Special Hobby 1/32 Morane Saulnier N

[RAGIII]

The weathering and painting look Fantastic! I am looking forward to seeing this one rigged!
RAGIII

[Ryan]

Moving right along man, looking suitable grubby.

Ryan

[rhallinger]

Eric, I really like the look you have achieved here.  It looks just right to me.  Thank you for sharing your tools, products and techniques.  Very well done!

Best regards,

Bob

[GazzaS]

Beautiful!!

[ebergerud]

lft-ft by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr

My rendition of the Morane Saulnier N is rigged and finis.

Anyway I could have done this the rigging would have lacked realism. Special Hobby calls for .5mm wire. I guess that's right judging from the photos. But I haven't a clue how I would have attached those C Type turnbuckles - and they're on every photo. (One modeler online did use wire and I thought it looked awful - I'm sure the plane was rigged with thick cable as opposed to rigid tubes.) The kit came with PE turnbuckles but I haven't the foggiest how they expected anyone to use them with wire. I checked one out and I would have had to use ship rigging line to get it through their very little eye. So heck with it.

The rigging was very challenging and I doubt there are many models where it's so visible. I used 2lb P-line mono. The anchor points are Gaspatch white metal. I also used Gaspatch resin Type C turnbuckles. The idiom of rigging is still new to me and I know I made several errors. Most are underneath - it did that first figuring it was a good place to hide mistakes. I'll have to work on setting the anchors in more precisely. It did take a while to figure out how to attach the Type C. The resin type C did look the part, but they are very fragile. It proved pretty easy to crack off and eyelet and four had to be replaced. I probably should have made my own.  I replaced a few lines completely, but did leave some errors alone. For now, I can't let the search for very good to get in the way of "okay."   I'm new at biplanes and look at every kit as, hopefully, leading to something better.

I'll put up some more kits in the "Completed Builds" forum. Here's what I've got now.
Eric
rigdet by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
front by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
rt-r by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr

[rhallinger]

She looks wonderful Eric!  Just the way i picture a Morane Bullet.   You can be justly proud of this one.  Very well done!

The rigging is quite challenging on this one.  How did you get all of the lines to anchor on the apex struts with pulleys?!

Outstanding work!

Best regards,

Bob

[RichieW]

Excellent Eric, looks like a well used warplane. The weathering techniques worked out beautifully.

[RAGIII]

Looks great! A well used Morane for sure!
RAGIII

[aliluke]

Hi Eric
That's a fantastic result. To me it looks as flimsy as the real plane would have been - you have perfectly captured the fabric - in all senses - of these death traps.

For rigging I take a less is more approach. Eyelets at both ends of a line then a .3mm brass tube threaded on the line to indicate a turnbuckle at one end only or central to the line. The trick I reckon is that the rigging should become a secondary detail to the primary detail which is the rendition of the plane itself. If the rigging becomes the focus by being overly detailed then the main object - the plane itself - is lost. Many of the exemplar models on the WNW website demonstrate this with no eyelets and no turnbuckles at all - just a line. Taking that approach also really simplifies the challenge of rigging in general. I use the eyelets more for the ease they provide for rigging rather than realism. At 1/32 an eyelet would be near invisible and a turnbuckle a mere thickening of the line. This has been debated here in the past and it comes down to personal taste.

But all said your rendition is great and when I get to this model - which I have - I will reference your approach.

Cheers
Alistair

[ebergerud]

Alistair

I do not quibble with your views on rigging. I think the techniques argued for by Des are sound - and if done correctly I don't think they'd be an addition to almost any model. This one .... if I had been more experienced in biplanes I might very well have done things differently. Had I made my own turnbuckles they would have been smaller and would have installed cleaner but those big C type buckles are simply very prominent in all the photos and I simply didn't have the confidence to ignore them. I've done several ships and it's common to use white glue and paint to emulate all kinds of fittings and that would have been an option here.I know WNW takes the minimalist approach to rigging, but I'm not sure if it's because they are right or want to sell more model biplanes. I'll post that question and see if some people here would chime in - the bar is very high on this board - it reminds me a lot of Model Warship. For what it's worth, I've bought a couple of Eduard 1/48s. (Not that I had much choice - WNW doesn't seem to exist at this moment.) On those I'll use EZ line and glue/paint to emulate sleeves. Am curious there to see how easy it will be to stick EZ line into a hole containing CA - could be a well hidden eyelet would still help. We'll see. Thanks for your opinion.

[GazzaS]

What a great looking build!  Nicely done!