ianwau Posted September 29, 2021 Author Share Posted September 29, 2021 20 hours ago, Marklo said: Mm yes it’s a bit blurry so to speak. When it works PETG is great So with my PETG (online order) not yet delivered, how do you find it compares to vacforming plain white styrene? Butyrate (to date) has been very similar to white styrene (but clear styrene has been something quite different). If that makes sense? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marklo Posted September 29, 2021 Share Posted September 29, 2021 No issues with white styrene. With either Vac or plunge molding. But I find with the PETG it goes white before it’s sort enough to vac form, so I’ve only successfully plunge molded it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianwau Posted October 10, 2021 Author Share Posted October 10, 2021 A bit of progress.. Interior has been completed - and canopy fettling has finished and now been attached. A bit of 2-pack epoxy at the back and a touch at the front. Then some Mr.Surfacer to fill some gaps and do a bit of bonding, then some fine white Milliput to blend in. Doesn't look much at the moment but pretty happy this'll clean up with a light sand. Also visible in the pics is pre-drilling of all the holes for struts and rigging. LOTS of holes - but this'll speed up the process later and and of course assist with alignment. One small job was to represent the ribbing on the underside of upper wing fuel tank. My approach to this is to do a template in MS Powerpoint (ie 'n' equidistant lines printed on paper). then a relatively straightforward process to stick on strip styrene. In picture - strips are oversized and will be trimmed back after glue dries. The undercarriage was next on the agenda. In 1:1, each u/c leg has fore and after tube metal - fabric covered - with some attempt at aerodynamics at the trailing edge. Which I've imitated in 1.5mm styrene. I've drilled holes for brass rod at the fuse attachment points (and into the fuse) and also holes for the wheel axles. It's not that far removed from 1:1 engineering. Shock absorbers (?) are drilled scrap sprue and I've used (thickish) stretched sprue for the other components. Have also been working on the various ducts/vents on the engine cowl (wip). Anyway - here's how she'd looking at the moment. Needs a good clean up - but pretty happy with progress. One of the hardest things with this model is dealing with the excessively long wingspan. You sort of have to push your chair back to be able to flip it over etc - or risk snagging a wingtip in your left nostril. Next steps - is resolving how to deal with the wing struts. It's very much a staggered top wing - with struts going every which way. Legoland will most certainly assist in the process - just need to work out what to pre-attach to top wing vs bottom wing vs fuse. Regardless - paint is going on before the top wing is attached - way to many stripes on this to be able to deal with a delicately attached upper wing. 13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James G Posted October 10, 2021 Share Posted October 10, 2021 Great work! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbadbadge Posted October 10, 2021 Share Posted October 10, 2021 Wowee, this looks great, the undercarriage unit looks fantastic as does the ducts/intakes, looking forward to struttery and paintwork. Chris 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianwau Posted October 18, 2021 Author Share Posted October 18, 2021 Just a quick update - have spent a couple of hours playing with Lego - basically getting the jig set for bottom and top wing. Once the struts are fitted - this'll also serve as the jig while the rigging gets rigged. I know there's some "proper" jigs you can buy for modelling - but I rather like the flexibility (and the precision) that Lego gives you. I've positioned the a/c right on the edge of the lego board which is going to facilitate access for struts and rigging. The fuse/lower wing has been elevated - mainly to get the u/c off the ground, but also to assist access for struts. The rear of the lower wing has a solid line of Lego to push back against. Conveniently there's a couple of points on the leading edge where a Lego block happens to be 'just right' - ensuring I have nil fore/after movement of the lower wing. Dihedral is defined by some 'fractional' Lego at wingtip and mid-wing. All coming together nicely so far. I've aligned the fuse so that the thrust line is more or less horizontal - gives me a bit of a datum. You can see in this pic that there's a strip of lego running fore/aft which I've used to define the thrust line (this is removed in next pic). etc etc And another angle. Note the upper wing is just floating at the moment - nothing glued. the top wing still needs chocking at the trailing edge (fore/aft movement) - and also at each wingtip (left/right movement). For the moment - a couple of Lego chaps are doing a fine job holding top wing