HubertB

Lots of prep work going on, Rob. If it’s any consolation, the fit of the body panels of the original Cobra was not that great, when you look at period pictures. Hubert

I’ve never tried basket weaving, but that should not be too difficult 🤣😂🤣 ! Thank you guys. This metal work is just about being patient and taking your time. And I avoided soldering, which always makes my life far more complicated. So I have relied on some mechanical links on top of CA … Hubert

Agreed ! Hubert

Afterword : back to metalsmith works and Good Ol' Scratchbuilding Well, afetr having spent so much time worrying about the weight of the finished kit, and how to avoid potential problems, I have been caught up by my lack of oversight ... To be honest, when I completed the design of the Messier tailskid, and then installed it at the end of the build, I asked myself whether it would be up to the task of holding its share of the kit's weight. It was designed as a scale-accurate contraption, but I was not sure about the ultimate mechanical resistance of the 3D-printed resin. I now have my answer, after three weeks of static display. The resin may be nice for fine details, but one should not expect it to have a significant mechanical resistance, especially when printed in relatively thin sections. When displaying my finished Rutan Quickie next to the Potez, I noticed that the tail skid had collapsed under the weight of the kit. Truth is that, even if the bulk of the kit's weight is borne by the main wheels, a portion of it will be transferred, logically, to the tail skid. My maths are too rusty to calculate it using the precise formulas, but I estilmate it is about 20 / 25 % of the total kit's weight, and that amounts to at least 70 grams (whicj should have been the real total scale weight of the Potez) ... So, as for the main landing gear struts, and the lower sesquiplane, some metal reinfocement was needed. I toyed with the idea of cheating and inserting a brass rod to hold the skid in position, but finally voted for coming back to some good ol' metal scratchbuilding, and building a new tail-skid out of brass. I have a good supply of various rods, tubes, sheets, plus some Scale Hardware nuts and bolts, so that was theoretically possible. And, having designed the scale-representation of the Messier tial skid in 3D, I had a good idea of its breakdown. So, after a few hours of work, here is the result of my efforts, next to a spare 3D-printed part I had kept "just in case". Not nearly as perfect as the 3d-printed part, and some of the smallest details have been omitted, or represented slightly overscale, but overall, "good enough for govenment's work" as the saying goes ... Now, to paint it, rermove the old broken one and glue the new tail skid in place ... THE END Hubert

She is looking really good Dennis. Knowing the difficulties with the build, and your hand operation, you can justifiably be proud of you 👍 ! Hubert

And another neat Corsair from you John 👍 ! Well done ! Hubert

I bought this one on impulse, as it was so much in my areas of interest, being off-beat, civilian, and resin I started it (mostly filling the many pinholes in the resin fuselage) some time ago, then shelved it, and restarted mid-December 2024. It is essentially OOB, but I redid the dashboard and its very visible rear face, and the seat-padding using Evergreen strips. Below are the pics of the finished bird, with its pilot, a very nice figure from Reedoak (civilian pilot). I had a blast painting the Hawain shirt on the pilot, and scratching some Aviator glasses for him, with fine wire and blue-green-tinted (what else ?) transparent sheet The base is a simple frame I bought in one of the many Chinese shops you can find everywhere in Portugal, with AK Asphalt paste for the runway, and some added grass for ineterest. I hope you like it. Hubert

Finished ! Ok, I can call this one done. And that brings my tally for 2024 to two finished kits (plus a restoration of Columbia, plus the pilot of my Fisher Ryan ST-M). I can call this year a record one for me in decades. And, yes, being retired and with a mind free of the family worries of the beginning of the year makes a big difference ! I had some sweaty minutes until the last moment; especially with the canopy. I have to admit these were self-inflicted woes. When removing the masks from the canopy, the tape glue left a hazy residue. Ok, this could be cleaned with a paper rag dipped in lighter fluid. But then I felt I could be even more transparent. There is a saying in France that says "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien" (literally, "The better is the enemy of the good"), and I should have remembered it, especially as the canopy was looking good after some polishing with Tamiya polishing paste. But, anyhow, I decided an extra layer of X22 would do well. I have mentioned in the previous thread that I had some issues when laying the Tamiya X22. I am using for fine airbrushing a Chinese knock-off of soem well-known brand, and it has worked extremely well so far. But, for laying even coats like varnish, it reaches its limitations simply by the fact that is has an 0.2 mm needle, and the paint flow is limited. The X22 varnish tended to dry quickly and produce an uneven finish. No problem, I have an Iwata Neo with an 0.5 mm needle, and that will do the X22 work fine ... (by the way, I re-discovered very recently that at some time in the last years I had bought a H&S Infinity ). But my control of the Neo was such that I emptied the cup of the airbursh without even having covered the whole Quickie. So, yesterday, morning, back to the "usual" airbrush. Open the needle, and have multiple passes for a "wet" look with the X-22. Needless to say that did not turn well. My canopy ended with marks, ridges, and a general unevenness, and it was mostly on the inside ! After trying to recover a smooth finish with Micro-mesh and 000 steel wool, the canopy still looked like crap yesterday evening. A cheating attempt by dipping it in Future just highlighted more of the issues 😡 ! In despair, yesterday evening, I brushed some lacquer thinner on the transparent part of the canopy, and then the modlling gods turned on my side. Not only the white paint stayed, but the damned uneven varnish coats went away. Yessss ! This morning, I had a new attempt at polishing the canopy. All good ! But hey, what if I added another layer of X-22 ? Being dumb once is not enough for the brave dumbasses ! So I dipped my canopy directly in the X-22 jar, let the extra varnish flow back in the jar, and put it to dry under a cover... Then I missed one or two heartbeats : whe drying, my canopy was looking foggy and like an old gate-guard canopy ! Fortunately, when it dried further, the full transparency came back, and a last round of polishing allowed me to move to the last roller-coaster attempt : fixing the canopy to the fuselage In the meantime, I had decalled the Quickie, broken the Neo again for another round of X-22 (but being very careful with how I handled the trigger), added the finihsing touches like the exhaust tubes, the wheels, and the rear tailwheel. The prop boss and tips were covered with aluminium foil. All in all, I have managed to finsh the Quickie before the year ends ! And here it is, next to the Potez 25, under the bowsprit of Columbia … More pics in the RFI section, here : And a Happy New year to all my LSM buddies ! Hubert

