Hello all,

Thanks to everyone viewing my postings. Please send any comments or questions. I'll be happy to answer anything.

I've glued the fuselage halves together and taped them to hold them together. The only part I didn't glue is near the back where I need to attach the tailplane.



When I get back from work today I'll post how I fill seams. While the seams are drying I need to so some work to the tailplanes.

Stay tuned.....

Mark

OK, on to the seams. I use Tamiya Tape on both sides of the seam. I don't want to sand any more than I absolutely have to.



I use Squadron Green and Tamiya Silver for most of my projects. I use the Green for large fills and then an overcoat of Silver after sanding to fill in any imperfections.



Since I'm doing just the seam, I'll be using only the Tamiya putty. I put it on sideways to the seam to make sure the putty goes into the seam as far as possible.



Then I pull the tape off before it dries...........



.....and you get a nice puttied seam line to sand.



That's how I deal with seams. Next time I'll move on to the tail plane and show how to add rib detail where there is none.

Mark

Go Mark go! Model On!

Hello all,

I've been back at it today and want to show you how I add some rib detail where there is none. I call it a "rib sandwich". It's worked well for me in the past.

Here we go.........

The kit provided parts only have rib detail on one side because of the vacuforming process. Here you can see the faint rib impressions.



I trace the part out on .005 plastic sheet. One for the top one for the bottom.



I measure the rib spacing, mark it with a pencil and use a burnisher to "draw" in the ribs.



Here's what the reverse side looks like after burnishing....



Next I cut out the pieces with scisors...



The piece will have a curved shape when you cut it out from being burnished......



Hold the piece on straight and apply superglue underneath the .005 sheet in sections...careful of alignment.......



Heres the "rib sandwich" I told you about..........



Trim the excess .005 sheet around the edges.................



And with a little practice you get nice rib detail............



The harder you push on the burnishing tool, the more pronounced the rib detail. You can use this method to improve or correct any kit ribs you might want to change.

That's it in a nutshell....give it a try.

As always, comments, sugestions, criticisms, are always welcomed.

Mark

Hello all,

Here's the vertical tailplane........



The forward fuselage seam has been sanded.......



I always paint over my seams with silver paint. It will show the slightest imperfections so you can go back over them again.






Mark

Hi Mark!

This is getting better and better! Thanks a lot for the rib technique, it looks very convincing and easy. I'm sure it will be usefull someday

Jean-Luc

Mark,
that method for replicating the ribs works a treat!
Looks like a quick and easy (and very effective) method. Makes the prospect of scratch building not so daunting.

Cheers,

Hugh

Thanks, Jean-Luc and Hugh. One thing I didn't mention is that I usually make 3 to 5 rib sheets for each side and then pick from the best of those to go onto the part. It can be hard to get a consistent rib depth at first and I'm not completely satisfied with what I've done so far but I'm working against the clock and want to get the build done here in a week or two before my Christmas work takes up most of my time.

I also use a little thinner middle section for the "sandwich" when I completely scratchbuild the part to keep the part as thin as possible so it will be more to scale but I'm trying to use as much of the kit as possible in this build.

Thanks for the posts!!!!!! Keep 'em coming!!!!!!

Mark

Hi Mark,
John Alcorn, editor and main author of "Scratch Built" and "Master Scratch Builders" (Both available through Schiffer Books, talks about this technique in detail.
He says that you can get better regularity by working quickly (which I guess comes with practice anyway)... Mind you, by the time he built his multi award winning 1/24th DH4 "Ninak" and skinned the wings and control surfaces using this method, he had a few scratch bulds under his belt.

If you can get hold of these books Mark, you will be super inspired. As we are by what you are doing here!

Cheers,

Hugh

Hugh,

Yes, those are two books I reference frequently. I mentioned them in an edit to a post on this page. They really show the potential of scratchbuilding and what you can accomplish using your imagination.

BTW, there are a few other books I reference also....

"Scale Model Aircraft in Wood" by V.J.G. Woodason (1943, revised 1978)

"Aircraft in Miniature" by W.O. Doylend (1957)

These are older books I found on ebay. They go into how to craft wood into the different parts of an airplane. I get a lot of great ideas from them to make masters to vacuform over.