in position. Note I've removed some of the Lego bits that were going to get in the way of access One of the key considerations here is that once the top wing is glued/strutted/rigged - I can easily remove a few bits of Lego and slide the model out from the jig. So that's 80% of the time on preparation and hoping the strutting/rigging will not take more than the remaining 80% of time. (Going to paint first though. Oh - and cut the struttery before that...) 9 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbadbadge Posted October 18, 2021 Share Posted October 18, 2021 The lego jig is brilliant, great job. Chris 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnl42 Posted October 18, 2021 Share Posted October 18, 2021 Nice work on those very high aspect ratio wings! Were the uh, extra, parts of the jig there for the photo or your general amusement? I may or may not fly my aircraft to/from airbrushing sessions in the garage... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichieW Posted October 18, 2021 Share Posted October 18, 2021 Excellent preparation, this is definitely the way to go! On my first (and only) completed biplane scratchbuild I spent zero time preparing the top wing mounting and 3 weeks cursing while I desperately wrestled it into place. Richie 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k5054nz Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 I'm amazed I've not commented so far! A unique build among unique builds, Ian, and it's a treat to watch it come together. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianwau Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 18 hours ago, dnl42 said: Were the uh, extra, parts of the jig there for the photo or your general amusement? Ummm, guilty as charged your honour. The chaps doing the work needed a bit of supervision... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianwau Posted October 29, 2021 Author Share Posted October 29, 2021 Some more progress... First off - have masked the canopy and since applied a coat of primer to check out the faults (actually pretty good!) Thence on to the struttery. Lego jig is all set up now. I have some styrene chocks at the upper wingtips and upper trailing edges to keep in position. And am using my CAD drawings to work out the angles between struts, wings etc. I've splashed out on a guillotine specifically for this project. Never had one before - but suspect this is going to be a real asset for a bit of precision work. It works a treat - nice clean straight cuts vs things flipping all over the place. It's a clever piece of kit and can see I'm going to get much use out of this. And here's the rest of the tools for the job. 0.5mm drill bit (with a 12V handyman drill!) for drilling out the struts ready for brass rod locating pins. Vernier caliper - an essential tool which I've had for about 20 years. An internal caliper for measuring distances between upper/lower wing - looks a bit unloved (must clean it up) - but suspect it's higher precision than modern equivalents. And the essential airfoil section plastic extrusions - picked some up years ago and so thankful I did. The fine brass rod is slotted into the correctly angled and cut-to-size struts. And I've worked out each of the strut locations has a neat little triangle of struts (aren't triangles great!) that allows me to pre-assemble these pieces (and paint them) before final fitting of top wing. The pre-assembly happens on the underside of the top wing using the pre-drilled holes and the brass rod locating pins inserted into each strut. There's a tiny bit of 'white-tac' holding each strut at the wing location whilst the pointy ends are glued. Just to prove that I make mistakes - I discovered (too late) that I had drilled the wrong strut locations on the underside of the port top wing. Long story short - I marked the lower wing position on the upper wing. So you can see in the pic - I've filled these surplus holes with stretched sprue segments which will be sanded flush tomorrow. And new holes have been drilled. And here's what it looks like as a dry assembly. There are more struts required than these basic triangles - but this will allow me to firmly attach top/bottom wings with correct alignment and the others can be easily fitted later. Next steps (apart from cleaning up the filled surplus holes in the wing) is to get some white paint on her - then mask for the two shades of blue. I'm pretty sure I'm going to print decals for the crazy grill in the front of the cowl (think 1937 Ford). The only other way would be photo-etch (maybe I'll check out those home PE kits you can get from electronics stores). Starting to feel I'm closer to the finish than the start... 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k5054nz Posted October 30, 2021 Share Posted October 30, 2021 Lovely stuff Ian, she's shaping up really nicely. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnl42 Posted October 30, 2021 Share Posted October 30, 2021 Nice bit of jigsmanship! