Hello everyone,
and thanks for your last kind comments!
I haven't written anything in a long time, sorry. And that was pretty stupid. I wanted to post the entire engine as a separate assembly, and that's exactly what's backfiring on me now. The engine was so demanding and time-consuming that I now had to choose from over 200 photos. It's really hard to decide what to leave out. I had some ideas and discovered for me some new products, which could be helpful also for others. So it will become a very big post, and hopefully and hopefully you won't fall asleep during reading
Let's start with what you get in the kit. If you roughly put the sprues together, you get this:
You can actually see the amazing level of detail right out of the box. Great. But here we come also to the first problem. Unfortunately, you can immediately see that the fit between the upper and lower halves isn't perfect. All cylinders have this seam on both sides. And no file I know of can get between them. This is a challenge, so let's get started.
After gluing, the joints were masked and then everything was primed with Mr Surfacer 1500 (heavily diluted). This made all the seams clearly visible (no separate photo, it wouldn't be pretty anyway).
Here's my solution for this type of filing. Misuse of the Albion Flex-I-File. Cut off a bit of the sanding strip on both sides. Do this on both sides so it doesn't tear on one side due to the pulling force. Use a cutter knife and a ruler. Here's one filing strip and one polishing strip:
Now you can also carefully sand in more inaccessible places:
If you don't know, you won't be able to explain the gap between the things on the cylinders and the valve guide arms. Unfortunately, Wingnut Wings only implemented the spring mechanism halfway here; half the spring is missing. And that's to be taken literally. Hopefully, you'll know what I mean in a moment. To fix this, you first need to bend a wire into a U-shape in the smallest possible way. You can't do this evenly by hand (at least I can't).
Don't be confused, after a few pictures, it'll become clear what this will be. Above, the "bending tool": two pieces of brass tubing. Below, the copper wire to be bent. The rest is a picture story, as everyone will surely understand:
Shortening:
Installation:
Drill out the spring:
Repeat this process twice for each of the 9 cylinders. So, 18 times. Many hours later:
As you can see in this photo, sanding with the above solution was successful. Everything was then recoated with Mr Surfacer 1500 to create a uniform surface. However, the finish is somewhat dull, even when thinned well. Therefore, it's very important to spray all future metal parts with Alclad 2 (now called A-Stand and recently produced by Ammo) Black Primer & Microfiller beforehand. With this preparation, you'll achieve usable metallic effects:
Here comes the metal:
Now things get interesting. The Salmson 9z was water-cooled. So we have copper cooling system around the cylinders. Therefore, everything that shouldn't be copper-coated was masked. (The part in the middle was already masked, but it's barely visible.) Then we covered it with Alclad 2 copper.
Some modelers leave it in this light copper tone. I don't like that. The copper will certainly look completely different after a few hours of flying. It will also have aged and tarnished. If you google "old copper," you'll see that it turns almost black. The black Alclad Primer works excellent for darkening it (later pictures will be better):
Without words:
Now for the next problem. The valve rods must be connected to the levers in a sensible way
As you can see, you have to take care of the spark plugs beforehand; you won't be able to get to them later.
They don't have to be bright white; they'll be dirty afterward anyway. Gray primer has sufficient coverage:
The distribution ring is still missing. Using the needle of an insulin syringe, you can puncture the exact center and then drill out (0.7 mm):
Painted with matte black (Tamiya X18). And the clamps were brushed with Alclad 2. Yes, Alclad 2 can be applied very precisely. Simply apply it to the cap of the bottle with a fine brush after shaking...
Without photos. Holes for the ignition cables were also drilled into the distributor ring using an insulin syringe and a small drill.
For the ignition cables, I used 0.2 mm lead wire. It's the perfect material; it stays exactly where you bend it, and it's super easy to cut.
The wires were painted brown, glued to the spark plugs, and the tips were coated with copper Alclad. Later, I added a dash of black (not shown in the photo).
Here is a hint for a really good tool, black superglue. I discovered it for me after seeing Plasmo using something comparable in his videos.
It comes out of the bottle quite runny and dries to a high gloss. If you wait a bit, it thickens a bit, yet still forms a smooth surface when applied. I used it to create the connection between the valve arms and valve rods (you may remember the photo with the gaps). You can see it now in the high-gloss black spheres. These are simply drops of glue applied with a thin wire. Later, I painted them with Alclad:
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I'll skip to the radiator (the front and back are identical, I won't go into that later). It was pre-painted black. I think it was simply Vallejo Black or Tamiya X18. The center, however, is supposed to be aluminum. I used my circle cutter. Note: Always add more masking and divide it into smaller pieces. This way, you can easily overlap the adhesive strips:
To give the cooler the appropriate finish, these two dry paints were used for dry-brushing. Nicely smudged:
Even better:
Now making use of thinned oil paint. Black, Burnt Sienna and Turpentine substitute
I also got the entire engine dirty with it. Here's the result after it dried. Incidentally, this happens quite quickly, within a few hours, thanks to the white spirit (turpentine substitute):
As a final item on the agenda (you'll be done soon), I'd like to show the magnetos with the wiring:
I'll spare you the details, but I'll explain how I got to this point. Prime the plastic piece with black primer, apply metallic paint, and then mask it off. The pipes are sheathed, which was then painted black (as the magnetos). The clamps are painted with Alclad. Metal parts: play around with brown and black panel liner to break up the uniformity...
Other pipes were made similarly:
Here, I've glued on 0.1mm fishing line to spray it with Vallejo Air brown. These will then become the connecting cables:
Glued with the black superglue
No photo. The shine of the glue was brushed off with diluted matte varnish.
Bent brass pipes were now needed to bundle the cable harnesses:
Here you can see how the cables were plugged in and come out on the other side.
Brass pipes were painted (almost) black with this mixture:
Here's the next step. Where the paint came off with tweezers or similar tools, it was touched up later.
After all cables were pulled to the correct length, superglue was dripped into the back of the painted brass tubes to prevent the cables from moving before they were cut:
Everything was secured in place, and the engine was finished after more than 6 weeks. Here some final pictures:
Thank you for your patience. Many more photos with additional intermediate steps, as always, here:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/6HJAoo86QpPWBft5ABest Regards
Rafael
