Sopwith 5F.1 Dolphin, CSM 1:48, Upd 15.5.2020 Finished, done, over!

[Alexis]

Hi Frank ,

Really nice job on those details and the landing gear legs turned out excellent . Once the pulley windows are installed , those are going to look sharp .


Terri

[smperry]

Very creative and effective solution to the pulley bracket. ( Translation: Quick! Write that down and stick it in the Dolphin box.)

Great modeling.
sp

[Bughunter]

Fuselage


The Dolphin requires some thoughts regarding painting and mounting. I wanted to close the fuselage, so I continued on parts for that.

For the instrument panel I added some spare decals and PEs from Eduard since there are no dials in the kit. For the compass in the middle I added a polished slice of stretched clear sprue.
I think I will add small brass wires to both switches down left.



The fuselage halves are glued together then, so I could add more of the great PE to lower surface.



On the side there are other PE parts, the air guide plates for the radiator are nearly functioning. The maintenance panel could be showed opened, but I decided to close them.



Another example for nice PE usage are the "ears" on the upper cover: clever mix of PE and plastic.



The next task was the masking of the fuselage. All holes are closed.



The I primed and sanded the fuselage.



The lower surface of the tail plane is painted with shading, in real it looks better and I like the outcome. I often paint to much layers, but this time I stopped early enough.



I checked the blue cans of my paints, since I don't have the RAF blue of Drooling bulldog. I tried 5 different or so, decided at the end for Gunze H5. A very deep blue, in the direction to violet. It matches nearly the blue color on the Pheon decals. The Osprey Aces book has a color plate for it, which looks violet.
But I added a drop of Tamiya X-21 to get a satin finish.



The back part is painted with MRP PC10. I wait a bit before I masked for the blue front. The tailplane need some more layers.



The was a day with good results. To be continued ...

Cheers,
Frank

[RAGIII]

Continuing to be totally awesome as always! I Love the blue, it looks perfect!
RAGIII

[Alexis]

Frank , Guten Tag !

Ist genial . wunderbar !

I must say , I really like that shade of blue ( favorite color ) and have made a note to get instruments . I didn't notice if they where in the kit . I do like your shading on the underside of the tail plane , it's prefekt  But now I have to wait for the top side and I do look forward on how it turns out . Go with the gut feeling you on the underside and stop . I find this alsways to be the hardest part , always want to keep and more layers .

Looking forward to the next stage Frank !


Terri

[Bughunter]

Thank you Rick and Terri!


Blue and Sight

At first I used today PC1 - "Protective Covering 1", also known as masking 

The parts now blue enough for me, luckily no big accident during painting and unmasking. One mask lifted up I had some overspray going in, but exactly were later a cockade decal is placed.



The fuselage is not big, the camera highlights the blue, because in real it looks darker.



The blue paint is allowed to dry now, so I'm doing some other details.
The radiator is made of PE and plastic, painted matt black, here in comparison to the original one. I was not able to mask the small recesses since they are so small. So I removed the fresh paint with a wooden tooth stick, but needed some tries.



The next think was the Aldis Sight.
The kit one on top is grey plastic and on the long side, may be some additional cover on. So I used clear streched sprue again to create one according to the plan, polished the ends and added small brass rings.



After paint it black ...



... it looks like the real one:

Source: simhq.com


And it allows light going through, here you see my roof window.



And I see a problem on the horizon!
Today I read Rick's build report of the big WNW Dolphin again completely and I noticed the robust construction of the lower wings. Both wings are firmly connected by the fuselage section and thus the angle is given and above all the lower wings can support the upper ones.
On my smaller model the lower wings are glued only with small pins to the fuselage, so cannot take much load (left side of pic).
The upper wings are connected by only very thin plastic struts (plus sprue gates) which cannot take much load, see right.


So nearly the full load of four wings hangs on those thin struts - that will not work with driving to exhibitions on highway .
One solution would be functional rigging, but normally I use rubber lines, or I will try to stabilize the lower wings, to get somehow a WNW solution. Let's see ...

Cheers,
Frank

[Jorgo]

Excellent work as usual with your masterpieces, Frank!

