remcohe

Your paintwork is exquisite Remco

Sopwith Camel I would love to build one of their kits next to my scratch build Remco

That looks like a great kit

Hi Crazypoet, I hope you start a bulldog! Erik B. thank you for mentioning The Vintage Aviator. I looked around at their website and besides a vast amount of very useful pictures of the other Sopwith variants also some very good closeups from the cockpit showing the airframe. Although they probably use Ash or Birch, the color of those woods is not a whole lot different from Castello. So the choice is made I will use Castello, it's a very nice wood for building models. Its strong with a very dense grain, holds an edge very well and even the finest details can be cut from it. Here's a sample what you can do with it (A Brown Bess Marines Musket, sorry way off topic.....) Remco

So this is the beginning of a build that has it's roots in 2008 when I purchased a Model Airways Sopwith Camel kit. I started it right away and quickly realized that I was not very happy with the quality of the kit. To give an idea, the britannica cast parts are rough and need a lot of clean up, the laser cut parts have a lot of char to remove and the provided wood for the airframe is of low quality birchwood. The model quickly disappeared in a pile of unfinished plastic models. About 2 years later I switched my plastic kit building hobby to wooden ship modeling and was quickly absorbed by it. Although I had long thought wooden models could never reach the level of detail found in a plastic kit with some aftermarket sets, overtime I discovered the opposite is true (although more difficult). For me working with wood is much more pleasant than working with plastic or resin, wood shavings and sanding dust are way less annoying than the sanding dust of plastic let alone resin (I really hate resin dust). So I was really happy building my 18th Century Swan class ship. But the Sopwith kit down in the kit pile kept drawing my attention and now I will give it an other try but not with the kit. I'm not going to try to make the best of the kit but just start from scratch and make the best possible scale replica I can produce. I ordered plans from Replicraft and those are really stunning, there are folks using there plans to make a full scale airworthy replica. 6 sheets of 160 x 80 cm (approx 5 x 2,5 feet) crammed with details, to give you an impression: So this build will involve a decent amount of woodworking but also lots of small parts I will create using an etching service, so lots of drawing involved to. I have never done a photo etch set so that will be a nice challenge. If there is enough intrest I even might create a building manual and provide the etch set for others to have their own Sopwith Build. The engine will be a model in it self with plenty of lathe work, either brass or aluminium. So still lots of planning to do and preparing before I can actually start but I will post updates here when ready. One of the decisions I need to make now is the type of wood I'm going to use, either Castello or Swiss Pear. I really like to work with Castello but most replica's I found on the web are build from a wood that looks more like Pear. While all the bigger models I see use a much lighter colored wood. Maybe a combination of Castello for the delicate wing ribs and Pear for the square beams... Suggestions are welcome. Along the way I will decide which specific aircraft I will build Remco

Really brilliant, I love the heavy weathering Remco

Hi, Here's a sneak peak into my workshop. As you can see I added lots of storage space over time to store all my tools. I work mainly with wood and metal, for now there is still a ship in the shipyard but soon room will be made for my next project a fully scratch build 1:15 Sopwith Camel with internal structure and details. Remco