Sopwith Dolphin - radiators

I've spent the last few days making radiators. I wasn't going to originally. I've got a resin kit of the Dolphin, and my original intention was that the radiators were the only bits I was going to use from it. But when I looked at them closely, I saw that they were, to be honest, little more than blobs. So, as I said to myself more than two years ago when I first got the resin kit, I can do better.

Right, so the first challenge was how to represent the honeycomb texture of the radiators. This is such a fine texture that it is little different from a perfectly smooth surface. But you would notice the difference, and so a perfectly smooth surface just isn't good enough. I started looking into fine etched meshes. The finest one I came across was from a company called Scale Link, with a pitch of 0.25mm. I knew this was way overscale, but I ordered a sheet anyway. It arrived a couple of days later. Excellent service. But as soon as I tried cutting out a trial piece, I realised it wasn't really going to work.

This is the way it goes with this project. I think of the ideal solution. I spend several days admitting that it doesn't really work. Then I think of a workable alternative. When I was working on the pilot's seat, the alternative took the form of fabric, and so I decided to try the same trick in this case. If you get a very fine piece of fabric with a sort of square weave, then cut pieces at 45 degrees, you should get something vaguely reminiscent of a honeycomb radiator.

Anyway, what I decided to do was build up the radiator core from a sandwich of plastic strip between layers of fabric. The plastic strip would be 1.5mm thick. Then I would add the side plate and headers from 2mm plastic sheet and half-round.

Here are the bits ready to be put together:

And here is the result:

Then some paint:

And there you are.

More noticeable progress in the next post, with any luck.