Lukgraph Hawker Nimrod, 1/32

[Chaotic Mike]

Reverting back to my theme of Hawker single seat fighters, and lulled into a false sense of security by the ease with which I despatched the Special Hobby Whirlwind, I have taken the aforementioned biplane from the stash. Mixed media resin and 3D printing, and spare wings. And rigging. This will take longer, I think. 

Just a couple of early pictures showing the quality of what is in the box. 

 

 

 

 

 

The 3D printing process leaves tiny striations behind, but the resin is very easily sanded. Here is a WIP... 

 

I have some Ez-line on standby for the rigging, but I think it is too 1-dimensional. Anyone know of a workable alternative that would show the flatness of the real wires? 

 

Mike

[corsaircorp]

First at the bar !!

Very interested by your build Mike !!

Sincerely.

CC

[Chaotic Mike]

Hello CC, welcome to the slow-moving resin-fest that will be this here Nimrod.  I hope you don't get too lonely!  🙂

This week, I have mostly been working, but I got some shed time this weekend.

 

This is just preparing the interior, of which virtually nothing will be seen through the tiny cockpit aperture.  Nevertheless, Lukgraph cast them, so I'm going to paint them!  What you can see is a bit of aluminium around the cockpit surround, brick red representing the doped finish for the fabric areas, and interior green over the backsides of the panels that will comprise the cowling.  As this is difficult to determine from references supplied, I am going with this!  As I say, all-but invisible when assembled.  The two halves can stand a bit of clean up on the mating faces to remove whatever is the resin equivalent of sprue gates.

 

  A little bit of detailing going on.  The control column, which is beautifully 3D printed.  I used fine wire rather than the supplied photo-etch to represent the gun actuators, as I prefer the more 3D look.  But, as I said previously, I reckon this will be nigh-on invisible after assembly.

 

 

That's a lot of screen real-estate for not much payload!  Must crop harder!  Next up is the instrument panel:

 

 

This is massively magnified. The chipping around the dials is because this mounts behind a framework in the cockpit cage, and every time I have placed it behind the framework for test fitting, it has chipped a little more from the panel.  Nothing that can't be touched up before the inevitable consignment to oblivion, though!

Speaking of the cockpit framework, here is its current state:

 

Not a lot to see here except that there will be a fair amount of touch-up in my immediate future.  I'm still blown away by the rigidity and delicacy of the framework, though.  It fits beautifully snugly against the relevant sockets in the fuselage halves.

 

Finally the seat, awaiting a bit of grime, and some belts.  It's actually a dark aluminium colour, a bit paler than the picture would have you believe.

 

 

That's all, folks...  

 

 

[rob Lyttle]

Wow, when you said Nimrod in 1.32, my eyes widened somewhat.... 😳

I'm with you now. 

I've got some knitting - in elastic thread which is very stretchy and has a flatness about it, rather than a round monofilament style. I have no expertise in rigging, but I'm managing with this stuff. Ever tried it?? 

Might be a bit too lightweight for 1.32, but maybe worth a look. Knitting and haberdashery depts. 👍

[Chaotic Mike]

Sounds intriguing! 

[perdu]

Wow, guess what? Love this.

 

At the back near the food concession by the bar.

 

Watching and hoping to learn Osprey stuff

[Chaotic Mike]

I'm also thinking of reverting 45 years and using stretched polystyrene rod. I will experiment by stretching something that is rectangular in section to see what it will extrude to. 

[bigbadbadge]

Oooooo, missed this til now, great start and really looking forward to watching this progress as have one in the stash too.  

Does look lovely in the box and it's great to hear about the fit so far.

Chris

 

[Chaotic Mike]

A couple of weeks later and what progress have I made?  Well... not a massive amount!

 

Three views of the cockpit framework, prior to it being installed.

 

 

 

 

In the second picture above, I appear to have assembled the starboard gun out of focus, but I'm sure it won't notice IRL!  🙂  In the last picture, you can also see where I broke a bit of the framework - this printed resin is excellent to sand and (gently) file, but it is very brittle so you have to be very careful when drilling or sawing.  However, the next picture will show you why I'm not going to be losing sleep over it.  In the earlier pics you can also see sundry PE levers and wheels being attached.  After a lot of muttering because the CA I'm using has no tack (so bits kept falling off) I resorted to drilling tiny holes and using wire to make mounting pins - at which point the swearing was replaced with a new variation targeting the difficulty in drilling onto a tightly convex surface with a teeny-weeny radius.  I got there in the end, though.

Right.  Why am I not massively fussed about things like broken framing low down?  Here's a test fit of the cockpit going into the fuselage:

 

 

Observe the very small hole through which the internals can be seen...  When I have it zipped up (which won't be long now, there's nothing else to go inside) I'll post a view looking through the aperture, to reiterate the futility of much of our efforts!

 

Laters, taters...

 

Mike

 

[bigbadbadge]

Lovely to see some more progress on this  looks good nestled in the fuselage too,  looking forward to the fuselage halves coming together too.

Great work 

Chris

[Dave Slowbuild]

This is interesting….  I’ll tag along Mike if that’s OK?

I particularly like these interwar types!  Loads of character 
 

Dave

[Chaotic Mike]

Back after a few weeks of desultory bench time, but not updating the build log.  Bad Mike.  Anyway, quite a lot of progress since I last posted. 

 

First up, I put the tail feathers on:

 

Being a resin kit, (albeit a really well engineered resin kit) it benefits from being reinforced with copper, brass, steel... anything I have to hand, really!  If you look carefully you can see a couple of brass rods that went into the fin and fuselage for stability.  Nothing short of a lump hammer is going to knock that fin off!  I set it so that you can see air between the fin and the fuselage, just like the original.

