Supermarine Walrus 1/72

[Flying Badger]

Joining the party. 

 

My offering to start with is this (I assume this is Roy Cross artwork?) Walrus II in 1/72 scale. This kit was originally a plastic bag kit from 1957 that got a new box in 1964 but airfix were still offering this kit as recently as 2011!

 

Box is a bit battered:

 

Sprues aren't too bad. A little flash but nothing to worry about for 60 year old plastic.

 

Decals.... well not so good and rather on the minimalist side:

However, I have stuck them to my window in the hope that a good dose of UV might remove some of the yellowing. (If not I'll be making my own decals)

 

The detail is non-existent for the inside of the fuselage so that needs addressing and the Bristol Pegasus, whilst not bad for a kit first released in 1957, isn't really up to my level of detail. I'll be CAD designing and 3D printing a replacement detailed engine.

So far I have glued the wing halves together and filled the sides of the wheel wells ready for a bit more detail.

[Ventora3300]

56 minutes ago, Flying Badger said:

Joining the party. 

 

My offering to start with is this (I assume this is Roy Cross artwork?) Walrus II in 1/72 scale. This kit was originally a plastic bag kit from 1957 that got a new box in 1964 but airfix were still offering this kit as recently as 2011!

 

Decals.... well not so good and rather on the minimalist side:However, I have stuck them to my window in the hope that a good dose of UV might remove some of the yellowing. (If not I'll be making my own decals)

That's great news @Flying Badger. The artwork for the Walrus appears in the second of Roy Cross's books on Airfix box art so it's a good 'un. Let's hope your decal sheet is much improved after a bit of sunbathing. Looking forward to your build. All the best. Mike.

Edited July 4 by Ventora3300

[Flying Badger]

Incidentally I found the original tin I bought in 1990 to paint the undersides: Airfix M16 Duck Egg Green

 

I distinctly remember going in to my local model shop (a cave of impossibly stacked kit boxes) to buy this tin in order to build the walrus....

 

Opened it up and other than needing a good stir it's still good!

Not bad for 34 years mostly in the garage.

 

[2996 Victor]

14 hours ago, Flying Badger said:

Opened it up and other than needing a good stir it's still good!

Amazing! The ultimate Classic Build! I never had the Airfix Walrus (mine was a Matchbox), so I'm looking forward to watching this one  

 

Cheers,

Mark

[Heather Kay]

14 hours ago, Flying Badger said:

Opened it up and other than needing a good stir it's still good!

Would you mind bottling the smell and sending it to me? 

[Flying Badger]

Found some decals online to try out.... so this might be built up as HMS Warspite's Walrus II or perhaps an RAF one on a rescue mission in the channel

 

FB

[Flying Badger]

Thinned the wings down a bit and glued them together... not too bad as this is an early pull from the moulds so not too thick.

The wheel wells end up with big gaps that are wrong so I filled them in

I think this will be posed landing on water in a diorama so the wheels will be up in the wells. That means I don't have to scratch build the wheel well structure detailing.

 

One glaring issue with this early kit is the clear parts.... they're really thick. Here is the kit part on the right with a vac form canopy I managed to locate on the left:

 

However, fixing that does throw up some issues... firstly the fuselage halves are too narrow towards the front and the canopy (kit one or vac form one) is too wide. Also the front circular opening for crew isn't circular so clearly there has been some distortion of the mould over time.

 

To fix that I measured the difference and realised I needed to add c. 1mm at the centre line. Pieces of 0.5mm plasticard on both sides (keeps it more even) have been glued in place and that's rectified it - everything is much better fitting now. I'll fill and sand the larger gaps further back later.

 

The other issue with having a clearer canopy now is that the cockpit is essentially none existent on this kit! There is a blobby protrusion that you can perch the pilot figure on but it's crude to say the least. 

 

So out with the spares and offcuts box and on with some scratch building to detail it out a bit (not planning for it to be perfect as that canopy isn't perfectly clear either (albeit a massive improvement):

Added a scratch built half bulkhead behind the pilot, as well as the seat back before trimming the blobby extrusion of a "seat".  I've also begun adding some sidewall detail. 

 

There is also no panel in this kit. So again it's scratch building time.

 

Here's how I started:

The wire rings are 0.9mm internal diameter as I wound some wire from the outside of a bottle of Rioja around a 0.9 drill bit then snipped them into rings. A bit of time with my jewellers pliers and rolling them around the desk on the drill bit turned them nice and round and flat.

 

Glued on with CA, these will be my instrument bezels:

(yes that is a 1 pence piece!)

 

They look a bit overscale but in reality they are tiny and when coated with black matt paint should look fine - especially through the canopy.

 

Finally I did a quick dry fit for inspiration:

 

Certainly starting to look Walrus like. Those wing ribs need knocking down a bit as they're a tad over emphasised. 

 

FB.

 

 

 

[Andwil]

Some good work going on with this old kit.  You must share the secret of the levitating top wing though!