I also have a few Shipbuilding books that have great ideas also. You never know where that next inspiration or answer to a question will come from.

Mark

Hello all,


Here's some work I've done on the tailplane. I decided to use brass rod for the posts. Maybe a little overkill but I have had styrene rod buckle after a few years on another build so I'll play this one safe.

Here are the parts......



I added the brass rod and drilled holes for the wires to go through..........



Always check alignment, it'll save you some headaches later on...................



Here's some pics of the test fit......................













Just a little tweaking and I'll be happy. Send out some comments, please.

More soon....................

-Mark

Very cool Mark I have been using brass as strut replacements for sooooo long that I don't think of it as overkill. It is now just a part of the build process for me. You will not go wrong with this. The build is going along very well. You really have a talent for this.

I've decided to try something different for the wings. Normally you have to thin a top half and a bottom half of each wing before you glue them together. This requires a lot of sanding and scraping......a lot of scraping. This time I decided to use only the top half of the wing (that has already been thinned) and use brass rod as a stiffener and then to fill in the airfoil with putty. Then I made a bottom wing "skin" out of .005 sheet and scribed in the ribs.

The wing......it had a little bow to it......................



The superglue I like to use. I put a little into the bottom dimple of the measuring cup and apply with a pointed toothpick.



The brass rod superguled into place. I left a little hanging out so I could easily mount the wing to the fuselage..............................



The first round of putty. Pretty, ain't it...



Sanded and filled in with "silver" putty......the bottom .005 "skin" is next to it.......I added one more short piece of rod to the wing so I could secure the back part of the wing to the fuselage......



Lower "skin" superglued on...........



Bottom is on and leading edge is smoothed out...........



Ribs scribed in.........................



Here's the kit propeller. A lot of flash but nothing to worry about.



The prop after a little clean-up.



A wing float with struts.....................



Test fit to the wing...................



Now it's starting to look like a floatplane...................




Comments welcomed.

Mark

Such an inspiring build, as has been said by others it really makes me want to try a vac form kit.

I look forward to more installments.

H

Thank you, Howard. I appreciate your post.

There are no photo-etch parts in this kit so I'll try to improvise. Here's a test I ran to see if I could improve the gun mount and cradle.

Here's a picture...grainy but OK.......



Here's the kit piece provided. I need to do some thing different.



I drew out a graph on .005 sheet for the holes. I did a few extra because I'm bound to mess one or more up.....



Punch them out. The punch and die sets and pin vice are the most used tools I own. They were expensive but I've been using them for years and they're still performing great.



Here are the parts roughly cut out..............



The finished product. No PE, no problem.





The mount doesn't look right to me and I had a few more ideas to improve the scale and look of the gun mount while making this part, so I won't be using this piece. Sometimes you have to try a few different things before you get the result that you're happy with. I failed this time but I learned a few things on the way. I'll try again and post the next one I make.

Let me know what you think.

Mark

Hello all,

I've done some painting on the Maxim machine gun and want to share what I did with you. Here's the gun with the front painted RLM Grey and the back painted flat black.





I'll use Gun Metal to drybrush the details on the back part.



Wipe of as much of the paint as you can. You might think it won't deposit any paint but it will.



Drag the brush over the details in an up and down and X movement and the paint will stick to the highest raised details.



Next I did a wash of Vandyke brown to the front part.



Put a little thinner on the pallete..........



You won't need much paint....................



Mix it up....................



It should run like muddy water..................



Touch the brush to the indentations and let capillary action pull the thinner in. You'll have to give shallow indentations like these a few aplications.



I did the same procedure with Ivory black because I wanted it to have more depth.

After it all dries, it's time for drybrushing. Here's the RLM Grey and White paint.



I want a lighter shade than the base coat so I mix about 70% RLM Grey with 30% White.



Mix it up...........



Here's the end result................................





Oh yeah, don't forget to drill the barrel out.....



I will probably end up giving the front end a coat of Dullcoat.

