SE5a CONSTRUCTION BEGINNING TO . . .

[Guest]

I fully agree with your thinking Greyhead. So many people spray paint boat hulls and superstructures on models from the early 1900's long before boats were painted with spray guns!!

To make the model realistic paint with the closest you can to the original technique. My coaster is being painted with small flat brushes to simulate the large flat brushes used to paint the original ships and I will be making a point of 'feathering' the edges of the red and the black of the hull. As you say in those days who bothered with straight neat lines?!!

[Greyhead]

Richard

I couldn’t agree more, we can tend to “romanticise” these old aircraft etc. When we see examples today they have been painstakingly restored to “showroom” condition but at the time the SE5a was just another way to kill the enemy and being churned out as quickly as possible. To get an idea of how they must have looked it’s best to look at one of today’s “work horses” like a crop duster; no perfect paint job there!

Grahame

[Greyhead]

Before marking out the roundels a piece of liteply is taped at the centre position to hold the point of the compass, the circles drawn in pencil and the white blocked in. Then the circles are drawn again, this time using red and blue marker pens, I haven’t got a “PC10” pen for the outer ring. The centre red section won't be painted as yet, it’ll have to wait for the outer ring because I can’t remove the liteply until that has been drawn.





This photo is with 2 coats of blue applied; one more should finish it.





I am using Warbirds water-based paint and when painting the rudder registration and the black “Z” everything seemed to be OK, but to quote from the 1960s “black is black”! When painting the blue, which is quite a lot lighter in colour than the marker pen it became obvious that the paint wasn’t being drawn to the edge of the marker pen ink as is the case when using enamel paint, in fact if anything the paint was being repelled.


It was certainly no easier or better than painting to a pencil line so I’ll be thinking again about the outer “PC10” ring. First I’ll try my home made trammel, I’ve never been happy with the results using enamel paint but maybe it’ll be better with this thin water-based paint.





As on this model I want to replicate hand painted roundels getting a sharp edge isn’t all that important but I’ll now amend my “Hand Painting Registration Letters Etc.” tutorial to include this information

[Greyhead]

When brush painting to a line it’s far easier to paint from the “coloured side”; this means that when painting the outer edge of the blue ring of a roundel eventually you end up having to reach across the section that has just been painted. A useful accessory is a suitably sized tub placed in the centre of the roundel which helps to ensure that your arm / sleeve doesn’t end up smudging the other half of the roundel.





This one is a Morrisons “healthy eating” coleslaw, courtesy of the better half; I just knew it was the right thing to do to buy good wholesome food!

[Greyhead]

There are at least two different types of oil filler covers; the Shuttleworth SE5a has is a simple “blister”, the other is flat with “OIL” embossed as used on the French restoration.


To make the “blister” would be another plunge moulding exercise but I thought that the embossed cover would look good when painted and weathered to pick out the lettering.


I first drew the design, with the lettering reversed, and printed out two copies onto sticky labels. One label was stuck to litho plate and “OIL” embossed using an old Biro the other onto 1/64th ply, which was then cut to shape.





The ply was given a thin coat of 5minute epoxy and using the holes as guides the litho plate was held in position with pins whilst the edges were formed first with a hard balsa tool then finally “sharpened up” using a piece of 1/8th square spruce.





I think the finished part will look quite convincing with some subtle weathering.





I’ve not fixed the cover in position as yet because I might use it to hide the access hole for the glow plug connection, but there’s a hinged flap on the other side of the fuselage that might be a better proposition, I’ll make a decision on that latter.

[Greyhead]

I’ve thought some more about the glow plug connector and decided that it will be best to mount it under the hinged flap and not the oil filler cover. Having made that decision means that it will have to be a working hinge and I have to consider how to keep the flap shut. To ensure that the hinge will take the “punishment” I’ll make it from tinplate so the obvious way to keep it shut is with a small magnet.


The flap and half the hinge are made from a single piece of tin plate





The hinge is bent around a 1mm drill and soldered then the slots cut out with the Dermal and cutting disc. The other half of the hinge is made in a similar fashion, I used a drill as opposed to piano wire to form the hinge around because solder won’t adhere to it.





