Episode 3: Enter the
Dragon Smer (subtitled "Fuselages, or how I learned to love the plastic")
Being a child of its' time, there is precious little interior detail in the kit and being inspired by a similar build on Britmodeller I decided that here was an opportunity to do a bit of detailing. I garnered some interior photographs from t'interweb and set to.
The fuselage was scraped down to half its thickness, and a representation of the stringers and frames cobbled together using PB wire and square section styrene strip. The interior rigging wires were added with thinner copper wire, a floor made and the whole lot painted up:
I was feeling quite chuffed with myself
And then it was time for a little holiday, our first in exactly two years.
While Jane and I were on holiday in North Devon I was reading through a brilliant build thread on Britmodeller by Putty Animal, who is none other than our own William Adair, in which he scratchbuilds a 1/144th scale FE2b. You can find the build here
https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=12423.0 and on Britmodeller here
https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235045706-royal-aircraft-factory-fe2b-in-1144/. I'd thoroughly recommend a read through. It is an absolute masterpiece!
Anyway, although I was fairly happy with the fuselage interior, that tiny little Fee made me think, "I can do a bit better!" So I bought a Smer re-pop of the kit and began the fuselage again!
I started by scraping down the cockpit walls again, although there was no Heller logo to remove this time
I also made a new floor again:
This time round, I thought I'd approach the interior a little differently and started with the fabric effect on the interior. I sprayed a primer coat of Tamiya rattle can IJN Grey-Green, my favourite wood base coat, and concocted a sort of salmony-pink shade to represent the red dope:
A very dry brush was then used to randomly splodge some linen colour over the pink, the intention being to reproduce the effect of red dope bleeding through the linen covering on the fuselage, while the floor panel was tinted with successive coats of Citadel Seraphim Sepia to create a sort of wood effect:
Stringers and frames were made from Plastruct 15thou diameter rod and 30th square strip respectively, also sprayed with IJN Grey-Green and held in place with tiny amounts of PlasticWeld solvent. Even though the joint formed is paint to paint, its actually strong enough to hold the stringers and frames in place, although it wouldn't stand much abuse! The frames were also treated to the Citadel Seraphim Sepia:
Also in this photo is the bulkhead for the forward cockpit. I made this from a piece of 30th styrene sheet, profiled first to fit the interior of the fuselage sides and then opened out using the time-honoured "drill a chain of holes and connect them up" method, followed by careful sanding to shape referring carefully to period photographs. This was painted in the usual Tamiya IJN Grey-Green, then the very edges were masked and the majority of it sprayed with Tamiya Bare Metal Silver. I made it over tall so I'd have a handle while I was beating it into shape!
The forward bulkhead was fitted into place, the handle part lopped off and the whole lot sanded flush:
I think that looks a bit better than the Mark 1 version! I've got some fine wire for rigging on order, so I'm waiting for that to arrive before I can finally button up the fuselage.....
Thanks for looking in. Comments and criticisms are always welcome (please don't be too harsh!).
More soon,
Mark