Special Hobby Chase me! The Bugatti 100 Air Racer in 1:48

[Mike]

1 hour ago, psdavidson said:

I'm regretting cancelling the pre-order for the big'un

 

I wouldn't go slinging words like "big" around for this aircraft.

 

3 hours ago, kiseca said:

Was amused to notice that a 1/48 Bugatti 100p is very nearly the same size as a 1/72 Spitfire😄

 

She's little, but beautifully formed.  more careful sanding needed in my near future.  I'm working on thinning out the trailing edges of the wings at the moment while I watch a bit of telly.  I've sacrificed the lower surface detail of the ailerons in the search for thinner wings I think I can probably reinstate those later with cut lengths of very thinly stretched sprue.  I've done that in the past, and it's worked fairly well

[Mike]

Here's a quick squint at the wings, the one on the right having been thinned a little before and after they halves were joined, and the left one only thinned slightly before they were glued together.  It's a small difference, but it adds a bit of realism to the wings, so I'll spend some more time thinning the left one next

 

[Mike]

Very slow progress on the wing root, partly due to the time of year, but I'm getting the seam a little better each time.  I need to make it invisible then reinstate the panel lines that cross it.  I've made some curved sanding tools from dowel that had wet'n'dry glued to it to replicate the curve.

 

 

I used some of the 3D printing UV cure resin I bought for the first time today as a filler, and the results were awesome I used it to fill the gap between the tail unit and the fuselage that you can just about see in the pic above.  A few moments blasting it with my UV torch, and it had set rock 'ard, but not so hard you can't sand it.  Using my collection of mini-files and sanding sponges I sorted out the gap and faired everything together nicely.  I'm going to be using that stuff again, probably to fill up those intakes at the wing roots before I drill them back out.

 

I also laid some bits of stretched sprue on the underside of the ailerons to replicate the detail that I had to bin off to thin the wings down, which went... OK, I guess?  It needs knocking back a bit, and I may still remove and replace some of them before I paint it.  This is where we're at now:

 

 

 

[Mike]

It's been a while since I've posted, and for the most part the Bugatti has sat next to my keyboard, but I've not been entirely dormant.  I've been doing short stints of sanding and polishing, and it's really brought home how many blemishes you create during the build process, but with the occasional squirts of primer and sanding, the lower wides of the ailerons have blended in a little better, and I've found some really weird little marks here and there, the weirdest one being an apparent crack in one of the forward wing root fairings, which I could have sworn were smooth last time I looked

 

 

 

You can't really see the shine in the pics, but it's starting to come out, but I think the wing leading edges need some work, as do a few of the panel lines.  more shine to come

[Back in the Saddle]

All the filling and sanding will be well worth the effort Mike👍.

[Mike]

51 minutes ago, Back in the Saddle said:

All the filling and sanding will be well worth the effort Mike👍.

Hopefully.  The blemishes seem to keep popping out of the woodwork though

[bigbadbadge]

Such a lovely looking aircraft, you're doing a sterling job  Mike,  looks good in the photos.

Chris

[Mike]

I've been mucking about with the Bugatti again, painting up the cockpit after quite a bit of prevarication on the subject.  It's not far off done, and once it is, I'll be throwing some paint at the exterior at long-last.  I've been polishing the surface and fixing blemishes too, and they seem to keep popping up every time I look at it.  It's amazing how messy a model becomes when you look hard enough.  Camouflage hides a multitude of sins I've not taken any pics of the cockpit yet, as it's not quite finished, but I'm quite pleased with it so far, and even though it's almost OOB apart from the floor mat, it should look pretty decent under the canopy.

 

Meantime, I'm looking at the rest of the exterior for detail painting, and noticed that there are logos on the blades.  What logos are these?

 

 

I'm not entirely sure whether they'd be appropriate to the original, but I've not yet spotted any photos that give enough detail on the prop to prove it either way.  If I can't prove it, a set of decals would add a bit of detail to the area

[SprueMan]

Ratier propeller

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/113674259296

[Mike]

2 minutes ago, SprueMan said:

Ratier propeller

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/113674259296

Thanks That one might be a bit large though

[Mike]

The only decals I could find for Ratier were of the wrong design Anyone got any ideas where I might find some?

