I guess I should be posting a build log of my DC-1 that's gracing the Douglas campaign. First, a bit of history:
TWA created history when they attempted to buy Boeing 247s and ran afoul of Boeing's ties with United Air Transport. Turning to other manufacturers, TWA issued a specification for an all-metal trimotor airliner which could take off at any airport along TWA's routes with one engine out. Donald Douglas' young company, filled with some of the greatest aeronautical engineers of the day, met the specification with a twin-engined aircraft, something which nobody else had thought possible. The DC-1 was almost immediately a world-beater, and the design was put into service with TWA as the slightly longer DC-2 which was able to carry 14 passengers instead of the DC-1's 12.

After being used as a test aircraft by TWA and Douglas, the DC-1 was sold to Lord Forbes in the UK in May of 1938. A few months later it was sold on in France and then in November was sold to Líneas Aéreas Postales Españolas (L.A.P.E.) in Spain. There it was operated by the Republican Air Force and later on by Iberia. The DC-1 was damaged beyond repair in a crash landing in December, 1940 at Malaga. Legend has it that parts of the DC-1 are used in one of Malaga's churches to carry a statue of the Virgin Mary during procesionals.

I've already posted a review, so I won't bore anyone with the usual pictures of the kit parts.

On with the build! When the DC-2 went into production, the fuselage was lengthened ahead of the wing by 2 ft in order to increase the passenger capacity. In 1/144 that works out to roughly 4 mm. I've inked in a 4 mm band on the nose where there aren't any panel lines to get in the way. This is what I'll have to remove.

Cuts made, I compare the shortened fuselage half with a standard DC-2 fuselage. There's a bit of a step on the underside to sort out but luckily a bit of sanding and polishing will take care of that. This concludes the work required for the conversion.

On to the windows. The fit is less than exceptional, but since I'm going to be using decals it's a moot proposition. Flood in the superglue. Yes, they're supposed to stick up like that.

And check the outside. Lots of room for cleaning up.

A quick little bit of building later and we have a closed up fuselage and the wings are on.

Add the tailplanes and we have an airplane!


Once it's all hardened up I'll give it a coat of primer and see how much filling needs to be done.

Hi Jessica,

A fine start to the start of a fine family of Douglas icons!

Okay, I couldn't resist putting on some putty first.


As far as it goes, this isn't an extreme amount of putty. I've built several resin kits which require much more than this.

I'm a little worried about engine #1. It looks as though it slipped a little before the glue set up. I may have to pop it off and reposition it.

Now wearing grey primer.

There's still lots of room for improvement.

Oops. The silver reacted with the undercoat.


I think that I need to think about how to solve this. Perhaps some Rub'n Buff over an acryllic barrier coat?

After giving the DC-1 a good sanding down, I'm trying something new. Vallejo's silver. I think that I still need airbrushing practise, because it's gone a bit orange peel. That's still better than how it looked last week.




I think that if I polish with very fine sandpaper and apply some Rub 'n Buff it might just begin to look good.

Adventures with Rub 'n Buff


And painting all the small parts

I just found this thread.
I can't believe how well you've puttied and sanded this resin kit, to finish well enough to wear silver paint! A gutsy move.
I'll be watching along with the rest of this build.
Cheers!
Sean H.
PS: is the cutting mat marked in inches? I never know which countries use which measurements. (Not to say that you didn't buy that mat in the U S of A. )

I haven't measured it, but the grid looks like it's in centimetres and the scale marks in inches. How typically Canadian...
Here's the model next to my poor beaten up steel ruler for scale.

The DC-1 in the colours of TWA as it was on delivery.