To attach it to the fuselage I didn’t want to rely on the small amount of gluing area available so the pin is bent at 90º, this will go though a hole in the fuselage side and be securely epoxied inside.





The “catch” is a 14Ba washer soldered into a “cross” slot.

[Greyhead]

A slight change of plan in so much as I’ve made the hinge pin in 2 halves so as to be able to have a 90º bend at both ends. The backing plate, which will fit inside the fuselage, is 1/8th lite ply, it will give a firm fixing for the ends of the hinge pins and also hold the small magnet.





The hinge pins have a small brass keeper soldered in place, I’ll reinforce it with a layer of epoxy later to prevent any vibration causing the holes to wear.





The flap in position and closed





With the flap open there is a nice sized hole for the remote glow plug connection.





The flap is held securely shut by the magnet working through the 1/32nd ply fuselage sides.

[Guest]

Grahame

Your attention to detail and metal working skills are awesome. I can see that this project is going to take a while, and I will be watching your progress here on the Scale Models Forum. Thanks for taking the time to post all the pictures.

John

[Greyhead]

The first thing people seem to look at on any scale model is the cockpit; therefore the padded edging needs careful attention. A good starting point is some split earth wire sleeving. Given a coat of brown paint it’d look just like “brown painted earth sleeving”, so it really does need covering with leather.





I searched high and low for some thin brown leather but couldn’t find any anywhere, then I remembered that I had an old “reversible” leather belt, black one side brown the other. Because it was made from 2 pieces sewn together the leather was not all that thick, but still too thick for what I needed! After separating the 2 halves, more in hope than expectation I fitted a rough sanding drum into the Dremmell, much to my surprise it worked and half an hour latter I had a strip of very thin leather; the down side was that I had produced what seemed to be an inordinately large amount of rather unpleasant smelling dust.


I used contact adhesive to glue the leather to the sleeving. I fitted the split sleeving to some paxolin sheet after first having covered the edge with paper, applied the glue then held the leather in place with clamps and a couple of steel rules.





The observant will have noticed that it isn’t earth sleeving in the photo; for the first attempt I used fuel tubing but the contact adhesive wouldn’t stick to it! I’ve used fuel tubing before with no trouble but this was a new “environmentally friendly” contact adhesive.


The finished padding was first stitched to the fuselage, which was then turned upside down and thin cyano “wicked” around the edge to finally hold everything securely in position.

[Greyhead]

Another use for the thin leather is the headrest. This is simply a piece of soft 1/4 balsa covered in leather, which is then suitable “distressed”.





The rear section of padding has been added and although not that noticeable in the photo the cockpit edging has also been scuffed.

[Guest]

Absolutely stunning attention to detail. Great work sir!

[Guest]

As always Grahame it is the use wherever possible of the correct relevent materials in conjunction with an appreciation of the effects of scale on these materials that really sets your model apart.

Superb again.

[Greyhead]

There’s not a lot going on with the SE5a at the moment as I’m waiting for the PC10 paint to arrive from America. Phil from Fighter Aces tells me it’s on the way so hopefully it won’t be too long as I’m starting to get modelling withdrawal symptoms and the better half is finding me other jobs to do!!


For the centre section tank overflows I’ve used copper wire from domestic house wiring cable; this is very useful stuff, it bends easily and comes in various sizes, this is the earth wire from 2.5mm2 with a 14BA nut and tinplate mounting brackets, which are simply cyanoed into small slots, soldered to it.





The top of the centre section now looks suitably “busy”.

[Guest]

Hey Grahame, let me know if you are still at a loose end! I could think of some scale bits you could make for my SE5! Ho ho.

[Guest]

Grahame,

If you are short of things to do on the SE5a - you could always post a few more pics of the aircraft in it's current state of completion to pass a few minutes!

I'm sure everyone here enjoys seeing your craftsmanship and miss the steady updates as you wait for the paint to be delivered!