer, a good night and no hangover, that must be a first...😄.

 

Anyway, the last time on worked on the Anson I was building the two Cheetah engines and arrived at a point where the main engine was built and now needed the pushrod tubes fitted, 2 per cylinder, 14 per engine and 28 in total. Each one had to be of the smallest diameter brass rod I have and each one needed to be the same length so I had to get my thinking cap on as cutting each without some sort of jig would not give me a constant length. I did try that method but could not maintain a constant size. I came up with a jig made from Milliput with a flat section sanded down to the required thickness with a hole drilled and a piece of brass tube pressed in. Into this I would stand my rod and using the flat outer surface of the cutter to the top of the jig I should get an acceptable and consistent length;

 

The Milliput is just an offcut from a previous job, never throw anything away; crikey, I sound like my grandparents..🧓👴😃.

 

I started to cut 28 of these 0.2mm lengths plus some spare which I did need in the end, I imagine I will find the others one day when I stand on them...🤕;

 

I started to fix them in place and all the usual problems occurred, sticking to the tweezers and not the plastic, flying into the carpet monsters mouth and generally not playing by the rules;

 

 

Not the best photo, apologies. One or two of the brass items ended up a little long or short but this was not down to the jig but more down to small differences in the height of the rocker covers.

 

Once all were in place it looked OK;

 

Round two commenced and the other engine was done, not the quickest of jobs but necessary.

 

In my last Annie post I spoke about how I may tackle the cowlings for the engine which are thick and clunky with an integrally molded engine, brass sheet being my choice. Before I did this which would be a lot of work I pondered about using the existing and hollowing it out, I had nothing to loose and still had the second engine to use as a buck if I went down the brass sheet route.

 

So out with the grinder, first taking out the engine itself with a rough cut tip. Next I used a variety of diamond tipped bits and very carefully ground out the cowling to a more scale thickness, I did not want to damage the rounded rim of the cowl as it would be a mare to repair. The last step of removing material was done by hand with a scraper. I purchased this scraper a few years ago and since it had little use but for this it was perfect, having a good sized round handle and a 3 bladed star like tip it was sturdy and precise. After a couple of hours this is how it turned out;

 

For comparison a before and after.

 

 

It turned out far better than I thought it would, one slip and it was plan B.

 

The critical moment though is seeing if the engine fits in;

 

It sure does and I think it looks very acceptable and a 100% improvement over the original, must remember though when fitting it to the wing to get the orientation correct, approx 180 degrees to where it is in the pic.

 

While I was basking in my euphoria I prepared the  pilots office for fitting;

 

With these two jobs now put to bed I can now start thinking about the Flightpath PE cabin window frames and how to fit them, I can see some nail chewing here, I hate PE but keep buying it...Why?

 

Thanks for looking.

[AnticlockwisePropeller]

I'm absolutely enthralled by all the delicate little details you've managed to include in both models so far! With all the care and attention you're giving them, they're gonna be absolutely fantastic when they're finished!

[Head in the clouds.]

Thank you Chris, I appreciate your kind words. The detail is what takes the time, both in planning and execution and even then I have to do it over but in a slightly different way sometimes when it does not turn out right. I also do not spend too much time on the basic build as this has no doubt been covered many times over on these forums and it would seem a waste of yours and my time to do so.

 

It is hard on the old MK1 eyeballs though...😄

 

Gary

[Head in the clouds.]

Evening folks.

The world becomes more bizarre  and I become more busy so I thought it about time I moved this project on a little and try to put the Lancaster to bed.

 

I have noticed that some marks have appeared on mainly on the wings;

 

lots of little spots, I can only assume it is either paint or thinner spatter but either way it has to be dealt with so the offending areas are given a gentle rub down with 3600 grade cloth and a thin under coat applied;

 

A quick woft over with the airbrush and that should sort that little issue;

 

At some point I have to tackle the PE flaps and after my hash up of the first 2 sections, I thought I would try a new approach. First off, rather than fix the ribs down first then try to thread the bar through the ribs this time I will mount the bar and then fold the ribs over; secondly, instead of using hot, extra thin CA that runs everywhere while the rib is in place I will place some thicker CA on the rib then place it in position;

 

 

The bottom two are done with my later method and there is a visible difference, no glue which is clearly visible on the top two. Hopefully a coat of paint will hide some of it.

