Sopwith Schneider, Special Hobby 1/48, Upd 14.2.2020 St Valentine's Day

[Bughunter]

With the new year I will reactivate a older project, because I want to feel and smell wood ...

Sopwith Schneider  



May be some of you remember my Lebed VII project, finished two years ago. This biplane was a copy of the Sopwith Tabloid and already at this time I thought about building another one, this time as the famous Sopwith Schneider.
At the end of the build report I created the floats already during a snowy winter day. After that nothing happens ...

This Tabloid with floats and a 100 PS Gnome Monosoupape take part on the Monaco Schneider Trophy, a race about 28 laps with 10km each:

Source: kingstonaviation.org

On April 20th 1914 the pilot Howard Pixton finished aftzer 2 hours 13 seconds with a average speed of 86.78 mph. One cylinder of the engine failed after half of the laps, but with two additional laps he completed 300 km and a world record for sea planes.

Source: kingstonaviation.org

References:
Windsock Mini Datafile 9 "Sopwith Tabloid"

Quelle: windsockdatafilespecials.co.uk

Windsock Datafile 60 "Sopwith Baby" with drawings of the Sopwith Schneider, but the later production version.

Quelle: amazon.com

I found also different drawings in the internet.

So far for the background.
May be this is interesting for some of you.

Cheers,
Frank

[Bughunter]

Floats

At first I repeat here the steps from two years ago, to have it all at one place.

Cut stripes of plywood. 3 of them are thick enough for one float. At first glued two, drilled bling holes to be filled up with a bad alloy of solder. I want to avoid tail sitter!



After gluing the last stripe the lead is no more visible. With my small Proxxon disc sander the floats reaches the final form within seconds.



The sides are also slightly sanded to reach nearly the needed width. After that it was planked with my nice pear wood.



After the dry glue a sanded the veneer carefully to reach the contour.



For the up and down layer I had to bend the veneer with steam and glue it to the floats.



The beading was intended and mentioned the the Datafile drawing. I have to reduce the thickness further and sand the beading to the final size.



After painting nothing happens on this ...

But with the new drawings and info now I realized, that some wooden strips for easier ground handling are missing. So I removed the paint and glued very thin veneer strips to the lower surface. I was only able to do it straight with using of some Evergreen strips.



After a bit of sanding I painted the floats again.



I think that is now a good base to continue

Cheers,
Frank

[lone modeller]

What a lovely pair of floats. And a simply super subject! I really like floatplanes and flying boats - not sure why but there is something attractive about them. I will be following this one with great interest.

Stephen.

[Robin]

Lead filled floats? Frank...you're not building a U-boot.

Kidding...looks fabulous.

Robin

[coyotemagic]

This is going to be fun to follow!  Those floats are spectacular!
Cheers,
Bud

[Alexis]

Very nice wood work Frank , those floats are awesome !


Terri

[Borsos]

Like the others have said Frank, a wonderful pair of floats. This is a lovely wooden tone achieved here.
Andreas

[Gisbod]

I love a bit of woodwork Frank,

Looks lovely. Could you have kept a natural wooden finish rather than paint? Not a criticism at all - just you can’t beat some natural polished wood!

Great subject..

Guy

[Bughunter]

Thank you Stephen, Robin, Bud, Terri, Andreas and Guy!

And a simply super subject!

I will use a Sopwith Schneider kit from Special Hobby, but the Race version is very different to the later production version of the kit, so I have to change some things and there are no decals offered for my planned aircraft.

Lead filled floats? Frank...you're not building a U-boot.

I hope I have enough in to avoid a tail sitter

Could you have kept a natural wooden finish rather than paint? Not a criticism at all - just you can’t beat some natural polished wood!

I guess this was painted a lot with spar varnish, to make it water proof. I think that look can't be reached with just polishing pear veneer.
Edit: forgot another important reason: natural veneer is very weak and damageable, also my thin airscrews, so at least the wood primer (german product name "Schnellschleifgrund") is needed to stabilize and harden it.

Now I have also birch veneer, but want to avoid to redo the covering work again without knowing in advance, if it will work with birch too
Let me think about it ...

Cheers,
Frank

[Bughunter]

Tail float


Following the above pattern, I glued plywood scraps again and carefully shaped them with the disc sander.
The slanted upper edge results from the fuselage shape.



On the underside I glued pear veneer and carefully sanded the edge according to the shape.



Then I bent a veneer strip over steam and glued it around the float. After drying, sand all overhangs, here the upper side:



And the bottom. Except for the coloring it can stay like this.



Will look like this. Later I will add a rudder, driven from the yaw rudder.



Again something done (was a bit sceptical, if this heavy bending is possible or not ...).

Cheers,
Frank

[kensar]

Nice work, Frank.  This will be a really nice model of the Schneider.

[RAGIII]

Incredible start to what is sure to be a Stunning Model!
RAGIII

[Bughunter]

Thank you for your praise in advance Ken and Rick, I hope I can fulfill the expectations


Wings


The kit contains many optional parts, because every Schneider seems to be different.
2 or 4 blade propeller,
Ailerons or wing warping,
different tail units,
another cockpit cover.



Fortunately I don't need to saw out the ailerons, the Racer had wing warping.
After sanding down the rib tapes I primed the wings white.



The real colors of the Schneider Racer are open to speculation. There are some artistic works,
e.g. by Kenneth McDonough

https://pinturas-gran-guerra-aire.tumblr.com/post/184279178820/1914-sopwith-tabloid-schneider-trophy-kenneth

or here nice sketches http://speedbirds.blogspot.com/2007/09/sopwith-schneider-circa1913.html



which one can use for orientation. But some things are clear from existing pictures: here are brighter lower ribs.

Quelle: jn.passieux.free.fr


Masked and shadowed, from above:



and lower side:



Then I painted linen colors, but I was not able to show the real colors on the photos made with artificial light





I hope, you got a impression and it will match somehow the original plane.

Cheers,
Frank

[Alexis]

Hi Frank , nice results with the wings . I like it 


Terri

[Bughunter]

Thank you Terri!

As I mentioned there are no decals available for the Racer (really pitty, for the 3 kit variants Special Hobby provided decals printed by Cartograf). But a friend jumped in and offered to help - he created masks on his cutting machine Since X-mas I own such cutting machine too, so it is another important reason to finally use the provided masks!

So the racing numbers are applied last night to the wings, using a night camouflage black by MRP:


Thank you very much, Walter!

Cheers,
Frank