forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com
WW1 Aircraft Modeling => Under Construction => Topic started by: smperry on August 16, 2018, 11:43:38 AM
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I'd like to play the victim here and say I was talked or arm twisted into taking on this build, but we all know better. In actuality, I jumped on the opportunity to build this kit feet first with my brain firmly in neutral. Lance Krieg contacted me and said Peter Kilduff wanted a Hannover done in the markings of Hanns-Gerd Rabe of Flieger-Abteilung (A) 253. Seems Peter visited and interviewed Herr Rabe before he passed in the 80's. That's all it took. Forget that I'm way out of practice and half my paints are dried up, "Sure!" sez I, "Happy to do it. I have the Eduard kit in the stash, no problem." I'm not claiming any problems but now that I have started, I can see a few challenges :-)
I plan to build the kit OOB except for decals of Hans-Gerd's personal markings. Fortunately this is one of the Hannovers whose lozenge camo was oversprayed with something that darkened it. That should cover a multitude of sins where I have to hand paint the loz on the fuselage. It also helps tone down the wing and stab loz that is supplied in the kit.
I hope to be able to get some advice along the way. I remember what can be done, but the how to gets a bit fuzzy at my age. I think I can get Peter a credible model of the aircraft his friend flew in as an observer a century ago.
If the photos below sow up, they are a profile and a photo of the airframe in question
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I started this build with the inside of the fuselage halves, They need to look like natural wood and the first thing I saw were some kind of nubs that are part of the injection molding process. I dremeled them off and while I was at it I took a little off the inside of the cockpit and engine area just to make sure the interior details would fit. My first mistake was not sanding the dremeled area completely smooth before applying some of my homemade plywood decals. Not real happy with the results, OTOH, not real sure it will be very noticeable once it is all closed up. Jury is still out on whether or not to remove the decals and do some more sanding. Deliberations continue as I work on the interior PE and engine.
I'd forgotten the mental gymnastics necessary to visualize how flat PE looks when all bent up correctly and how little help the Eduard instructions can be on some of this. Going slowly helps, painting the PE brass with acrylic paint does not help. Doh! forgot about that. Seems that just looking hard at it will scratch the paint right down to the shiny brass. I haven't gotten too far with it and I am still deciding whether to remove the paint or over paint with enamel. I may try a good bath in alcohol, if that doesn't do it then maybe some ammonia which is pretty deadly to acrylic IIRC.
sp
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Best of luck with this one! I had the kit in my stash for many years but eventually realised I would never build it (as I gave up on doing 1/48 when WNW appeared) so passed it on to someone who might. It looked like it needed a bit of work.....
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Nigel
Needs a bit of work is a bit of an understatement with this kit, but back when I got into making models of WWI airplanes, Eduard kits like this one were state of the art, (and 1:48 was the big scale) . Oh well, lots of modeling fun for the buck.
sp
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I got a handle on the scratches in the painted brass. As recommended, a coat of Future cured the problem and I got all the little scratches fixed. I fully realize most of the cockpit PE is not going to be seen after closing the fuselage, but they put it there on the fret and then drew some semi useful sketches suggesting how some of it should go. I took the challenge and I'm making an effort to use as much of it as I can.
I stumbled on the how to for bending brass Spandau jackets and applied the heat and aneal/heat and temper trick to the PE that wraps around a pin to make the joystick. Worked like a champ.
I also added what looks like a compass and a cap to what appears to be a fuel tank that will go under the pilot's seat. Actually got all 3 tabs into the 3 holes. Seriously tiny tabs into seriously tiny holes...not bad for a semi blind duffer trying to get his bifocals to line up with his OptiVisor.
sp
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Wow SP, that is some fine detailing on that small scale (too tiny for my tired eyes). Looking forward too your progress.
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Thanks Juan. Seeing as my progress is firmly tied to my tired fingers, your tired eyes should have no trouble keeping up :-)
sp
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Some more small progress. The cockpit interior is made and painted. I used every numbered bit of brass shown on the instructions and that was my goal. A complete cockpit interior out of PE leaves much to be desired. I did not go into any great effort to make flat brass appear to be thicker wood and metal. I simply assembled the brass as indicated and painted pretty much as per the instructions. I fitted the fuselage halves and what could be seen of the interior wasn't too bad. I have to say that was some fiddly brass bending.
