Crossing a DIII with a DH9a

[DaddyO]

The wing is looking good, and that's an interesting comparison between the wings.

Cheers Nigel I perhaps could have added the W4 wing for completeness, but didn't think about it 

[lone modeller]

The wings look good to me. Scoring the ribs is an idea I have not come across before: like panel lines on later aircraft I always have doubts about whether to represent them in this sclae.

Stephen.

[DaddyO]

The wings look good to me. Scoring the ribs is an idea I have not come across before: like panel lines on later aircraft I always have doubts about whether to represent them in this sclae.

Stephen.

I know exactly what you mean Stephen; difficult to get the balance right between what people expect to see and what would actually be visible 

For my recent builds I've just scored a couple of parallel lines close to each other with two very light strokes, using a brand new scalpel blade, which is just enough to get a slight ridge. You sometimes need a very light sand if the plastic is soft or if your scores aren't exactly in the same place, but I usually find rubbing a thumb over the surface works well enough. The best way is probably using masking a paint to get a slight bump, but difficult to get the gaps thin enough and exactly the same size so I 've settled on this as a reasonable compromise. (You can see the effect in this recent FK8 build which was also a Pegasus kit)

FK8 on base rear by Paul S, on Flickr

[Flute]

IIRC, scoring rib tapes was the usual method from earlier days - thinking Ray Rimell in Airfix Magazine and Scale Models, when I have the feeling most models were 1/72nd (in the UK at least) and it sufficed. FWIW I use two scalpel blades held together by CA to produce uniformly parallel lines. A bit of overkill in 1/72nd but I'm happy with it in 1/48th.

Paul.

[DaddyO]

Thanks Paul

With the varnish disaster going on with my other Albatros it was time to switch my attention to this one whilst I sort out what to do 

Annoyingly the radiator for the DIV is narrower than any etch part I have so down to a bit of creative thinking. After several different attempts that were okay but not quite right I came up with this (Thanks to William Adair for the suggestion suitably adapted for my skills) A scrap of 5 thou card was taped onto a blank plastic credit card and then lines were scored on it using a couple of scratches of a pin and  the step gauge of a vernier caliper (about 4-5 thou apart)

DIV Radiator scoring by Paul S, on Flickr

Once a suitable length had been made up it was cut to size and glued to a second over size piece of 5 thou and when dry the flange was carefully cut out around it. Photo shows the test bit made using this method on the left with some thin paint and the finished piece on the right

DIV Radiator by Paul S, on Flickr

[NigelR]

Nice work, that looks pretty good to me.

[lone modeller]

That looks first class - certainly more than acceptable in the One True Scale.

[DaddyO]

Thank you gents 

Having thinned the cockpit walls till they were starting to transparent it was time to add a few structural details and tabs to help join the two halves together

DIV fuselage by Paul S, on Flickr

[NigelR]

Very nice, good to see this progressing.

[DaddyO]

Having completed two of the many ongoing projects I thought I'd dip back into this one for a bit of fun 
I knew that there would be a lot of dust produced making the new nose contours using my usual 'carve from a lump of plastic' technique so rather than fully detail the cockpit at this stage I painted the wooden fuselage sides using acrylic then oils to get the general appearance and then joined the fuselage halves together. The joint isn't great and needed a fair bit of filler and sanding  (Shape of things to come)

Once I had a basic fuselage it was onto creating the new nose. A Roden radiator/nose cone was glued and then the back was completely filled with Miliput giving a nice solid location as well as allowing the propshaft somewhere to go. Two layers of 1mm plastic card added to the back of this and one more added to the front of the fuselage lengthened it correctly.Adding some plastic sheet and filler to the fuselage gave me a solid base to work with and allowed me to force the rather narrow nose a bit wider. I also glued two tabs of plastic card to the front of the cockpit area and moulded a piece of plastic card using boiling water and a curved former so that the 'dashboard' area was hollow

Albie DIV top decking by Paul S, on Flickr



Next some thicker sheet (2mm) was glued in a couple of layers onto the platform of plastic. In order to curve this I scored the top laterally and then bent by hand to get a nice fit. The nosecone was roughly shaped whilst this was drying ready to tack on later.

Albie DIV nose by Paul S, on Flickr


A couple of evenings work saw everything roughly sanded to shape ( ineeded to add a bit more card to the top and sides to get the fuselage wide enough to match the contours of the new nosecone) Once everything had been sanded down a bit a slot for the exhaust was cut out by drilling a hole at each end and then whittling with a scalpel. I've carved a lump of plastic card roughly to fill the space left in the bottom of the fuselage, but this isn't glued in place until I've detailed the cockpit. Next up more filling and sanding . . . .

Albie DIV roughed nose by Paul S, on Flickr

[NigelR]

Good to see this one back on the bench. That's some impressive conversion work there......

[DaddyO]

Good to see this one back on the bench. That's some impressive conversion work there......

Thanks Nigel (Feels a bit like I'm carving from solid these days)

[DaddyO]

Several rounds of sanding followed by primer followed by more sanding and I've got a set of main parts ready to be detailed 
I used car body filler primer on the fuselage to take care of those annoying little marks that appear between putty and plastic hence the yellow finish.

A standard DIII tailplane is shown for comparison; it's an Albatros Jim, but not as we know it . . .

DIV Parts by Paul S, on Flickr

[Flute]

(Raises one eyebrow, scratches pointy ear)................. fascinating.

Paul.

[ScottJ]

This is going to be good... I always thought the D.IV was a very nice looking aircraft.  Too bad the real one did nothing well (guess it was really just a test bed to try a geared engine?).
You've made a great start and obviously put a lot of ingenuity and work into this project so far... looking forward to seeing how it all turns out.

Scott