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbadbadge Posted October 30, 2021 Share Posted October 30, 2021 Great struttery indeed that guillotine looks fantastic and is very useful, I may have to look at one of those. Re the grill, it might be worth checking out if there are any PE sets for the 1/48 Ford's which would help out or a cheap car kit on eBay to see if you could thin down enough to use??? Great work Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianwau Posted October 30, 2021 Author Share Posted October 30, 2021 2 hours ago, bigbadbadge said: Great struttery indeed that guillotine looks fantastic and is very useful, I may have to look at one of those. Re the grill, it might be worth checking out if there are any PE sets for the 1/48 Ford's which would help out or a cheap car kit on eBay to see if you could thin down enough to use??? Great work Chris That's a good thought - may well be some other PE out there that could be adapted. Thx! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianwau Posted November 4, 2021 Author Share Posted November 4, 2021 Have pushed ahead with the painting. The white was Tamiya Fine White Primer straight out of the rattlecan and was the easy part - so lets skip over that and the first pic shows the masking for the 2 x blues. I'll paint the light blue first - doesn't matter if I get a bit of overspray on what will be dark blue. then ask the light blue and paint dark.... So here we are after painting the light blue. It's hand-mixed (you can see some of my experiments in the background. Matching the almost turquoise shade was tricky and I ended up using an old tin of Humbrol 109 enamel lightened with some Tamiya Enamel and thinned with lacquer thinner. After that dried for a few days I masked the light blue and shot the hand-mixed darker blue - this time using Tamiya XF-8 blue and white (acrylic). The photo shows it as I've just started to remove the masking (cowl in back of shot already unmasked). The paper the model is sitting on shows my template (with guidelines) for handcutting the stylised Eagle (the big E) on the cowl, This was cut out from Tamiya tape and applied before shooting the blue. So here's where I'm at - after a coat of semi-gloss clear (Tamiya rattlecan). I prefer the scale effect of semigloss finish on all my cropdusters. Top wing is just positioned to show the effect - and you can see all the pre-drilled holes for wing struts etc and the rigging Next steps - will be attaching the top wing, then moving straight through to rigging which will add more strength. Planning to use 0.1mm Albion Alloys nickel silver rod for the rigging which will scale out pretty well to real thing and I expect be relatively straightforward to work with (as much as rigging can be anyway!). At that point - it'll start to look like it's supposed to and I'll be on the home stretch. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek_B Posted November 4, 2021 Share Posted November 4, 2021 Looking very sharp Ian. I was surprised to read that Bellanca built 95 of these! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bandsaw Steve Posted November 4, 2021 Share Posted November 4, 2021 On 19/10/2021 at 00:57, RichieW said: Excellent preparation, this is definitely the way to go! On my first (and only) completed biplane scratchbuild I spent zero time preparing the top wing mounting and 3 weeks cursing while I desperately wrestled it into place. Richie Yep. Pretty much the same story here. 🤪 If there’s ever a next time It’ll be lego jigs all the way. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bandsaw Steve Posted November 4, 2021 Share Posted November 4, 2021 Wicked! It seems to me that Britmodeller is currently enjoying a real purple-patch of scratchbuilding. So much great work going on at the moment. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbadbadge Posted November 4, 2021 Share Posted November 4, 2021 Lovely, great work on the paint job, it looks awesome. Chris 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichieW Posted November 4, 2021 Share Posted November 4, 2021 Beautiful, loving the paint scheme. This is seriously impressive! Richie 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianwau Posted November 4, 2021 Author Share Posted November 4, 2021 58 minutes ago, Derek_B said: Looking very sharp Ian. I was surprised to read that Bellanca built 95 of these! Thanks Derek. Including VH-FTB and VH-FXB in Australia - which very much fits my AU Cropdusting theme! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnl42 Posted November 4, 2021 Share Posted November 4, 2021 Wow, excellent masking on that! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k5054nz Posted November 5, 2021 Share Posted November 5, 2021 Wow, that paint looks perfect! Top job Ian! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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