Mark , where do you get your Brass strut material from . I can only find it in plastic from which at times is not very suitable for strenght .

Terri,

Go to : www.rollmodels.com and type in Strutz in the searchable catalog. It's $18 a pack.


Mark

Here's some work on the tailplane. It wasn't lining up like I'd hoped so I disassembled it and started with a new jig.

I measured the leading and trailing edges and made 4 supports to cradle the horizontal tailplane. The leading edge at 2.5cm and the trailing at 2.1cm.




I made the supports out of .30 sheet and some left over resin pour blocks cut and glued to the bottom of the support.. I made them a little high so I could cut a notch at the correct height for each support.



Here's one cut to 2.1 cm.





Here's the tailplane resting on the supports over the fuselage tail with no struts..........




Now that the tailplane is lined up with the scale drawing and fuselage, I can attach the forward strut................




I'll be adding the rest of the struts and painting the tailplane over the next few days.


Mark

I've done the seatbelts. I used .008 lead foil and some left over photo-etch parts from my 1/48 Etrich Taube build.






My air compressor regulator arrived by UPS as I was working on the seatbelts. I'll hopefully get some painting done today.

Mark

Hello all,

Here's one last post for the day. I couldn't wait to get the regulator on the airbrush and start airbrushing so I'm getting the bottom of the lower wings ready for the wing floats and roundels. I first airbrushed them Tamiya Medium Grey as a primer then pre-shaded with black then painted them Misterkit WW1 Russian Doped Linen.

.....primer...



......pre-shade.....



......doped linen.........



You can see the lines I've scribed into the bottom of the wing now.


more soon,

Mark

Hello all,

I've painted the roundels on the lower wings today.

Frisket paper..............



Measure with a circle cutter...........



Cut the circles on the frisket paper......



A little touch up and it's done.......



This was my first time making roundel masks. It turned out better than I'd hoped.

More later,

Mark

I got the wing floats on today, Here are the floats..



I drilled holes to accept the struts and line and pulled the lines through the wing, taped them down and superglued the holes in the wing on the top and bottom.







Next I'll clean up the top of the wings and paint them..

Send out some comments, please. I need to weather the wings some, let me know if anyone out there has any ideas for me for any techniques to weather Clear Doped linen (CDL). I have a few ideas in mind but I'd like to hear from some others who have any weathering techniques they find useful.

Mark

Wow Mark! Most impressive. A 1/72 vacuform kit of the Short 184 won the Mike Fritz award this year at the IPMS USA Nats. This build would be a definate contender. Please Model on!

Hi Mark , I'm new to weathering some what It's something that I didn't do alot of . How I do my dope linen : I do my preshading and the spray CDL after this has dried for a few days I go back over the ribs with a lighter shade , clear with dull coat and then I use pastle chaclks to blend all that in . seal it future add decals and the to light washes then the final dull coat .

I'm still learning about this myself but I do hope that I was able to give you some guide line to go by .

Thanks for the comments Stephen and Terri.

Here's the jig to hold the top wing............


supports....................



Leading edge supports glued down....................



Here are the wings suspended on the supports..............





I measured the gap and used a part of the bottom lower wing that I didn't use to make a piece to connect the wings.....................



test fit a few struts......................



I had a little extra time so I made a center support that connects the wing and fuselage. I used a pin vice to drill holes in the struts for the pins. The rear support will also be the engine support............




More later...............

Mark

Hi Mark!

Very, very, very nice... and a thread full of informations and techniques. Thanks a lot for sharing!

Jean-Luc

Thank you Jean-Luc. I've been checking in on your Siebel Si204 thread and I have to tell you it is second to none. You've made that kit look like it was a state of the art injection molded kit that was released this summer. Excellent work. Kind words from you are most appreciated.

Mark

I painted the bottom of the fuselage. Some of my sources said the hull bottoms were painted light grey or light blue. I masked off the top of the fuselage and I went with light grey...............






Mark

Hello all,

Here's some work on the lower wings. Here's how I generally weather the wings to get contrasting colors. I lightened the color of the wing ribs with a lighter color of the wing CDL.

I use Rembrant pastel chalks.. mainly Gold Ochre (not pictured), Grey, Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, and Burnt Sienna.



I use a curved exacto blade and scrape off some chalk onto a pallet.



I use a semi-stiff brush and "paint" the pastels on.



Here's the wing before pastel shading..............................



Here it is after shading.............................



The idea is to vary the shading and try not to be symetrical.










More soon,

Mark

Most impressive Mark! Model On! Please.

very nice job done on the weathering on the lower wings . Looking forward on seeing more .

Thanks Stephen and Terri, I appreciate your comments.

Here's a way to simulate the metal bands on struts. (I'd previously painted the struts usuing the same painting method I used for the floor of the cockpit.)

Here's a few pics of the Grigorovich struts......




There are 5 bands on each strut. I measured the struts and come up with 3.8 cm...




Here you see my math. I divided 3.8 cm by six to locate the points where the bands should be located. It came to 6.3 mm. I marked the location with lines..........



Next I colored some bare metal foil with a black Sharpie and allowed it to dry.



Then I cut thin strips and used small tweezers to attach the foil to the struts using the marks on the paper for a guide so they would be symetrical.



Here's the finished struts, not great pics but you can get the idea.........




More soon,

Mark

I've also had time to mask and paint the roundels on the top wing............................




Mark

Hello all,

Here's a little work on the bottom of the lower wing. I'm using Part turnbuckle photo-etch for rigging attachment points on the wings.



Here's the wing and PE.......





Mark

Bl**dy hell Mark...

I don't know where you find the time for this kind of stuff, wht with this and the Gotha going at once...

This is going to finish up a museum piece!

Cheers,

Hugh

Excellent work Mark , i'm really enjoying your thrend on this build ! The rib tapping stands out so well , will be trying the clear tape method myself

Cheers Mark

Thanks Hugh and Terri.

I just bought Issue 24 No. 2 of Windsock Worldwide and it had 2 Grig pics I'd never seen before and they answered a lot of rigging questions I was struggling with. These things were rigged like spider webs. Wait 'til you see my new home made turnbuckles................

Mark

Hello everyone,

I decided to make rigging attachment points on each strut instead of "through the wing" rigging.

I used 1/48 Part photo-etch turnbuckles....................



Cut in half and bent with tweezers......................



Here are a few installed...........................................



Test fit a spare strut.........looks good......................




More soon,
Mark

Cool!
What a great Idea. I might have to steal that one.

Cheers,

Hugh

Great ! Now I am going to need an electron microsope to do as well.