 

They were then sprayed interior green and then weathered a little with AK weathering pencil number 10, Sepia. I am starting to use these more now and find them to be very versatile and any over weathering can be simply washed out with water;

 

 

The engine nacelle section is not fixed but in dry fix position and it still needs a top coat of Alclad. The weather looks good, maybe a little heavy on the right which I will sort with some magic H2O. Another job that needs doing and that I have just noticed is the trailing edge perforated plates that need sprating and fitting.

 

The sharp eyed amongst you will have noticed that the decals have been applied, for this I owe you an apology, the decaling was done over several nights and I just forgot to take pics but long to short I used the Xtradecal Post War Lancaster set that had a 82Sq machine in it but rather annoyingly it was missing the squadron crest seen under the cockpit on the port side. As PA474 was not the machine covered in the set I had to slash and cut the other serials on the sheet and use some others from the spares box to get the serial I needed but marking wise there are not that many. There are two I need to scource, the crest and another, broken square marking near the port tail which I think may be an emergency exit, not sure though!

All in all no problems with the decals, just time consuming scourcing and cutting to suit, the 'M' on the fuselage being the hardest to do as each is four separate pieces.

 

The lowered flaps are now fitted;

 

These have been an absolute pig that fought me all the way but something good always comes out of adversity and that good is that I now know what to do next time. One thing I have not mentioned is that when I fitted the perforated plates to the upper trailing edge it was not a they did not sit at a shallow enough angle but it was too late to do anything about it, I now think I needed to hollow out the trailing edge much more. Another issue was that I had to decrease the length of two sections of the lower flaps as they would not fit but I did not find this issue until I came to fit them.

Did I say that I dont like Eduard PE much...🤔

 

Last job is too fit the propellers and de mask, fit the aerofoil which I will leave loose for ease of transporting and I am calling this done;

 

Thanks for following, much appreciated.

 

Now to finish the Annie.👍

 

 

 

 

 

[Bertie McBoatface]

On 10/25/2021 at 8:35 PM, Head in the clouds. said:

 

 

Can you still get Fox's Glacier Mints? 🐻‍❄️

[Bertie McBoatface]

What a fascinating project. Keep it up!

[Pete in Lincs]

Silver paint, flaps, stickers. My, that does look impressive. If not positively lovely. 

[HOUSTON]

EXEMPLARY  workmanship  throughout with every little detail accounted for.

and Excellent  thorough research too with diagrams is nice to see.

Super photos! 

thank you.

 

[621Andy]

Stunning work! Great stuff😍

[Head in the clouds.]

Thank you very much gentleman.

[HOUSTON]

I cannot wait to see the end results. 

[alhenderson]

This has been a fascinating thread.  I work at Cranfield, across from the airfield, but sadly there's nothing as interesting as this there any more 😞

 

Al.

[Head in the clouds.]

On 2/7/2022 at 9:03 AM, alhenderson said:

I work at Cranfield, across from the airfield, but sadly there's nothing as interesting as this there any more

Very true Al, it used to be a little gold mine and you never knew what you may see, not all progress is good.

[Pete in Lincs]

We put more beer and wine into the Lord Harrowby today. We were in an 18 tonner so couldn't really drop by for tea  🫖

[Head in the clouds.]

Good work Pete, I was down there last Saturday night sampling a fine ruby ale ( or 3..🍻).

 

An 18 tonner you say, just exceeds my drive capacity by about 17 ton and 30 feet, you must have had a good run of deliveries to warrant such a big wagon. How did you get on with some of that moronic parking that is so common down there? Or did you just drive over them...🤪

[Pete in Lincs]

The new Landlord puts cones out in the side street. That wagon overhangs a bit, but hey...

You should see it delivering to the Avenue Hotel off the High Street!

[Head in the clouds.]

I can imagine, no wonder you don't come to G town too often, some of the town folk are out for you, the other half, myself, included are more than happy to see you, park your 18 tonner where you like for me 👍.

Let me know when your next on Avenue Rd, I will turn up and have a laugh at everyone getting wound up...🤣😉

[Head in the clouds.]

I have just looked at the date on my last response to Pete dated Feb 17th, has it really been nearly 8 months since I last posted here? Apparently so! It has been an insanely busy year and it shows no sign of abating and time at the bench has been very sporadic to say the least so what follows is several months work. Way back on page 2 was a picture of our garden and this has taken much of my time and like my model building it doesn't happen overnight but apart from the poncing around with flower pots and garden trinkets it is done;

 

 

So with that build project out of the way I suppose I had better pull my finger out and get Annie moving again, she has been sat on the bench, obediently awaiting my attentions, only getting a fettle on rare occasions.