[Black Knight]

They might be the sort of decal Eduard or Revell might put on sheets for their French WW1 types

I only have British and German and a couple of French WW1 types and the Frenchies are very old kits

[SprueMan]

14 minutes ago, Mike said:

The only decals I could find for Ratier were of the wrong design Anyone got any ideas where I might find some?

The props were mostly used for racing aircraft.

 

I know the SBS models have two kits with those decals:
https://sbsmodel.com/model/SBS-4005/caudron-c.450

https://sbsmodel.com/model/SBS-4006/caudron-c.561

 

Maybe you can get a decal set from them?

[Mike]

If I could figure out how to use my ALPS printer, I could probably make some myself, but my brain died

[Black Knight]

I think I spotted a couple of markings on a sheet of decals for a Revell 1/48 Spad XIII (Late). Bottom right on the sheet, number 33

[Mike]

4 minutes ago, Black Knight said:

I think I spotted a couple of markings on a sheet of decals for a Revell 1/48 Spad XIII (Late). Bottom right on the sheet, number 33

Can't see 'em.  Can you point them out please?

[Black Knight]

Bottom right, just above the Revell GmbH

I have that kit - somewhere. If I find it I can check to see what those are

[Mike]

6 minutes ago, Black Knight said:

Bottom right, just above the Revell GmbH

I see them now.  They look like half circles in the pic though, so I'm wondering if they're another different design.  I did find another design, so it looks like they changed their logo at some point, so it's possible they changed it a few times.

[Black Knight]

Sorry, they are red semi-circles on the decal sheet

I checked my other WW1 Frenchies that I have to hand and none have the Ratier marking

Like you I'll have to print them 

[Mike]

13 minutes ago, Black Knight said:

Like you I'll have to print them

Merci for looking though

[Mike]

Here's the cockpit now, although it's only pushed together to take the pics, as I've still got a bit of work to do on it.  The instrument panel is a decal, and as I suspected it's an Eduard print, so the carrier film could be removed easily.  I experimented with removing it with Tamiya tape, and it worked perfectly.

 

 

 

and an overall shot

 

[perdu]

Do you know how big the Ratier decals will need to be on  the props Mike?

 

Getting the image off line onto a Word doc was easy, but getting a reasonable size might be moderately more taxing.

 

A simple measurement I can deal with, doing sums is not my skill-set.

 

I did  this for my Sherpa model years ago, good to know I can still 'get it'

 

To get a printable version I had to lighten the goldy looking bits, so give me a dimension and I'll see what I can do, the file is in the PC now, ,hence available for useage.

[Mike]

7 hours ago, perdu said:

Do you know how big the Ratier decals will need to be on  the props Mike?

I printed out a section of the museum pic and it came out at 19cm off my printer.  I also measured the rear prop of the model (same one as the pic), and lo-and-behold, that happened to be 19mm.  Talk about fortuitous!

 

That makes the scale of the pic to 1:48 is 1mm to 1cm or 1:10, and the Ratier logo came out at 3.5cm wide on the pic, so 3.5mm is the correct width.

[perdu]

I usually use MS Word to print my decals after image games with Paint Shop Pro and I have just tested a line of images in a header using this image

 

I dont think my printer will give a decent image on clear paper* so I put a black background on it to be able to use decals from a white paper.

 

I added a grey outline to allow for differentiation of images.

 

Do you want to give this a try with your ALPS printer?

 

I can post you a strip of 3.5mm ones instead if you like but we know how effective first class mail is these days

 

*I have lots of wasted clear background decals to thank for that lesson  

[Mike]

4 minutes ago, perdu said:

I can post you a strip of 3.5mm ones instead if you like but we know how effective first class mail is these days

That'd be cool if you could.  My ALPS is in deep storage I also don't have a WinXP machine to run it on, although it's easy enough to set up a VM to do that. Space is at a premium in my tiny house though