Sopwith Dolphin - nearly finished

I've made a bit more progress this evening and suddenly it's nearly finished.

Sopwith Dolphin - Propeller

It's the last scratchbuilt detail. But it wasn't meant to be. I had assumed that I would find a suitable propeller in the spares box, but at the last minute I had a closer look at the plans and realised that whereas most British aircraft used a right-handed propeller, the Dolphin I, with its geared Hispano engine, needed a left-handed one. And would you believe it, there was not a single left-handed propeller in the spares box. Even when the search included not only two different kits of the SE5A (Revell and Roden), but also the early SE5 (Pegasus).

Sopwith Dolphin - some definite progress on markings

Here are the decals for the roundels, which I've printed out myself, and I think they look pretty good.

Sopwith Dolphin - yet more vacillation over markings

Still haven't got very far with the markings. All I seem to have been doing over the last few weeks is experimenting half-heartedly with one technique or other, finding flaws with it and getting discouraged.

But it's becoming clear that what I'm going to have to do in the end is cut masks and spray the markings directly onto the surface. There are problems with this technique, of course, the main ones being:

1. It's difficult to cut clean circles in masking tape: the circle cutting tool tends to cause tearing and it's difficult to cut a circle that meets up with itself properly.
2. Because of the poor planning evident at this stage, I'm going to be spraying white on a darker colour. This necessitates quite a thick coat. This means ridges.
3. It's a bit scary

I'm going to get round these problems as follows:

1. Cut lots of masks until I get enough useable ones.
2. Rub down paintwork after spraying. To avoid damaging the Gloss Cote, I'll have to use quite a fine abrasive: maybe good old 1200 wet and dry followed by toothpaste.
3. Grit my teeth

 The only remaining problem is that it will take ages to apply the masks, and I don't want to leave the masking tape on for too long, so I've got to wait for a free weekend. Until then, I'll have to do other stuff. As it happens, I've started re-reading David Copperfield (it's Christmas, you see: Dickens is mandatory), and at the moment it's not clear which will turn out longer: the road to acceptable markings, or the road to Dover. Time will tell.

More in due course.

Sopwith Dolphin - more work on markings

I've been doing some experimentation with decals. I got some Experts-Choice inkjet decal film recently and I wanted to see what it was like to use. And at first glance it seems like pretty magic stuff. The picture above shows some roundels that I drew up in TurboCAD, and they look great. The last time I tried this sort of thing was about 10 years ago, on my abortive SE5A project, and the decal paper I used then was about an inch thick and didn't actually seem to stick to anything. So I was a bit dubious this time round, but things have obviously moved on in the meantime. I'm pretty impressed.

Sopwith Dolphin - markings

Haven't made any more progress on the problems I've had recently with the simple task of spraying an even coat of varnish onto a model. I think I might try the idea of overspraying with Satin Cote: and I've realised that I can try this on the tailplane because it doesn't need any decals. Then, if this works, I can do the decals on the upper wings knowing that the Satin Cote will solve the problem.

Sopwith Dolphin - At last...

Le PC10 est arrivé - finalement

I've finally reached the stage of mixing up some PC10, but only after another hard day's masking.

Sopwith Dolphin - more ideas on bodged paint job on wings

After some thought and a bit of experimentation, I've decided that the wing surfaces will after all need a bit more work. Not only are the ribs a bit too prominent and jagged, but there are an annoying number of little bits stuck to the painted surfaces, even though I had brushed all the surfaces with a soft brush before doing the final coat. Perhaps I charged them with static in the process, thus attracting the small bits. I'll have to be careful about that in future. In addition to those problems, I've decided that the colour I've used for Clear Doped Linen is far too rich and I need to tone it down a bit.

Sopwith Dolphin - Undercarriage

Right, I've just finished the bits for the undercarriage, and this is what they look like.

Sopwith Dolphin - In Colour

I've just done the first coat of the undersurfaces, as you can see, with a kind of clear-doped linen colour. The wing ribs are showing up nicely, I think. Because of their dark colour I had to do two or three coats, but to save repeatedly cleaning the airbrush, I only waited a few minutes between coats (until the finish had gone matt). Enamel paint is very forgiving of this sort of treatment. Even when I got a few spatters (too thick mixture maybe? Incompetent airbrush technique?), they just flowed out when oversprayed. So I think it's all looking OK so far. I'm going to wait until tomorrow to see if another coat is needed. But at this rate, we're getting close to seeing some actual PC10 in this blog.

Sopwith Dolphin - More work on wings

Right, I've made a start on the wing ribs, and here's how I'm doing it:

Sanding Fixture

It's my new sanding fixture. The bed holding the piece to be sanded is hinged, and I've taped a piece of plastic under it to give the right angle. I've used it on the wing roots and it worked pretty well.

Progress of a kind, though not very exciting.

Sopwith Dolphin - Further Progress on Wings

Put 'em together and what have you got?

Right, I've nearly got the wings finished, and the tail as well for good measure. And I'm quite pleased about it. I have to admit, I wasn't sure what sort of results I would be able to achieve with my ad-hoc techniques. But I think it's all turned out OK so far.

Sopwith Dolphin - Wings

At last, I've got round to doing some more work on the Dolphin. Before finishing off the fuselage, I thought I'd try to work out how I'm going to make the wings. There are two main features of the wings that are going to be tricky to reproduce: the camber and the aerofoil section. And I don't just have to get it right once: I have to make four of them, all identical.

Vac-Forming

For my ambitious Sopwith Dolphin project, there was no avoiding the fact that I had to make some vac-formed bits. I had never tried vac-forming before, but it turned out to be quite easy. All you need is the ability to make a box, and recourse to a vacuum cleaner. And a grill.

Vac-forming box

Stretched Sprue

So, stretched sprue.

One way that you might use stretched sprue: from an abortive SE5A project.

Actually, there's probably not much new to say about stretched sprue, but this is how I do it: