Time for full disclosure! I have been planning a 1/32 Thomas Morse S4C for some time and now I have started the build. My Dad passed away numerous years ago and going through some papers he had saved, I came across line drawings for a Thomas Morse S4B and C which he had saved from Model Airplane News, May 1957.


I don't know why he saved these, along with some drawings of a Fokker D.VII, a couple of Neiuports, and a Chance Vought from between the wars. Maybe they were just from issues of MAN he bought. I did some research on the Tommy. There are no 1/32 scale kits of this plane - good reason to scratch one.
The Tommy was intended to be America's first scout plane, but performance wasn't comparable to the contemporary planes from Europe, so it became an advanced trainer. Most all American aviators trained during WW1 had time in one, so I believe it is a significant plane.

The Gnome Monosaupape was installed in the S4B and the first 50 S4C. Then the LeRhone became available and was installed in subsequent S4Cs.
I have already built the Gnome engine. Vector resin helped out here. A tea ball is handy when washing small resin parts.


Of course, we can't build anything OOB, can we?

RB Motion helped out here, with the bolts.


Finito!

Next, I need to make a cowling that will fit around the engine. From there, the firewall and fuse can be built and everything will fit together. I had good results with aluminum on the Hanriot, so here we go!
First setup in the lathe - carving out the inside.

Now I needed to cut the inside of the curved front end of the cowling. I went one step beyond the Hanriot cowling, and made a lathe tool to cut the inside curve. Its nice to be able to make custom tooling.


New tool in action. The radial lines on the inside are from the tool chattering when cutting. It is not stiff enough to stay rigid when cutting such a large surface at one time. It worked anyway.


Results of first lathe setup.


Second setup - file the outside curve on the front of the cowling by hand, checking the shape with a pattern.

Finished cowling and engine.

It fits! (But what did you expect?).

This is where I'm at currently.
Get buckled in - polystyrene, here I come!