Phonix DI

[NigelR]

That's looking pretty good, very impressive work with such tiny parts. And paper!

[Dutch522]

Marvelous work, I wouldn't have believed such a level of detail could be achieved on a paper model... one of the things I love the most about this group is the diversity of interests, mediums, and techniques. Between you paper folks, the 1/144 wizards, PJ's painstakingly-researched historical posts, Brad's reviews, and on and on, there's always something new to look at and learn from. Bravo!

Dutch

[DMPopa]

I have the parts of the engine completed prior to installing in the fuselage structure.   The exhaust ports will be installed after the paper skin is installed as these are likely to be damaged in this process.

I am making the intake manifolds from Evergreen 222, 1/6" rod.     I will use Evergreen or Plastruct  when bends are required as I have not found a way to get bends from rolled up paper.   Below is the in process build.



I pre-bend the Evergreen and secure the bend by heating it briefly under a flame.  My favorite flame source is this un-named torch which I sourced in a convivence store.   I am told these are favored by people who heat Dubs (Concentrated marijuana). 



This torch has a nice concentrated flame good for plastic bending work and is relatively cheap.  The separate pieces are subsequently superglued together.


These are the completed intake manifolds and painted using Testors copper shot from an air gun.  When making the intake manifolds, I was careful to not extend them outside of the footprint of the cylinder block.  This is because the engine fits into a box in the fuselage structure and they will interfere with the box if they stick too far out.




I added a circular feature at the top of the neater manifold, to approximate a feature shown on pictures of this engine from the web.  It is made from velum wrapped around a slice of Evergreen 214 1/8" rod.  I wrap first, push the paper past the end of the Evergreen, slice then push the paper back so it is flat with the outside surface.   What I wanted to achieve was good roundness and the Evergreen is thinner than the paper wrap so I get an indentation on the gluing surface side to help to position the feature.

Last is the ignition wire.....shaft?   It is made from K&S .032 Music wire with dabs of glue to serve as the spark plug attachment points to the cylinders.    Painted silver from the rattle can and followed up with Testors Dullcote.  The silver may not be accurate but I wanted to paint with a contrasting color to the valve covers.

[NinetythirdLiberator]

Lots of hard work is paying off!  It'll look great all installed.

Dan

[DMPopa]

I installed the engine and I painted the fuselage body a shade of green to match the color of the paper skins.  My reason for the paint is because if the paper skin seams are not absolutely perfect, the under coat will show at the seam.  Painting what is under the seam, plus adding paint at the exposed edge of the paper skin will work to hide the seam.  For paint I am using a Color Sample BEHR Marquee Satin, an enamel paint purchased at Home Depot.  This way I can get pretty close to the paint color needed for a model either by matching a paint swatch or have the paint dept use the color analyzer to get a color that is a very close match. Or I will mix a special color from what I have.   Plus you get a good amount of the paint.    For a while I was able to by what they call oops samples for $0.50 and having enough of these I can cover a lot of situations.

[NinetythirdLiberator]

Looks cool with that engine in!  Keep going...Dan

[NigelR]

Great progress here, starting to look like a Phonix.....

[DMPopa]

I am adding the skins to the fuselage structure. The inkjet printed paper was coated with Krylon UV-Resistant Clear Acrylic Coating matt finish.    I added the bottom and two sides.  and things lined up pretty good, the pre-coated structure help to hide the gaps between the sides and the bottom.



I pre-fit the various top parts and here is where the problems emerged.  The two top pieces behind the cockpit did not reach both side pieces and the forward piece right behind the cockpit does not reach forward enough.  The pieces forward of the cockpit did not reach the side pieces either.  So I will go back to gimp and edit in more color on the paper to correct (hopefully) this problem.  One thing that worked out is the Cresent and stars line up on both sides of the fuselage with the top piece.   

Best practice:  Test fit pieces before final gluing!

[Gene K]

Best practice:  Test fit pieces before final gluing!

I do my test fitting and subsequent adjustments with regular copy paper.

