Sopwith Dolphin - no news

This project is likely to go into hibernation for a bit now. I've had no luck finding suppliers for my custom transfers and so I'm starting to think I'll have to get hold of an ALPS printer. Or maybe in the interim someone will do a commercial set of transfers for the Dolphin. Or Roden will do a Dolphin that I can pinch the transfers from. Or the Vulcans will come and demonstrate advanced and yet accessible decal technology to us. Or something. More news in due course, hopefully.

Sopwith Dolphin - artwork for markings

Didn't make much progress with the Dolphin over Christmas. All I can show for my efforts over the whole period is this screen capture of the artwork for the markings. And I've still got to find someone that can turn them into transfers.

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.