Sopwith Dolphin - even more faffing about with markings

Today, after all the prolonged agonising over markings, I was actually going to sit down and make some effort to realise them in some form or another. I've been rereading David Copperfield, you may recall, and at this stage I felt some sympathy for Mr Dick and his neverending struggles to get his testimonial onto paper.

Anyway, as soon as I started trying to cut out painting masks, I realised it was a pretty hopeless exercise. There's no way I'm going to get the precise results I want this way. So now I'm revisiting the idea of getting custom decals made. Waterslide decals are very expensive, but dry transfers seem much more affordable and so they look like a feasible option. Of course, you have to get the positioning right first time; but if you tape the sheet in place before wielding the ball-point pen or your preferred burnishing tool, it's not too difficult. So I've started investigating potential suppliers.

More soon, I hope.

From the family archives

 

Just now, I remembered I had some old family photos that are relevant to this blog. My grandfather served in the RFC in the ground crew and I assume he was somehow connected with this photo, though he doesn't seem to be in it. Maybe there's no connection, and the photo I've got is a copy of a postcard or something. On second thoughts, maybe that's him second from right at the back. At any rate, the plane looks like a Maurice-Farman, for what it's worth.

He's in the next photo though (bottom right).

That ad for the genealogy website isn't lying, you know.

And we all know this feeling:

Oops

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 - further cackhandedness

I was nearly ready to do the decals, but I've mucked it up again. The picture shows the upper wings after their coat of Gloss Cote, and somehow I've managed to get a kind of discoloured rectangle right in the middle of each one.

Sopwith Dolphin - progress of a kind

Well, that's the main paintwork done. I was hoping to have started doing the decals by now, but there have been a few setbacks and I've started recognising a certain reckless tendency in my recent efforts. This tendency probably arises from boredom and pressure, and has on previous occasions led to disaster. So I'm calling a halt now for a few weeks, before the quality of my work goes into a steep dive that can end only in the wastebasket.

Realistic Historical Battles on Film

I happened to catch a bit of Oliver Stone's well-meaning biopic of Alexander the Great the other night. The critical panning was perhaps well-deserved but his heart was in the right place and it's worth sticking with until the battle of Gaugamela. After that, by all means, switch off without any fear of missing anything of importance. But the battle itself has to be the most realistic ancient battle ever depicted in film. As far as I can remember, it happened pretty much as described by the ancient historians, though the dramatic touch of an eagle's eye view featuring an actual eagle was slightly novel. Perhaps Harry Hill was a consultant.

So anyway, here's my top two historically accurate cinematic battles

1. Gaugamela (Alexander)
2. Waterloo (Waterloo)

There must be more.

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 progress with paintwork

A bit of a grey area

This is my Dolphin after a bit of tidying up. As I had expected, there was a bit of damage when I removed all the various types of masking, and the main culprit was the masking solution. It was impossible to stop it straying slightly beyond the edges of the apertures, so it left ragged edges. So then I had the job of rubbing down with 1200 wet and dry and retouching. Under a magnifying glass, you can see the patches, but to the naked eye (or a 3 megapixel camera) it looks fine, doesn't it?

But then, having patched up the real damage, I'm going to add some simulated damage later. Apparently, the paint was prone to flaking off the aluminium panels in real life, so I'm going to do some drybrushing on the edges that would experience most wear. But for the moment, it can keep its factory finish.

Sopwith Dolphin - nose corrected

Right, that's the nose job done. This time I managed to reduce the swarms of dust and small particles to a more manageable level, much as NASA has just done with its asteroid survey. And I am pleased to say that it's all been a complete success. The colour is a slightly darker shade of grey now - and that's a phrase you don't want to hear after a nose job. In this case, however, I think it looks a lot more convincing. Tomorrow I will, so to speak, remove the bandages and assess the damage.