 

One of the known flaws in the old Airfix kit is the flat bottom profile to the underside of the fuselage between the wings and the general consensus on rectifying this is to build it up and this where each modellers artistic license comes in. For my Picasso moment I decided to get 3 different thicknesses of flat Evergreen plastic and fit the thickest in the middle, followed by the next size one either side of the centre bar and then the thinnest on the outside. I did this because it gave the filler more to key to and it gave an indicator as to how far I had sanded down, once the white plastic showed  I knew I was thereabouts. A bonus of this was hiding the poor fuselage join;

 

 

It looks crude but it works, the sharp eyed amongst you will have noticed I have missed out the bomb aimers window which I worked around by inserting another piece of clear plastic deeper in the opening and then resting the kit item on top.

To fill the gaps I used my dwindling supply of Green filler;

 

There is just no neat way of doing this as can be seen, luckily, after about what feels like a lifetime of sanding it will look much better.

 

 

After the sanding marathon it becomes apparent my method of thinking was not too far off the mark but it is worth noting that that not only does it rise from the wing root to the centre but it also has to be blended towards the forward and rear fuselage sections too so in essence I am trying to achieve a shallow dome shape. This is where the plastic strip really came into its own to give me an indicator of shape. 

 

After all this sanding a large amount of dust was created of which about 3 bags of the stuff decided to take up residence on the inside of the side cabin windows and despite my best efforts to remove it some still remained so the long side glazing was removed. This was not a bad thing as the glazing over sailed the roof of the cabin by 1mm so it gave me an opportunity to make two new items with the 1mm removed, they have now been made but not fitted as I see more sanding in my future.. ☹️ As I had the old pieces they were used as templates minus the 1mm, not going to fall into that trap!

 

Next was to spin the fuselage around and look at the top which will need ....wait for it, more filling! As Cranfields Anson was an ex military machine I had to fill the gaping hole left by the omission of the turret but a simple solution presented itself pretty quickly simply by reversing the turret tub and sitting it in the hole upside down. Then fill. Also, the top cabin join was not very good and dipped in the middle so this too would need some filler;

 

You can see the white filler which looks like soft cheese but on the left is more filler for the top of the rear fuselage which again, was not the best of fits but in sanding it down I lost the rib effect which would require reinstating.

 

After another enjoyable session of sanding we have a result, this pic was taken before I removed the side glazing;

As can be seen the rear fuselage detail has disappeared so will need some big thinking cap for this one. I have to make raised detail to represent the ribs covered by fabric🤔

So what to do?

I did not fancy scribing as I felt any detail need to be raised to better represent the real aircraft. 0.2mm wire, that's the way forward, measured from where the turret was back to the point where the vertical stabilizer meets the fuselage. 9 lengths were cut and as you can imagine being so thin it was like handling a box of frogs, continually requiring straightening out with a steel rule. Trying to get it to stick to the kit was fun too, using thin CA I had to fix the end nearest the cabin and work my way along but it was here that the glue seemed to soak away into the filler and fight me. Got there in the end though.

There was more to do though, as we all know when the fabric is pulled over the ribs and doped it goes taught and creates shallow channels. This shows it well;

 

 

To hopefully replicate this I used Mr Hobby Self Levelling thinner and mixed with Mr Hobby 500 filler at about 50/50 ratio, this allows the filler to find its own level without running off but a little turning of the model for the first 5 minutes allows it to set to a point where it can be left. With the wire being 0.2mm it stood proud at the front and rear so more of the filler was used to build up these areas and a cotton bud soaked in the same thinner was used to blend it all together;

 

I have referred to @TheBaron Avro Anson build many times for inspiration and I needed to find a way to fix my scratchbuilt Cheetah engines in the engine nacelle but I ruled out building all the frame work from brass rod as the Baron did, I just needed a simpler way to do it and I am not aiming for the same level of detail or accuracy, mind you, it was something to behold watching his Annie come together. No, my way is a bit more agricultural but hopefully it will work.

My cunning plan is to build a plastic bulkhead (which does not exist on the real thing) just behind the engine cowling. An upside 'Y' shape will then be ground out leaving a round island in the middle, imagine the CND logo with a round centre island onto which the engine will be fixed, each leg of the Y will hopefully be hidden behind one of the corresponding cylinders. This should give some depth to the whole set up without being faced by a wall of plastic.