 

The undercarriage was a real pig.  Again, much drilling of 0.5mm holes to set wire in so that there was some sort of stability while I dropped on small quantities of Rocket extra-thin, which is my go-to CA when I'm in a hurry and I want to be sure that a good bond will result.  You can see a few ends protruding on the axle cross bar, but they are easily ground down with a needle file:

 

 

 

And on to the part that has been giving me the most cause for concern, which is mounting the upper wing.  Once again, out with the micro drills.  I have a Dremel with a flexible drive shaft, and I uncovered a collet that was capable of gripping my tiniest drill bit.  This was immensely helpful, because I have been slowly working my way through a quantity of extremely brittle PCB drill, leaving many fragments behind, inaccessibly and irremovable.  I was able to use a high speed steel drill bit instead, which is considerably more forgiving when you put a fraction of sideways pressure on the bit.  That meant I could bang out 16 holes in  more or less the right place across the ends of the N struts and the two sets of wings.  You can see an example below:

 

This meant I could dry-run getting the upper wing on.  It went well:

 

I'm using Tamiya Titanium silver to represent the doped linen parts of the airframe - it has a very fine grain and makes a very good substitute for the RAF's inter-war silver, IMHO.  Careful scrutiny of the upper wing shows where I painted the wing yellow before masking off the set of diamonds and lines that will ( I hope) reappear in glorious fidelity after I finish the silver and the national insignia.  I cut the masks myself after drawing them up in Inkscape and printing them onto A4.  I then laid Tamiya tape over the paper, cut with a new blade and transferred the masks onto the airframe.  This, I suppose, is why people invest in fancy Olfa cutters and bespoke masking material!  A few picks of the dry mounted wing - no cabane struts:

 

 

 

Whilst I was feeling machine-tool orientated, I put a mini-lathe that I acquired off eBay for a song to use.  First job was to use it to paint the wheels, which have a tiny bead of silver between the yellow axle covers and the tyre:

 

I was very pleased with how that turned out.  Then I looked at the decal sheet, which of course provides yellow circles of exactly the correct diameter.  However, since I had decided to paint the other yellow areas, I can be sure it will match nicely...  🙂

 

Finally, the upper wings have little nubbins moulded on to represent the formation lights.  I thought I could do better, and turned a little off-cut spare clear sprue:

 

I think that will look better drilled out, with a blob of red (or green...) inserted.

 

So, a couple of weeks work, but I'm really enjoying this.  Until the next thrilling instalment...

 

Mike

 

 

 

[bigbadbadge]

Great to see this one again,  great work,  taking notes for my build too.  It does look lovely,  looking forward to the next instalment. 

Chris

[Chaotic Mike]

Another week has passed... what will tonight's exciting instalment cover?  Mainly, tiny things and paint work...

 

There is a doofer (technical term) that attaches to one of the interplane struts.  I think it is likely a pitot tube for airspeed.  Anyway, here it is on the PE sheet, part 19...

 

I don't like the 2D nature of PE for parts like this.  I spent half an hour or so trying to carve a small bit of polystyrene that I could then drill to place brass tubing into, but that wasn't really working.  Then I remembered I bought one of my offspring a 3D printer for his last birthday.  So... time to learn Tinkercad?  Everything that isn't red is a support structure because it was too tiny to print just by itself.

 

And the result?

 

I will clip the various wires to being a lot shorter before installation - having looked at a picture of the real thing this is a lot better than the PE version.  Whilst I was thinking tiny (and I realise that next to @Putty Animal's activity, I have the appearance of Gulliver in Lilliput), I looked at the PE gun sight and again decided I could do better:

 

Note cunning recycling of the bit I could never have made myself.  These parts look a bit rough at this magnification but they have subsequently had the solder smoothed down a bit.

 

There are 2 hooks that go on the upper wing, that are supplied as resin.  Here they are in copper, instead:

 

This is the point at which insanity started to reveal itself.  There are a couple of tiny PE 'T'-shapes that go onto the trailing edge directly above the cockpit.  Well, 'somehow' I managed to displace one after installing it. So I thought I should make a replacement.  Cue muttering as I organised 2 bits of copper wire in an improvised jig that enabled me to make a largish (1 cm wide?) T shape that I subsequently trimmed down:

  

 Again, the slightly lumpy soldering was subsequently filed and polished.

 

Meanwhile, eager followers might remember that I had masked off the yellow diamonds on the upper wing.  I decided that today would be the day that I removed the tape, and would spray on some appropriately sized roundels.  Here is the result, I feel pretty good about how these have turned out - there is a tiny amount of touch up, but this is definitely more right than it is wrong.  Until someone pops up to burst my bubble.  Note the 2 tiny T-shapes, one in 2D PE, one in 3D copper, and the little hook like objects in the second picture:

 

 

That little bullet shaped fairing did, of course, require me to spend a few minutes on my knees in the construction shed once it had pinged itself off its 3D printing block.

 

Next week is going to be all about getting a nice finish on the metal panels that cover the front of the beastie.

[AdrianMF]

The yellow diamonds and roundels look great!

 

That shot also shows well how much the wing was extended from the Fury.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[bigbadbadge]

That top wing does look lovely,  great job and onbthe 3D replacements too.

 

Chris

[Chaotic Mike]

Ye Gods the windshield is difficult. And that's all I'm saying on the subject! 

[Lightpainter]

The windshield is difficult I rebuild the base of it based on my walkaround photographs.

[Chaotic Mike]

It's in RFI...

[perdu]

On 18/06/2022 at 20:27, Chaotic Mike said:

Ye Gods the windshield is difficult. And that's all I'm saying on the subject! 

Even worser in 72th scale Mike, fully agree with 'difficult'

 

Loved this build