Evening All,
Many thanks Bud, Ian, Frank, Rick, Juan and Roberto for showing an interest in this build - I really appreciate your support.
Roberto: as I wrote before, this has long been on my to do list as I have a fascination for flying boats and floatplanes from all theatres. They seem to be under represented by mainstream manufacturers and I do not really understand why as some of them were really graceful. Others were simple very ugly looking objects - which is why I like them too!
I have focussed on the fuselage this week as I wanted to try to solve problem of the double concave curve on the underside of the hull. I had been thinking about it on and off for a time and eventually came up with a simple answer as I hope to show here. First though I had to make the hull - a simple procedure whereby the bulkheads were glued to the bottom of the hull and allowed to set. While that was happening I glued strips along the edges of the hull sides so that when I come to cement the top and bottom faces later they have something to keep them square and even:
Making up the rear section of the hull was a straightforward case of gluing each side to the bottom face and finishing by gluing the top face in place. The assembly was held firmly by state of the art clamps while the glue set:
Note that the nose section was not glued yet - making the hull in stages like this is easier and means that the final result is square and even. Only after the rear end was fully set, (after 12 hours), were the front bulkheads added in the nose section and the nose joined - a small piece of rod helped to reinforce the narrow tip of the bow joint:
There were now two holes at the front: one above and one below. The one below was tackled first as it is this that has the double concave curve in it. I started by cutting a piece of 60 thou card shaped to fit the hole and then used a pair of tweezers to bend it to fit the curvature of the lower hull towards the nose. That was done by gently bending the plastic repeatedly, working backwards and forwards along the curve with two gentle twists of the tweezers at the front for every one towards the rear:
It does not matter if the curve of the bottom is not quite precise as it will be pushed into the hole and held by the plastic strips thoughtfully attached to the hull sides as described above: the bulkheads add extra support and also help prevent the bottom plate from being pushed too far into the hole. To make sure that I do not file/sand right through the plastic, I glued a short section of 30 thou card at the rear of the new hull bottom prior to cementing the new hull bottom:
The next step was to mark the centre line of the new hull bottom, two perpendicular transverse lines, and fill the side gaps with filler. The transverse lines mark the point where the concave curvature ceases at the front, and a marker for a small jig which I had made from card to test the depths of the curve to keep them even. Now the filing/sanding could begin. I started by using a larger diameter round file to make a shallow groove just forward of the hull step. This could then be slowly and steadily enlarged with fine grade glass paper wrapped around a piece of dowel. By putting slightly more pressure on the rear and by keeping the glasspaper and dowel almost parallel with the hull top I was able to gradually scoop out the required curve under the left side of the hull base. The centre line was used as a guide to prevent me making the curve too wide. The process was repeated for the right side:
What I thought was going to be difficult turned out to be relatively easy: there must therefore be hidden problems waiting for me further into this build....
If you have been, thanks for looking.
Stephen.
