I'm working my way through an ambitious second 1:32 aeroplane after getting through the famous modeller's "dark ages", and I've just started the Maxim 08/15's. I thought I'd share how I did it here



These are the Maxim's for a Roden DR.I lying on a printout of the wonderful drawings on the Arizona Model Aircrafters website

Bottom right is a set of the Eduard PE for this kit. I haven't used this as the jam clearing linkages and air cooling don't match the pictures I've got.

Bottom left is a Tom's Modelworks German Machine Gun set and at the top the Tom's Modelworks DR.I detailing set. I'm too much of a coward to make the guns from the first set, particularly as the instructions are a bit difficult to follow, so I've used both sets to detail the Roden guns.

Richard

These are the guns I'm using together with an unmodified example. Incidentally, as this one has a bad sink Roden very kindly replaced these free of charge. Thanks Olga!

I've removed all of the mechanism from this side, and cut off the gun site on the top.

Strictly the belt feed slot has the wrong profile, but life's too short to correct everything

Richard

There are lots of lovely fiddly bits on the Toms Modelworks PE to scare you, but how to get that lot onto the gun casing without going mad?

I noticed that the frets have little holes which seem to be to put rods through when making the guns from scratch. What I did was drill out these holes in a side frame to suit the copper wire that I have (0.65mm). I then used this as a template to drill the Roden guns and glued in some pieces of wire.

Richard

I drilled all of the linkages out to the same size and threaded them onto the pins, gluing them with cyano as I went along. Here are all the linkages on pins, and the jam clearing lever as well. The two handles still need fitting, and the ends of the pins are as cut and need filing. Could do with straightening some of the links out too.

Richard

Here is one of the guns with the loaded belt feed chute, the empty belt chute, the jam clearing links, the air cooling jacket and front and rear gunsites. On the bottom is the mounting bracket which may have to come off to fit it to the kit.

Below is the Roden solid Maxim 08/15 which is a very nice thing in it's own right.

So there we are. Is it perfect? No. Am I happy with it? Perhaps. I'll have a go at straightening the links and filing the pins, then it's going to have to do.

This method certainly works, but you do need spare links. I lost a couple and wrecked some. Doing this again I'd use a smaller drill and pins, perhaps 0.4 - 0.5mm. Order two sets of PE. They're well worth it to get some nice looking parts.

So there it is, how I modified my Maxim 08/15's for my Roden 1:32 DR.I. Hope that it may help someone else.

Richard

Good stuff Richard! I have added the URL to the end of a traveling thread on a similar vein.

Click here.

Nice work and so wonderful of you to give us that link........it answered so many questions and wow what a resource.

MANY thanks as my AM
AMS kicks into overdrive

Keith

Thanks Stephen, I'd been looking for that thread. I stumbled over it about a week ago but couldn't find it again. I haven't got my head around the landscape here yet.

Anyway, I wanted to make a contribution here, and now I have with this thread

Keith,

those drawings are brilliant, but hard to print out. I eventually managed to print them out on multiple sheets of A4 and glued them together. There's hours of "fun" in working out what all the parts do.

Richard

And a fine contribution you have made!

Maxim's mounted on my DR.I. I'm quite pleased with how they have turned out. There's something very wrong with the empty belt chute on the right hand one, I had to cut most of it off to clear the belt feed for the left gun. Never mind, under the top wing it shouldn't show too much. Jacob's will have to go easy with the right gun or it'll jam.

Richard