WNW Fokker EIV - NOW COMPLETED

[NigelR]

Thanks Lance and Dutch, much appreciated.

But I think instead of a note-taking loop we may be in danger of outright quantum entanglement here, where something you do on your build simultaneously gets incorporated into mine, and Gary's, and Allan's, and my son Curt's, and back and forth across the breadth of the multiverse...

I can see the movie title now..... "Every Build Everywhere All At Once" 

[DaddyO]

Thanks Lance and Dutch, much appreciated.

But I think instead of a note-taking loop we may be in danger of outright quantum entanglement here, where something you do on your build simultaneously gets incorporated into mine, and Gary's, and Allan's, and my son Curt's, and back and forth across the breadth of the multiverse...

I can see the movie title now..... "Every Build Everywhere All At Once" 

Too cultured for your own good Nigel   

[NigelR]

I've been away for a few days but am now back to the bench and have made a bit of slow progress.

We have a propellor:



We have a closed up fuselage with a lot of gap filling:



And here's a quick shot of the wings dry fitted, showing so far only a tiny bit of droop on the right wing:



Hopefully I will be able to eliminate that when the wing is fixed in place.

Now on to lots of tedious prep work before painting, weathering, decalling and assembly.

[DaddyO]

Not going to be ready for the weekend then? 

(Lovely work so far Nigel)

[NigelR]

Not going to be ready for the weekend then? 

You cheeky monkey! I was hoping to have it done for the Gloucester show on the 22nd but that won't happen either. I need to speed up!

[macsporran]

Lovely propellor.
Sandy

[FAf]

Lovely propellor.
Sandy

Agree! Oils, pencils, decals, magic?!
/Fredrik

[NigelR]

Lovely propellor.
Sandy

Agree! Oils, pencils, decals, magic?!

Thanks Sandy and Fredrik. It's a combined pencils/oils approach. In the past I have painted the laminations in darker oils over a light acrylic base coat, let it all dry and then brushed a reddish brown oil coat over the whole thing and dragged brushes through it to create the grain. However, painting the laminations with oils is hard work and time consuming. So I used Bertl's technique of coloured pencils. I sprayed a light wood acrylic, coated it in flat varnish and drew the darker laminations with a coloured pencil. It takes a bit of practice and I couldn't get as good a finish as Bertl did, so I sprayed flat varnish over the pencil work and used oils over the top of the whole thing to create the grain effect. When dry, a coat of semi-gloss varnish ties it all together.

I was quite pleased with how it turned out. It's definitely easier for me using pencils to draw the laminations rather than trying to paint them on.   

[FAf]

👍
/F

[Dutch522]

Coming along beautifully, love the prop. Oddly, what impresses me most, though, is what a neat job of work that face-plate is... did you freehand it, or use a mask of some sort? I can never seem to get that outer edge that clean.

Dutch

[NigelR]

Oddly, what impresses me most, though, is what a neat job of work that face-plate is... did you freehand it, or use a mask of some sort? I can never seem to get that outer edge that clean.

Thanks Dutch. It's freehand. The trick is to not try to paint the faceplate right down to the wood of the prop. Instead I use a dark pinwash to fill in the gap around the edge of the faceplate where it meets the wood.

[Dutch522]

Thanks, Nigel, I'll give it a whirl. I've got three or four "practice props" for the E.I grained and set aside, so I won't lack for victims...

Dutch

[RAGIII]

Beautifully done prop and engine! Looks good with the wings test fitted!
RAGIII

[NigelR]

I have been doing quite a lot on this build although I haven't posted any updates. I have a box full of various painted sub-assemblies which I can't be bothered to photograph, I've now moved on to the main parts. After a long time taken to eliminate the seam on the fuselage join, I have undercoated the main parts and am doing some pre-weathering before applying  the Aviattic decals.

I don't like to over-weather my WWI aircraft but the Eindecker is an exception. They were notorious for getting soaked in castor oil, so I've been experimenting with pre-weathering to get the look of the oil soaking through the fabric. I've tried various concoctions for this, and my favourite is Tamiya brown panel liner. Here's the undercoated fuselage with the first coat of weathering applied:



The panel liner dries with a nice stained effect, especially around the edges. However, one coat is too transparent, so I applied another coat to really darken the staining. I also applied this to the wings, all based on photos of the original machine:



It's now nice and dark so the next step is to gloss everything and apply the decals. Watch this space......   

[DaddyO]

Very nice young man. Presumably the panel liner is water based so it dries quicker than oils? Certainly looks the part 

Paul