Looking forward to more. 

Gene K

[DMPopa]

I repainted the fuselage skin paper pieces to cover a bigger area.  This is the backside of the piece shown in the earlier post.  I put paint on the structure to indicate where I will have to trim the piece to fit.  Paint like this was not accurate enough so I went back to using a fine pentel pencil to mark the cuts.   



I want to point out a couple of details.  The gluing surface on the side of the structure, and above the already applied fuselage skin is pretty narrow.  The result is what when fiddling with the piece it did not take much pulling to cause the joint between the top piece and side piece to open up.   

I rounded the edges of the "spine" downstream of the cockpit to help in getting a better fold on the top pieces.   

The bulkhead midway down the fuselage downstream of the cockpit created problems when the top pieces edge did not land on the bulkhead.   I had to add pieces to thicken it up to provide a surface that both the upstream and downstream pieces will sit on. 

Another thing that I did was to burnish the centerline crease from the inside with a dollar store sourced tool.   This technique made the fold much smoother as the fold is greater than 90 degrees.



I had the best results when I pre-fitted the tip pieces and trimmed the front, back and one side to size.  I glued a top piece on the trimmed lengthwise end after it dried, fold it over trimming to size the opposite end, then glueing it in place.   This is the cockpit top piece with one side glued.   I did not glue in the kit supplied piece that gets glued in the inside of the cockpit opening, rather I painted the inside.  I did this as I expected that a double piece of paper would cause a messy joint.   



I also had to resort to thickening up bulkheads, the bulkhead downstream of the engine compartment had to get another piece of 0.020" thick cardboard added.

This is where the fuselage looks now.

[NinetythirdLiberator]

Looking more than good!

Dan

[NigelR]

This looks like quite challenging work but the results so far are looking good.

[DMPopa]

The area behind the cockpit, the upper pieces for me is a hard to do.  The forward upper piece, the one just behind the cockpit and below the center crease is concave inward just behind the cockpit at the bulkhead and is straight at the midspan bulkhead.   Lengthwise the piece is flat.   The rearward piece is flat in length and width below the center crease.   To get this correct, the downstream piece cannot pucker either inward or outward (there is no supporting structure directly inboard of this piece), and any deviations from perfectly straight and flat after the piece has been trimmed to size opens up the gap between this piece and the flat skin on the sides of the fuselage structure.   The pieces upstream of the cockpit were easier to achieve the desired contours in my opinion as the paper pieces are concave outward and there is some spring in the paper which closes up the gap and adds stiffness which works to establish the round contour. 

Best practice for difficult to assemble pieces, scan the kit sheet and create using Gimp (my favorite) or some other editing software, duplicates of specific pieces and print on a separate sheet.   Test fit and trial and error is good. 

I will continue with what I have; however, when I revisit this plane again I will build up the fuselage structure upper and behind the cockpit to give a solid gluing surface to the correct contours.    And I will edit the skin so that the seam is at the top midspan.   I get why a seam at this location is un-desirable as it will be very visible, however the rudder covers a lot of territory at the top canter negating this argument.   

[DMPopa]

I did some work to straighten out the back part of the fuselage.   I made two cuts, upstream of the upper midspan bulkhead (the one downstream of the cockpit) and one downstream of the bulkhead, and both on each side of the fuselage center rib.    I positioned small squares of cardstock soaked with white glue through each of the four cuts and used the exacto knife to move and straighten the skin.   The cuts needed to be hidden, so I used the paint I mentioned in an earlier post.   



The matt paint I used is not as matt as the printed cardstock.  To create a more matt finish I brushed the surface with cosmetic powder, purchased from the Dollar Store.  This also has the effect of changing the paint slightly to better match the printed color.    I brush until I am satisfied with the matt finish and color.  I used the dark grey and green colors.   



Now on to getting the fuselage nose completed.

[RAGIII]

I have just gone through your whole thread. Incredible artwork, construction processes , and dedication to getting things the way you want them! Your build looks amazing to date!
RAGIII