Sopwith Dolphin - more paint being splashed about

Pope surrenders to half-built model aeroplane

More progress on the paintwork. The picture shows the first coat of battleship grey on the plywood and aluminium panels. It's been quite a job to get this far, though. I've spent most of the day applying various types of masking. I suppose it's a bit easy to criticise a design 94 years after the event, but the Dolphin did seem to have rather a lot of apertures of one sort or another.

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 - rethink on wings

Having looked a bit more closely at the paint job I've done on the undersurfaces, I've decided that the wing ribs are not quite right: they've come out a bit too jagged, with an obvious ridge at each side caused by the masking tape. This is what comes of not doing a coat of primer to reveal this sort of problem. Also, the clear doped linen effect has turned out to be more of a custard effect. I might have to rub the wings down with 1200 wet and dry and do another coat or two of a slightly lighter colour. But then I'm in danger of making the rib detail disappear altogether.

I'm going to have to ponder this for a while.

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 - Lower wings added

This is what a regency biplane would have looked like

At last, I've got the lower wings in place. You will also see that I've done the rib effect. So now everything's ready for painting.

Sopwith Dolphin - Masking on wings finished

Wings, tailplane etc. masked, ready for painting.

Sopwith Dolphin - More work on wings

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

Curved Wings

It Happened Today*

Unfortunately, this isn't news of a collaboration between Paul McCartney and Sonja Kristina (with involvement by Francis Monkman now looking rather doubtful). No, just another tedious setback in my ongoing project to make a small thing that calls to mind a rather larger thing from some time ago.

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 - Some progress on wings

Wings in various stages of completion

At last, I've made some more progress on the wings. Since I'd already made one of them, the task I faced when I finally got down to work again was simply to repeat the procedure three times (see previous post). Easy! But for some reason I felt daunted enough to take a break for a couple of months before starting this stage of the project.

Sopwith Dolphin - Fuselage Finished

I've just worked out, a bit late, some of the details of the radiator assembly. Dolphins had their radiators mounted each side of the fuselage, and what I've just worked out is that there was a hinged shutter in front of each radiator, which could be extended or retracted to regulate the flow of air through the radiator. The plywood panels were fitted around the shutters, and if you look at the period photos closely, you can see that it wasn't a perfect flush fit. Because I couldn't be bothered to do any research before starting work, I allowed myself to be influenced by the unbuilt kits I have in my possession, and  to consider the shutters as a surface detail. If I had done an adequate amount of research, I would have been able to cut out apertures in the fuselage sides and make the shutters as a separate assembly, and then I could have had them slightly extended.  As it is, I have to leave unarticulated that which could be articulated; to simulate what I could have replicated. Bit of a shame, that.

Sopwith Dolphin - Fuselage nearly finished

I've nearly got the fuselage finished at last. Here's what it looks like with the engine fairings.

Sopwith Dolphin - Some Progress

Just to prove that this project is still ongoing, here's how it's looking at the moment. Since the last post, I've mostly been making mistakes and trying to correct them, so the only obvious thing to show for it is that I've added one bit of the starboard fairings for the cylinder heads.

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.

SE5A - An unsuccessful attempt

Haven't made much progress with the Dolphin recently, but here are some photos of an unsuccessful attempt to super-detail the Revell SE5A. Since then, I've got hold of one or two Roden SE5s that I might build sometime. But Roden have done such a good job that it won't be nearly as much fun.

Sopwith Snipe

Not imaginary

I seem to remember from an episode of Cheers that a snipe hunt is a wild goose chase. Well, as it happens, there was a time when if you tried to find a Sopwith Snipe in kit form that certainly would have been a wild goose chase. See what I did there?

Early effort - Sopwith Camel

Man builds kit 10 years ago!

My first post of 2011 is not very Dolphin-friendly. I've just got round to taking some photos of my first serious effort, dating from about 10 years ago. At the time, I had just noticed that Toko was bringing out some interesting subjects. I immediately got hold of a Snipe, but I decided that the first thing I should build was a Camel, as a kind of apprentice piece.