So here it is......................before...................



........and after...........


More soon.

Mark

Hello all,

Here's my second try at the gun cradle. I'm very pleased with how this one turned out.

Making a graph on .005 sheet........................



Punching out the holes.................................



Here's the holes on the sheet. I always make extra so I have more parts to chose from. There are 6 potential pieces here and a lot of spare "disks" for later.



5 turned out like I wanted.......................



Here I'm making the part that attaches to the gun. I glued two thick pieces together, drilled a hole for a brass rod and used a file to dig out the center so the gun would fit into it.



Nice fit...............



Etch-mate....not just for bending PE.............



My 1/48 Copper State Models Nuts and Bolts set. I'll use these to simulate the mounting bolts.





Here they are on the part..........



Glue the attachments to the gun cradle, and there you have it....................





Here's the first cradle I made beside the new one for comparison. The things I learned making the first part greatly enhanced my second part. Don't be afraid to try to make some scratchbuilt parts for yourself. It's a lot of fun, especially when it turns out better than you thought it would.



And here's the gun test fitted to the fuselage....................................



Send out some comments, questions, etc., and let me know what you think.

More soon.

-Mark

hi Mark!
I follow your feature with great anticipation. And it is wounderful taht there are modelers like you... doing a rare Vacu in times of super detailed Eduards... Rodens etc. I also prefer the rough way of scratchbuilding and it´s so satisfying to see a nicely done part after several tries. The best is in any case, the result is always a unique model and you can be honestly proud of your skills.
best regards Peter

Hi Mark!

I still follow this build with great interest. It's very informative so keep the pictures coming...

Jean-Luc

This is one of the best Vac form builds I have seen. More please. More...

Hello all,

Thanks for the posts Peter, Jean-Luc and Ross. I just wanted to check in with everyone to see if I'm explaining what I'm doing well enough. I'll be posting a lot more over the next few days.

Stay tuned..............................

-Mark

Hello everyone,

I got a little more done tonight, mainly sanding and putty, but I do have a few more pics to share.

Here are the wing floats. I made the holes in the wings a little deeper so that they will stay in by themselves without glue for now and gave them their first coat of "Desert Yellow". I'll give them a coat of gloss before I go to bed so they'll be dry tomorrow.





One other thing I wanted to finish up was the hand grips on the Maxim. Here's the kit piece.



I tried to slice a top and bottom off but the thickness was inconsistent........



So I rummaged around in my old photo etch box and found some spare German clasps. The ends turn up. That's what I'm looking for.........



I used just the ends of the clasps and made the grips out of rod styrene....



I'll paint it up after the super glue dries and that should do it for the machine gun.

More tomorrow.

Mark

Did you find that when the putty dried that you applied to the wings that it caused warping? Or did the brass rod help stop this?

Ross,

Warping the wing was something I was worried about when I considered puttying the wings. I've never tried this before. It was just an idea that came to me, so I thought I'd try it on this build. When I prepared the wing I ran the brass rod the whole length to keep it from warping. I superglued the rod down to the wing REALLY well. I put down two layers of the green putty with a sanding after each dried. Then I filled in any indentation spots. I checked for warping after each application. Then I put the silver putty on because it sands smoother than the green. Then the bottom .005 skin was superglued down. Heres' some pics of both wings leading edges.




I would guess that the wing would have warped if I hadn't used the brass rod the whole length of the wing.

I hope that helps.

-Mark

Hello all,

Here's some more.

The M-5 fuselages had runners placed on the bottom to help drag the boat up onto the shore. The kit doesn't have runners so I have to make them myself.

I used some styrene strip, two pieces cut to equal length..............................



Super glued them down very well...........................



Checked alignment..................................



After the bottom dried, I used a rubber band to hold the rest of the strip down while it dried over night...............



Dried and ready to be shaped...................................



I cut and sanded the upper ends of the strip to taper the runners so they look like the photos I have of the real thing..............................





Runners finished and final coat on the wing floats which are ready to have thread installed.



Thanks to everyone watching my post. I'm happy to answer questions.

Mark