Sopwith Dolphin Retrospective No. 6 - More Fuselage Clutter

Next: the instrument panel and all the clutter behind it.

 I spent a lot of time studying Windsock 54 and the Cosford pictures before doing this bit. It looks as though there was a bit of variation in the layout; it probably depended on the variant. But the Cosford version looks like the Dolphin I, with its geared Hispano engine, and that's the variant I'm making, so I'm probably not too far off.

Sopwith Dolphin Retrospective No. 5 - Rear Decking

Here's how it looks with the rear decking:

The problem here was to represent the effect of canvas over longerons. I knew I could forget right away about trying to carve or mould my way to a decent result, but I thought that a sheet of plastic card, scored on the reverse, might do the trick. I think I've seen this technique mentioned somewhere before. So I tried it out with a bit of scrap and it works a charm. The scoring actually serves a structural purpose in addition to what you could call its mimetic purpose, though the two are closely related. At this scale, a piece of card just doesn't want to conform to a roughly conical surface; but after scoring it curls up like a little kitten.

Sopwith Dolphin Retrospective No. 4 - Interior Detail

This is the fun bit, isn't it? Yeah!

Sopwith Dolphin Retrospective No. 3 - Vac-Forming

Vac-forming is never going to give very precise results with the sort of home-made equipment I'm using, but the key is to be aware of its limitations.

For instance, an injection-moulded kit might represent the forward decking as a single piece, with the fairings for the cylinder heads moulded integrally, but that would never work with my simple techniques. So the fairings have to be moulded separately. And there's no point trying to mould surface detail. You can add that later.

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:

Sopwith Dolphin Retrospective No. 2 - Fuselage Framework

Here are some photos of the first stages of the project. The photo below shows the first cutting of plastic.

First cutting of plastic