The engine is next and I blatantly stole the idea for an engine stand made of sprue that I saw posted here. Works great. I don't know how many manifold pipes or plug wires I have knocked off a white metal engine that ploped over on the bench.
sp
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Great progress here. I bought it back in the late 90s when I got back into making WWI aircraft (maybe like you?) they were the only game in town, in fact I was really excited to get my hands on it! It looks like you are making a good job of it and I like the philosophy of a lot of modelling for the buck.
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Well I just got a whole evening worth of modeling fun out of two tiny pieces of brass and a few inches of 30 thou rod.
There was simply no way I was going with flat brass intake manifolds peeking out from behind the lip of the cowl. So I decided to thicken up the brass with medium CA. First the brass needed to be bent as intended and then I held the very end of the piece in locking tweezers and dabbed CA onto the part. I positioned the tweezers so gravity would help keep the CA from flowing onto the tweezers and gluing the tool and part together.
After sufficient time for the CA to set fully I removed the manifold part, there are 2 of them, from the tweezers and promptly managed to launch it into theLland of Parts Unknown, a strange parallel dimension populated by lost PE parts and bad guy pro wrestlers. I searched high and I searched low and that part was gone.
OK, off the hook with trying to add body to flat PE. I looked in my pile of Evergreen packages and came up with a nice piece of 30 thou rod. This I bent to shape. The 90 deg bends cracked the rod, so each bend took a dab of CA. After some fit and fiddle which resulted in a proof of concept, but inferior part, I was able to cobble up 2 intake manifolds the same size as the flat PE one I had left.
It was about this time that I noticed something poking my toe through my sock. Off with the sandal and sure enough the missing manifold had returned from the Land of Parts Unknown and landed between my sock and sandal.
So now I have 2 intake manifolds out of 30 thou rod and 2 out of brass, one of which is coated in hard CA. Total time spent a bit over 2 hours to get 2 pieces. Now that is getting the max modeling fun out of the minimum model parts. I told the wife about all the fun I had just had. She looked at me funny and muttered something about simple pleasures and simple minds.
sp
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I always thought 2D brass for manifolds was pushing the use of etched brass a bit far..... I wondered how you would get round that!
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Nigel
I painted and installed the two manifolds made of 30 thou rod. At this point I noticed your reply and said a hearty, "You got dat right" to myself. Then I got to thinking and went and painted the brass manifold that I had attempted to thicken up with CA.
I'll post the photos below. Both rod and CAed brass are a long way from perfect, but judge for yourself. I may yet pull the rod pieces off and thicken the other brass piece and use them...or not, kinda a 6 of one, half dozen of the other thing here. OTOH, I may just move on and worry about what I am going to do about spark plugs and wires before I add all those push rods and valve gear.
sp
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I was waffling over whether or not to attempt representing spark plugs, wires, conduit and mags. I was leaning against until I found a couple of pieces of extremely thin rod, Perfect for spark plugs in 1:48. I figured go for it. I'm a modeling bench hero if I pull it off and if not I can just scrape it off and re-paint the white metal engine cyls.
After I removed the scratch built intake manifolds and set them aside, I glued a short piece of the thin rod to each cyl and nipped it close for the plugs, I painted some really fine copper wire black for the plug leads. I painted a piece of 30 thou rod copper for use as a plug wire conduit and cut a couple of cross sections of sprue to use for magnetos.
I laid the engine block over and marked the center of each cyl with a fine point pen on the white paper on my bench. This was for a guide for about where to attach each of the plug leads. With the copper painted 30 thou card taped against the marks I made, I then started CAing small pieces of the black painted fine wire to the conduit piece at the marks.
At this point I thought it wise to call it a night and allow those 12 CAed plugs and 12 wires to cure overnight before I try to mount the conduit and attach and trim the plug wires. The mags and the wires on that end of the conduit are a modeling adventure for another day.
Lessons learned, (or possibly re-learned...I forget), Best to CA bare copper wire to bare styrene rod and paint later. Oh well, there is no shortage of 1:48 engines that need plugs and wires added. I'll do it more gooder on the next one.
sp
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This night's fun was attempting to deal with the PE brass valve gear. After experimenting with one, I decided to cut the fine brass push rods completely off and deal with them later. It was simply too much to deal with positioning the valve gear atop each cylinder and also getting the pushrods, all 12 of them, straight and not tangled in the intake manifolds or spark plug wire conduits.