A start was made;

 

And that pretty much sums up 8 months of on/off work. There is still much going on but hopefully I will be able to post more regularly in future.

Thanks for looking in.

[TheBaron]

A lot of hard work gone into this already and I'm sure that engine mounting plan will work out just fine. Great stuff.

[Head in the clouds.]

Hi folks, me again, only 6 months since my last post on this build, on current form this is what I call regular posting....🤪.

 

Now, where was I? Following on from the last post the upper halves of the wings have been cemented in place, a little more fetling was required on the cross member that will support the undercarriage to allow the wing to sit flat.

 

With the wings together I could now mark out the backplate that will ultimately carry the Cheetah engines. It is marked out in such a way that it should be hidden behind the cylinder castings. It turned out to be bit of a tricky job and did not turn out as neat as I would have liked but it will be hidden so I won't loose sleep over it. A Dremal type drill was used to drill several holes along the marked out lines and a very small rasp was used to remove unwanted material.

 

 

Another job that I have done but which I have no pics of are the side windows. I was not happy with the length of the glazing, it protruded by about 1-1/12mm into the area where the canopy will be fitted and there was a lot of dust from all the sanding so they were removed and new items made, of which one is playing 'hide and seek'. While on the subject of glazing, the cockpit glazing for this kit is awful, with a massive defect and minuet cracks, but, rather annoyingly fits very well.....typical! I purchased the Falcon cockpit set for early British WW2 bombers but the fit was not particularly good...I have said once and I will say it again...typical! With that option out the way the only way forward was to make my own so out with the Milliput;

 

After more sanding;

 

G-APIC has the later, more upright cockpit glazing which is the one that comes with the kit, I have said i.......🤪😂

When I am doing this I tend to do a little and then put it down as I find it boring so with that in mind I turned my attention to a much nicer medium...brass. I thought I would have a play with the exhaust pipe, annealing the brass to make it more pliable and using what I had at hand as an anvil. For some reason I found this really finiky to do and I have not even started the stubs yet that connect to the cylinder block;

As we will find out in a moment this was all for nought.

What is wrong with this pic?

 

If we look at an earlier pic;

After carefully hollowing out the kit cowling it can be seen that AIPC has the later and larger cowling.....doh! That's a big miss and it now means I have to make two cowlings and possibly two new exhausts. I have always been a collector of tools and i still am so I splashed out on this; (warning..crap picture)!

A Doming set travelling at 900mph! And a nice hammer, probably my 12th at least. Never used one before so looking forward to this. So today I started by figuring out how big my blank needed to be by doing a little doodling and then marking it out with a scribe on the brass;

 

Once the blank was cut out with a hefty pair of sciccors it was rolled in the AK Rolling set, yet another new tool;

Now time to get out the soldering iron. The work piece was held in place with Blue Tac and soldered but it moved slightly which meant de-soldering and going again, filing away any excess solder. I then spent the next hour and half daping away, I did have to re-solder the joint where it was being worked but surprisingly it all went rather well, I used both a small hammer and the larger one in the pic above;

 

After a clean up we have this;

 

 

Well, at least they are round....😆. I found the best way to form the metal was to use positive, solid strikes of the hammer to do the main forming and the smaller hammer to finish off. While tapping away you do loose the shape somewhat but as you work around it gradually comes back, just keep the faith. I do need to take 2mm off the depth of the cowl, hopefully it wont be an issue, next time i make a blank I will make it 1.5 mm shorter. I found the process rather relaxing which was the opposite of how I thought it would turn out.

 

Thanks for tuning in and see you next time.

 

 

[marvinneko]

Whew, amazing thread to follow. Very traditional old school modelling skills.

 

I have both these kits... $5 each acquisitions. I'm browsing build threads and adding them to my notes for when I'm ready. Amazing to see your conversions for some interesting research aircraft!

 

I don't have your patience so I think I'll ask my wife to 3d model engines and whatnot when the time comes.

[Head in the clouds.]

4 hours ago, marvinneko said:

Whew, amazing thread to follow. Very traditional old school modelling skills.

 

Thanks for your kind words, it is a slow build because as you say I do need a lot of patience and time but sometimes I just have to leave it for a while and allow ideas to develop.

 

Good luck with your builds.