Lebed VII (Sopwith Tabloid), Special Hobby 1/48, Upd 23.1.18 100% scratch floats

[davec]

Agree that the Eduard wheels look great.  Thanks for showing the steps for shading the wings - I'm new to this, and seeing the sequence was very helpful.

Dave

[Manni]

Great modifications, that fit perfect the original.
Manni

[Des]

You have done a fantastic job with the wheels Frank.

Des.

[Nigel Jackson]

Super work on the wheels, Frank. I'm really enjoying, and learning from your build.

Best wishes
Nigel

[Bughunter]

At first thank you all for your comments, highly appreciated!

Those engines from Small Stuff are really excellent, but your painting has turned it into something that looks as though it is made from metal.

To improve the pictures further (I wrote about that before) I experimented with a polarization filter (not software, but glass in front of the lens). I thinks it shows more the metal look as the real model:

I'm really enjoying, and learning from your build.

That was the lesson "kit improvement by accident"
I guess without the broken PE part I would have used the kit solution. But luckily (from the actual point of view) I was forced to think about it.

This was not the first time! For my Fokker E.III Stripdown I scratched and soldered a landing gear. It was finished and I wanted to airbrush it, so I deployed my spray booth on the work bench - where the hell is the gear? Your guess is right - below the booth, in a flat variant! At first frustration, but since I had to rework it the second version gets even better.

Cheers,
Frank

[Bughunter]

Landing gear


The kit parts. Wanted to use them, really!
But the axles are to short for the spoke wheels (but correct for filled plastic ones). The middle strut was only there on some Tabloids, but - you guess - not on this Russian one. In the manual was nothing stated about it, just on the box cover and the painting page it was visible.



Additionally I have looked at pictures of the replica from Hendon ...

Source: abpic.co.uk (Air-Britain Photographic Images Collection)


And found a lot of fantastic pictures in high resolution here:
http://www.maquetland.com/article-phototheque/5982-sopwith-tabloid-hendon

One example:




After some work with pear veneer, including bending with steam, this is the result:



All struts are secured with brass pins, also in the skids:



I think, this looks better!



And matches the datafile drawing.



Already this early Sopwith uses this half axles, which I scrached on my Pup



After painting of the wood and mounting the metal that is the actual look:



Now I have to think about suspension, fittings and rigging. Some PE would be nice, but I guess such fittings are not available in my scale.

Cheers,
Frank

[Jacek]

Beautiful undercarriage design.
Congratulations.
Jacek

[Juan]

Truly amazing and beautiful job on the undercarriage (and everything else).

[RAGIII]

Your gear assembly looks stunning! Very well done!!
RAGIII

[lcarroll]

Truly amazing and beautiful job on the undercarriage (and everything else).

Indeed; wood, metal, and a plastic mainframe, great work!
Lot's to be learned here and a pleasure to follow!
Cheers,
Lance

[ALBATROS1234]

Super nice build. Love the wheels and use of veneer

[Manni]

Speechless.... Beautiful use of wood. The landing gear looks so good.
Manni

[KiwiZac]

Beautiful is definitely the word. I think I'm in love.

[Bughunter]

Thank you all for your feedback about the undercarriage!


Fittings


If done with wood, I should add metal too.

That means fittings. Soldered thin brass foils together to do some parts at once.



Additionally two other kinds.



Mounted view. I can put the suspension between the "bolts" (0,33mm nickel silver).



In the front it just hold the strut. The instant glue will stabilize the wooden frame (I hope).



Still not done! Two plates with hole and 0,2mm axle ...



... steers the half axles during rebound. This is shown in a drawing in Datafile.



And if I do sheet metal forming ...

I found a picture of the open front in the internet:

Quelle: postimg.org


I tried to build that part as far as I could.



The bearing is turn from brass on my lathe. Since I don't own a dividing head some of the small holes are not distributed equally, but axle and air screw will block part of the view.



After a tin-coat it looks much better.



I will solder the parts from back.



Such small parts could eat up a lot of time, and I never constructed or made myself PE parts.

Cheers,
Frank

[RLWP]

The bearing is turn from brass on my lathe. Since I don't own a dividing head some of the small holes are not distributed equally, but axle and air screw will block part of the view.

If you can drill small holes that evenly, you don't need a dividing head!

I have a dividing head, I can make a much bigger mess of that job than you have

Lovely work

Richard