Things went a bit quiet there for a while. The silicone and resin that I have are a little too "quick" for making the wings, so I started saving my pennies for a different type with a longer pot life. Duly ordered and received, I then prepared the masters and awoke bright and cheery on the 1st of Feb to unbox and try out my new degassing chamber and pump... Only to discover that critical to its running is about 300ml of vacuum oil (oil not included).
You will be shocked dear reader, to discover that vacuum oil isn't all that much of a commodity to most people. Indeed my enquiries to the local hardware stores in the area met with faraway gazes or shakes of the head for the most part.
Driven back indoors I resorted to evilbay, and found a supplier interstate who sold the precious stuff and promised delivery within three days. Great I thought. I can still get the oil and be up and running for next weekend, before starting the 4-week grind at work where I'd blithely promised to cover for everyone else's holidays.
A week went by. Then another. No oil. It slowly become apparent that I had ordered from a front company that claimed to be local, but held its stock overseas and posted directly from China. Grrr!
Finding myself at liberty, I busied myself with a few other side projects and had a go at the cockpits as well. The openings were burred out and enlarged to accommodate the floor, instrument panel and seat for each aircraft. The seats are 2-piece styrene affairs stuck together with superglue. Liquid glue is a bad idea with bent plastic, as the solvent exploits any weak spot and causes the material to break and fly apart. Ask me how I know!
These were sprayed in a base coat of Mr Color "leather" then brushed with a coat of raw umber oil paint.
I also made the instrument panels and painted them in a similar way before adding instrument faces from painted decal stock. The silver bezel around the white instrument face is difficult to see. Maybe after I tone the white down with a light wash it will be more visible...
Then would you believe it? The bloody oil arrived. Today I was able to do some test shots after pouring the moulds. Not a runaway success by any means, but I know what I did wrong
I made the moulds in such a way that the wings were sitting upright and the sprue block was attached to one wingtip. The idea being that I would then have very little cleanup to do on each cast. I suspect the depth of the mould means that there is much less pull at the bottom compared to the top. Which explains why the starboard wing works out relatively well, but the port wing is bubble city.
The top wing is the first try. The second one is where I created a large reservoir of resin above the wing. While on the third one I held the mouth of the mould open with styrene wedges to try and evacuate as much air as possible.
I think I'll do another mould with the wing leading edge facing the sprue block. This will give me a much shallower mould and hopefully a much better cast. I'll salvage the intact ailerons from the lower two wings and see if I can make use of them. The dodgy ones I can experiment with, steaming them to achieve a wash-out profile towards the tips.
More soon hopefully. At least the detail is there!