I got the rocker arms all bent up and attached the pieces to the tops of the cylinder heads. I fiddled until each rocker arm was straight and in line with the rest. Even got the brass painted with Modelmaster Burnt Metal Metalizer. All before I dropped the dang thing on the hard tile shop floor...right on the brass valve gear. I could tell by the sickening sound it made. So I got to re-straighten and re-align all the valve gear.
Looking at the valve gear it is pretty cool, however looking at the flat brass top to each cylinder is pretty uncool. It begs some semblance of texture, but I will have to think about that. Right after I figure how to position and attach the super fine brass pushrods.
sp
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Hi sp
This is looking really good and incredibly detailed especially at 1/48! I have the WNW Hannover so interested to keep following your log.
Have you tried Imgur to load larger images? It'd be great to see them in a larger format and it is very easy and free app to use.
Cheers
Alistair
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Hi Alistair
Thanks for the compliment.
No, I have not tried Imgur. In fact I am so computer challenged, I have no idea what that is. I have wondered how the nice large photos were showing up on other threads, but I can't seem to get them any bigger without exceeding the Kb limits. Perhaps you could send me a message and point me in the right direction.
Thanks
sp
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sp,
I am probably in the top 10% of computer challenged people and I use Imgur with ease. Highly recommended and the service is free!
Cheers,
Lance
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OK, I looked at the site and made no sense of it. I suppose I need to click on the sign up button, something I am generally disinclined to do. I will have to wait until I have more time as these sort of things are usually much more complicated than they let on at first. I usually get frustrated and walk away before completing a sign up. Took me multiple tries to get signed up on this site.
Thanks for the recommendation and I will try it as soon as I get ready to beat my head against a digital wall.
Thanks
sp
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I finally got signed up, but I couldn't figure out how to make large clear photos using minimal bandwith, much less get images back off the site and onto my computer for use here. Oh well.
sp
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OK I think I'm on the right track. The posted image started out over 4 mb and is now supposedly around 22 kb.
Hopefully this will post OK.
sp
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I have no idea what magic Imgr does, nor do I want to know how, but it seems to do the trick, which works for me.
Alistar and Lance, thank you both for pointing me in the right direction, now I can share all my modeling mistakes in full size and crisp detail.
Thanks again
sp
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This little engine is taking me forever to complete, OTOH, I'm having a lot of fun doing it. I was pretty sure I had lost all ability to work on something this small. Seems I can still work small, just not quite as well as I could back when I could see what I was doing.
The attached photo should show a lesson learned about making engine stands out of sprue. Wrap the supporting pieces in double sided tape and the engine will tend to stay in place when you pick it up.
I also remembered to scratch off that crooked engine data plate decal and replace it with one that dried a bit straighter.
Finally, I added the first two pushrods on the front cylinder. I tried 5-0 surgical steel wire which kept popping loose from the CA holding it to the rocker arms whenever I tried to trim it flush, so I used the brass pieces I had previous;y removed from the valve gear. These two were added unpainted and that was a mistake as painting them required considerable touch up. I pre-painted the other 9. No my math isn't bad, I managed to flip one tiny brass pushrod into whatever alternate dimension lost brass ends up in. Not bad as this is the first piece of brass from this kit that I have lost completely. I pre-painted some fine copper wire to use in place of the missing brass pushrod.
Once I get the pushrods installed and add the exhaust manifolds, I will be done with this little puppy. I won't be adding magnetos as they cannot be seen when the fuselage is closed up and I am ready to move on with the build.
sp
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Finally had done with the engine. The pushrods were not fun to attach, nor is the result pretty. Fortunately the cowl covers most of the mess. I got the fuselage closed, though there was half a mm or so more width to the PE cockpit than the plastic fuselage halves. It is an early Eduard kit, so what did I expect. Got it closed up and did a bit of preliminary sanding to remove any stray CA and then masked the seams and slathered on the Squadron White putty, which amazingly had not dried out.
So now it sits closed up and waiting on the putty to cure. This is a good time to take a break and work on another model for a few days.
sp