Me 5 ! (Jumped 2 to 4, given the supply stock ) Hubert

Making slow progress on the Quickie. I am struggling to get the prefect finish I am dreaming of. Small blemishes in the white paint have to be touched up, the canard-to-fuselage joint proved troublesome and had to be sanded a few times, but then it means some repaint, and my second (or third ?) coat of Tamiya X-22 showed some orange peel that had to be sanded away . All of this whilst trying not to send the delicate compensators of the canards flaps fly away on their own ! Anyway, this is where I am at this morning : A small paint build-up at the extremity of the left canard sanded away and to be repainted ... See the blemish I scraped off on the canard-to-fuselage root and needs a repaint 😡 ? The airfield is ready for a fly-off ... Uh oh ... Not without wheels and prop ... ... And the pilot is ready to take the Quickie to Florida for the weekend ... But not yet ! In the meantime lookie lookie who is trying a creeping come-back in a corner of the bench ? Whilst the paint and varnish on the Quickie were setting, I designed and printed some new slats for the Cutlass, after the frustrations of the original kit's ones ... Hopefully the Quickie will live up to the thread's title Hubert

Great work Mike ! I hope you can make it to the deadline. As a general rule, I add 0.1 mm to the diameter of the holes in which a rod or tube is inserted. Albion Alloys are really precise, Evergreen not so much with tolerances in 0.05/0.1 mm area, but you just need a few hundreds of mm to throw you out of whack. Very brave to use a motor drill for bits this small. They induce so much torque, a few vibrations, plus some top weight that make it very difficult to hold the bit straight and not break it. I do all my drillings with small bits with hand-held pin-vises, going slwowly and not forcing the torque when I feel resistance, and even then I break bits regularly ... Your work is really looking good. I am not sure that a 1/32 kit would not have been simpler in the end than two 1/48 ones with accessories, but I am looking forward to see them completed anyway Hubert PS: good to read that, for once, Verlinden AM was the right size, and not oversized - which is the reason why I stopped buying them eons ago. Come ion Aires, if Verlinden can do it, so do you !

Go, Carl, go ! You CAN make it before the deadline (says the man who is a "specialist" in GB deadlines) ! Hubert

Steel wool is very useful for buffing, polishing, light sanding, in its finer grades. A ball of steel wool will last a modeller’s life. Another (cheap) addition to the tool chest Hubert

Great pick, Rob. Now, I am officially jealous Hubert

Looks stupendous ! And finished at « JohnB’s speed » ! Hubert

Fantastic, I won two kits ! Thank you all for your generosity and a special Thank You to Ernie for organising the raffle and his generous gift of the A-20 ( which goes to me, ho ho ho ) Scott, PM sent already. Gus, I have been bus- lazy recently and not took the time the write the full stash list. I sent you a PM with indications so that you can steer me to your preferred kit. Hubert

Amazing progress. Re. the canopy : is it your own vac-form or an AM part ? Hubert

Hubert

Merry Christmas to all ! (And if you find an aircraft model box under the tree, I hope it is in 1/32 scale - that one is for TJTX and his Border wish 🤣😂🤣 ) 🎅 Hubert 🎅

There are a lot of fantastic paper models of locomotives, but they are mostly in 1/25, or sometimes 1/38. I do not know what your diorama idea is, but if there is any « Rhubarb » idea, how about a forced perspective with a smaller scale train / loco ? Hubert

There is this site … although the prices are … steep ? … the models look very nice 🙄 https://www.heskethscalemodels.com/ourshop/cat_745010-135-Locomotives.html Hubert

Amazon to the rescue ! Here is a great, realistic, scale-representative. model, that you can move from box to display in a few seconds. https://www.amazon.fr/Carapace-carton-Bricolage-décoratif-dimensions/dp/B0CHTL3QSZ Hubert

Ah, the « Armata » … keeping alive and strong the Russian practice invented by Potemkin for the Great Katarina Tsarin … Hubert

Yes, it’s surprising there are not many participants this year … C.mon guys 🎅 ! Hubert

Great work and result, Mike. I bet you’ll be happy to return to 1/32 scale after this one Hubert