 

AW

[CliffB]

Wow, that vacform canopy (and all that's followed from it), is such an improvement 👍

[AdrianMF]

My overriding memory of this kit from my childhood (9 or 10 I guess) is learning that cellulose dope does not work as a varnish over enamels!

 

Nice instrument panel.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Flying Badger]

Two months since I had chance to do any modelling.

 

So spent a bit of bench time tidying up and scratch adding more detail to the inside and making it look a bit less barren.

 

First off one of the frames in the rear cabin (Plasticard):

 

I've opened up the rectangular windows to this area, removed the pilot's seat thing (still wasn't happy with the partial fix I already did), then added some frame and stringer details to the inside walls with some .5mm square profile:

 

That took ages, but I'm now on to adding details. Added the two plotting/mapping tables in the rear cabin area. 

Next up will be some more cockpit details and the rope reel on the port wall just behind the front/nose hatch

 

More whenever I carve out another hour or so of free time.

 

FB

[AdrianMF]

Fantastic!

 

And hopefully with a big flat-sided canopy you will get to see it clearly in the finished model too.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Flying Badger]

Maybe... the vacform isn't wonderfully clear... but certainly is a lot better than the kit part.

 

speaking of glass... I need to decide how to glaze the side windows I made...bit of scrap clear packaging from the rubbish mightwork, time for some experimentation!

 

Slowly filling the gaps between the fuselage halves with thin plastic then filing it down. It will need some filler on the outside but that was always going to be the case. Might be time to make a new batch of sprue goo. 

[Johnson]

Excellent work.

[Flying Badger]

Thanks. 

 

Chopped up some sprue and it's in a small glass jar slowly dissolving into some old and manky tamiya extra thin.

 

Meanwhile I'm working on the area below the rear circular hatch as it also needs some wall details.

 

FB

[Flying Badger]

 Bit more internal detail:

 

 

I started scratch building the internals and then realised I was being dumb and doing everything the hard way.....

 

....I have a 3D resin printer so can print the internals.

I would just need a .stl to feed to the printer. Sooo.... out with the CAD for a while and we have this so far:

 

I'll also be making a new version of the instrument panel in CAD too. Not got to that yet.

 

Also decided to start some of the smaller fiddly bits to populate the inside. Here's the winch for the front hatch and an ammo can (for the machine guns) which are attached to the side walls near the rear hatch.

 

More as it happens.

 

FB

[Paul J]

This looks to be an interesting one to follow.

I had a really early edition of the kit built and in my collection until a couple years ago. What made it an early issue of the kit was  the wing ribs that were depicted with very fine raised lines and not as your one here.  I think  I  have pics of it somewhere.

[Flying Badger]

Finally had a bit of time to finesse the CAD and get it in the 3D printer.....

 

There ended up being a lot more detail parts than this model really warrants. 🙂 

 

Sadly everything is slightly over scale..... but thats not a problem as it's fairly consistent so I can scale it all in the slicer reducing it all to 85% of the current size. 

 

Thankfully the other items on the same print plate which are a present for my father in law are the correct scale (1:145 scale):

 

I'm making scenery  to enable his current N scale railway builds (the above are all pre clean - up, hence the evidence of supports that still need removing etc.)

 

2nd attempt at printing and then hopefully I can start throwing paint at this thing!

 

FB

[AdrianMF]

Nice work on the model and gorgeous CAD/printing!

 

I'm really torn with 3D printing. The possibilities are endless, but I rather enjoy my hobby the way it is, and there are other things I'd like to try when I get a spare moment.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Flying Badger]

8 hours ago, AdrianMF said:

I'm really torn with 3D printing. The possibilities are endless, but I rather enjoy my hobby the way it is, and there are other things I'd like to try when I get a spare moment.

 

What is always overlooked when people extol the virtues of 3D printers is that it's not the printing that takes time, but rather the CAD to print something. Yes there are models online, but, at least for aircraft etc, rarely are they up to the standard I want and the greater resolution capabilities of Resin printing. That's slowly improving as more people put resin designs online, but the vast majority of online 3D models are still intended for Filament printing. Occasionally I can adapt a design made for filament to use it in the higher resolution resin prints (especially where I'm scaling it down to a smaller scale and the lower resolution of the filament print is minimised in the smaller resin print), but a lot of the time I have to go back to scratch and CAD the thing I want myself which takes a huge amount of time. 

 

In truth, my resin printer probably isn't getting anywhere near the use it should do and if there was a reliable cheap online resin print service I probably couldn't justify the costs. 

 

That said a big part of scale modelling pleasure for me is scratch building and crafting something out of nothing.... I'm not all that bothered by the finished item other than as a reminder of the fun building the model, and painting is only partially enjoyable. So I find the CAD design a digital version of my favourite bit of modelling and really enjoy it so the 3D printing becomes an excuse to do more digital modelling in CAD. 😉

 

 

[Alex Gordon]

 

The first time I saw anything about 3D printing I was absolutely astonished.With this photo you have taken my breath away.Well done old fruit,keep up the superb work.

[Flying Badger]

Thanks. 

Although the surface finish on the dog is a bit woof still. 😉