Regards

Jörg

[RAGIII]

Amazing is all I can say! I really have to remember that clear sprue Idea for the gunsight!!
RAGIII

[Bughunter]

Thank you Jörg and Rick!

Rick, I forgot to mention the lower fuselage surface, see the first picture of the last update. You have done it with linen and painted the panels battleship grey, I decided to use PC10 and paint the side-matching panels also blue
I think both paintings are possible. I found two pictures on the same page of the RAF book, one with linen, the other one with PC10. We will never know the real lower surface of Irvings Dolphin.

Today I tried to mount more things to the front of the fuselage  ... I can only say, do not try to use Gaspatch Vickers, don't even think about it! There are so many parts to be integrated, all very tight fit. Again, do not use other then kit Vickers!

Cheers,
Frank

[Bughunter]

Engine compartment


At first I have to add the panel, the painted Gaspatch Vickers and the blue cowling together. Even with dry fitting before the paint job nothing fits. After further modifications and a lot of tries (with some paint scratches) it is now one piece.



The window is not yet in, only the frame.



I noticed some fit problems between fuselage, engine and cowling. Later I found the reason - the fuselage halves bend together! I used a rigid 0.6mm nickel silver rod to create some pressure, the problem was to find a place, where is no collison with engine or cockpit parts. Now also the struts on top fits to the upper wing.



I painted the nickel silver black and added control stick, rudder pedal and a bar on top with instrument.



Long time ago I prepared the engine:



Now engine and cowling was added to the fuselage, some small PE are added to outside.
The front panel is only plugged in.



There's not much room in the cockpit!


This was one of the most complicated mounting work ever done on a model by me.
Now I need a substitute nerve:

Source: trnd.com

Anyway, I like the result. I need only to fix some scratches, mostly in the metal paint.

Cheers,
Frank

[lone modeller]

Just catching up Frank. Your skill and patience are really to be admired.... getting all fo those tiny pieces into a very small space without damaging anything is truly wonderful. I am still trying to get my head around the size of many of these pieces - in 1/32 scale they are small enough!

Stephen.

[RAGIII]

Exceptional work Frank! This one, as usual for you, could be mistaken for a Larger scale!
RAGIII

[Bughunter]

Thanks you Stephen and Rick!

Wings


After the big progress on fuselage the next step should be the wings.

The aileron recess contains small clamps, but as I find it difficult to glue the painted parts later cleanly, I decided to pin the ailerons with brass.



It holds without glue, and I can bend the ailerons into position later.



And since I just made hinges, I separated the rudder from the fin (the only connected control surface in the kit) and tried something new: thin metal hinges. On the original, they also look very delicate. The very thin plastic pins fro mounting are also replaced by brass.



Then I cut out the windows (very thin) and glued them to the wings. That went surprisingly well with superglue.



The PE frames (half etched, so also very thin) are tinned and glued on top



For masking of the wings I used my cutting machine to cut matching stripes in Oramask foil. The nice thing is, that you can have every thickness and length you need. The stripes are applied to white primed wing.



The I shadowed the wings, not so strong on lower side ...



... and a bit more on top.



For the painting of the wings I tried to use the Dolphin in Hendon as template. On underside MRP linen ...



... and on top MRP PC10.



I'm curious how it all looks together The decals can follow soon.

Cheers,
Frank

[smperry]

Wow Frank! Your work in 1:48 would be hard for me to duplicate in 1:32. Two questions. First, please tell more about the cutting machine  and second, you mention tinning a PE frame. As with a soldering iron?
sp

[Bughunter]

Thank you!

The cutting plotter is a Silhouette Portrait 2 which I got last Christmas. My first project to use it were the markings of my Sopwith Schneider project. Nice device, but I use a ball bearing aluminium blade holder with matching blades (found on ebay). And I cannot say anything about the Silhouette software, because it do not run on Linux, so I use Inkscape.

The tinning was not done with heat, it is a chemical process. I can't find a translation, it is mentioned in the german wikipedia, but not on the english page:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verzinnen#Chemisches_Verzinnen

Cheers,
Frank