Hi all - well, it certainly is the season for Albatrii!
Bertl's amazing 1/32 triple build continues to dazzle -
https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=13288.0Chad's fantastic 1/48 build of the classic Eduard DVa is looking wonderful -
https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=13307.0And i'm making a hack of the new 1/48 8113 re-release of the classic 1/48 Eduard kit -
https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=13255.0This just tells me... who doesn't love an Albatros?
As I have found with my recent Fokker Dr1 builds, I am more productive when I do dual builds... accordingly, I have decided to start another 1/48 DVa. This time, I have gone with the Revell boxing, which is a re-box of the Eduard kit. Revell have moulded this kit in a very light grey and slightly brittle plastic.
Reflecting upon the fact that a tightly cowled Albie hides all of its secrets, I decided to bite the bullet and tackle something that i've wanted to do for a while; an un-cowled DVa.
The first thing to do, unsurprisingly, was cut off the kit cowls, and thin down the fuselage sidewalls. I sanded off all of the interior detail, and thinned down the interior of the nose section with a dremel:
Now, the real challenge... how do deal with those curves, and build all of the distinctive formers? Having sanded the fuselage, it was now not simply a round symmetrical section that I could use. I also really didn't want to make up each frame painstakingly by hand. I decided that I would use my Silhouette Portrait cutter to cut the formers from thin plastic. That would also allow me to design the lightening holes and have them cut out cleanly.
To do this, the first thing I did was roughly get the shape of each frame using thin plastic. Some of the shapes were going to be a bit 'odd', due to the way that the plastic had been sanded, creating shapes / contours that weren't quite oval (mainly at the point of the firewall, as you can see I needed a slightly odd shape here):
This then allowed me to scan the shapes into the Silhouette drawing program, and trace out each shape. The appropriate details were then added:
I then used the Shilhouette Portrait cutter to cut the shapes from 0.010" plastic. I had to use this plastic thickness as anything thicker would have been too hard to cut. This plastic was too thin in and of itself for each frame, so in order to provide some rigidity I cut two pieces for each frame and glued them together:
I then had the frames I needed to create the main structural elements:
Next was re-adding the structural detail in the fuselage halves:
And here it all is, VERY roughly placed within the fuselage. It may need a couple of adjustments here and there, but I think it will all work.
And proof the fuselage halves still come together...
I now have the basis to commence the rest of the interior. Phew...!
Happy to take comments, tips and feedback.
Cheers again!
BC
