Wood Effect / Seat Belts

[NORTHDUK]

 I am working on an Airfix DH-4 kit, inspired by Brad Cancian's build elsewhere on this forum, and have now almost completed a scratch-built interior.  This will have to be painted to represent plain varnished plywood.  I know that this will involve painting everything in a "wood" colour and applying a thin coat of a darker brown but I would like to know what colours people here use for this and what their preferred method is for applying the top coat to give a wood grain effect.

In addition, I have not yet made the seat belts as I have no clear idea what they would have been like.  My guess is that the pilot's belt would have been a simple lap strap but the observer sat on a circular stool like a piano stool and would have had to stand up, move about to fire the gun, operate the camera and face forward or aft as needed.  Does anyone know what the belt would have been like and where it was secured to the fuselage? I can find no photographs of the cockpit interiors that show the belts.

All suggestions or sources of information would be greatly appreciated.

Best wishes,

Gordon McLaughlin

[Brad Cancian]

Hello Gordon!

Firstly, welcome to the forum! You'll find an absolute wealth of information and expertise here

Thanks also for referencing my DH-4 build; glad to see I am not the only one that decided to add a little bit more to the 'office' in this otherwise quite nice kit (for its age).

In terms of replicating the 'wood'; for me, I usually start with a cream coloured base, then streak over various mixes of oil paints; burnt umber, raw sienna, yellow ochre, mainly. You can mix these to get different colours and effects to your liking. In 1/72, don't be too concerned about pronounced wood grain; it should look 'to scale', and give more of an impression of wood than an overt representation. That being said, there's always artistic licence that applies



For seat belts, your guess is as good as mine, I presumed that there would be lap belts attached to the fuselage sides, which is what I went with. If the observer had to stand up to do their duties, I would think the belt would come off. This would be ok provided the pilot didn't decide to 'split-S' or do something silly that might 'throw' said observer out of the aircraft. Remember, occupational hazards and safety standards were a bit different back during WW1 - think of those poor FE2B gunners, for example!

Cheers,

Brad

[Davos522]

Hi Gordon, I'll take a look through my WWI Aero indexes and see if I can come up with anything relevant RE: the belts. I know that the observer's seat was mounted on a pair of sliding rails fixed to the cockpit floor, and flipped up and down like the cover on that thing you find in everyone's bathroom, so how you'd mount a belt to it I'm not sure.

Dutch

[davec]

Hi Gordon -

Danny just posted a great color chart of different combinations of oils over different base colors (https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=13998.0).  It might be helpful for you.   Agree with Brad that for most wood the grain should be subtle at scale, even scales larger than 1/72.  Most of the frame wood would have been something very tight grained, especially if it needed to be bent as part of the construction.  Plywood is a little different as it tends to have a prominent grain pattern that probably could be seen even at fairly small scales. Probably not a big issue at 1/72.  At larger scales, people simulate with brush, sponge, or colored pencils.  There are some companies that make decals (https://www.uschivdr.com/shopping-categories/shop-wood-grain-decals/) to simulate the grain.

Dave

[Davos522]

No luck finding anything about the belts in the -4, all I could come up with was this snippet about the foot straps on the rudder-bar; interesting, but pretty useless for 1/72 unless you're crazier than I am:



Odd how every once in a while you find a complete black hole where information is concerned (ever see a photo of the bottom of a French 2B2 Strutter?), where other times you have data glut (every variety of control column for a Dr.I, for example).

Dutch

[NORTHDUK]

@Brad Cancian,

Brad,

Thank you for your reply.  I was very impressed by your work on the DH-4 and, having the kit in the loft, I decided to see what I could do.  This is my first attempt at making an interior of this kind for an aircraft model and I'm learning from my mistakes as far as possible.  I find that I have more difficulty than I used to have in cutting out and handling very small pieces and I have had to find alternative ways of doing things.  Nevertheless, it's been interesting and satisfying.  I envy your skill!

Your painting technique obviously works well and I'll be trying it out shortly.  I'll probably use enamels rather than oils, though, to cut costs.  I agree with you that simple lap belts are the best bet. 

When I complete the fuselage, the next problem will be the rigging.  Despite several attempts over the years, I've never successfully rigged a biplane and I'm determined to succeed this time.  Previous attempts have have ended up in the bin.  This time, I'm going to try using elastic thread.  I may go for a simplified version of the rigging scheme as the DH-4 is rather complicated.  Alternatively, I might try the technique on a single bay type first before attempting the DH-4.

Thanks again for your reply. 

Gordon

 

[NORTHDUK]

@ Davos522,

Dutch,

Thanks for your replies.  It was good of you to take the trouble to look for the answer to the seat belt question.

You're right about black holes in the information available.  To judge from the plans, there is nothing on the bottom of the fuselage of any aircraft.  Often, there is no underside view at all.  By chance, I found a plan that shows a circular camera port on the centre line of the fuselage underside along with a fuel jettison pipe and another couple of fittings.  No other plan shows them or mentions them.  Since I started this model, I've been looking for more information about the interior layout and fittings but I'm not sure that I know enough.  Fortunately, relatively little will be visible once the fuselage is closed up. 

Thanks again for your help.

Gordon

[NORTHDUK]

@davec,

Dave,

Thanks for your reply.  The wood effect colour chart is impressive and I'll try to copy it for future reference.  It was clearly a labour of love.

I've seen some of the wood grain decals and I can see uses for them but they wouldn't be suitable for this particular job.  Nevertheless, thanks for bringing them to my attention and thanks again for your help.

Gordon