This scratchbuilding thing is VERY difficult! Thought I'd have a go at making the tail plane. All was well until I attempted to skin the laminated cores, the first effort took many hours and was so bad I didn't take any photographs, the second attempt was going promisingly until I knocked a bottle of liquid adhesive over and badly damaged the surface, I attempted to rescue it but then realised I had used the wrong diagram anyway and had been making the tail plane of a Scout D, oops!
Fail by
Richard Williams, on Flickr
I embossed the rib tapes with a biro using my cutting mat to lean on and this picked up the texture of the mat so was pretty bad all round.
The third effort was a lot more promising and far less time consuming, I made new cores and did the embossing using a sheet of card to lean on. Unfortunately I damaged the surface of the skin with my finger nails and when I laid out the elevators it became apparent that my centre line wasn't central.
Fail 2 by
Richard Williams, on Flickr
I don't think this is fixable so I will have another go tomorrow. It's a good job I ordered more styrene sheets, I think I'm going to need quite a lot of it at this rate.
I will use the failed efforts for painting practice and make sure I measure and mark out more carefully next time. I actually feel encouraged despite the disasters, although I have nothing useable yet my efforts are getting a little better each time.
Thanks for reading
Richie