Thanks again to Ron and Phil!
Its amazing how much history turns up in old barns!
Right then, on to...
The Wicker Chair:
Although this part of the build is only appearing now to finish off the detailed cockpit, and you have already seen some of the scratch build resin parts, this was actually my very first foray into the art of resin casting! It was a lucky thing too as I now use this mould as a ‘dump’ for any excess liquid resin when casting the other parts (I hate wasting the stuff!)
and I now literally have about twenty of the things!
Photo 1 shows the beginning of the design with the paper base of the kit chair glued onto a scrap of clear Perspex. This is from a sheet I’ve had for many years and on which the supposedly protective printed polythene sheet has bonded itself permanently in place! Although no good for display cases now, it’s still useful for things like this. I have drilled a series of 0.5mm holes around the edge of the paper piece into which I hammered a set of 0.5mm brass rods as illustrated in
Photo 2. These will form the uprights of the willow chair frame and, as shown in
Photos 3 and
4, the actual woven strands are formed from the same single 0.2mm wire previously used for the internal bracing in the cockpit frame.
My intension was to use solder to ‘fill in’ the woven strands to secure the whole chair together, unfortunately this didn’t quite work out. Despite using the proper flux I just couldn’t get the solder to flow into the wire well enough to preserve the fine detail in all the weaving. When it did seep in it was too thick and I only did a part of the back before giving up and applying thin super glue to finish the task. I did try using the micro flame jet to make the solder flow – big mistake! The brass rods got so hot they melted the Perspex and the entire chair dropped out! Anyway, the chair back remained in one piece and I was able to use my finest wire snips to carefully cut the rounded shape of the back out from the rest of the woven mesh, (
Photo 5). In case you’re wondering why I didn’t just cut the brass rods to that shape in the first place before all the wasted weaving – it was too ruddy fiddly!
It was much easier to create a curved rectangle and cut that down afterwards. In fact, maybe it was all the finger oil from pulling the strands tight during the basket making that prevented the solder from melting in – probably should have dunked the whole thing in white vinegar first to de-grease it! Since the Perspex was no longer with us it was necessary to create a new plasticard base for the metal back to sit on. This was done, and a rounded edge was created, by forming a length of thicker solder around the contours of the chair as seen in
Photo 6. Also seen in this photo is another piece of plasticard sanded down to represent the leather cushion. To further keep everything together the wickerwork part was given a couple thick coats of
Admiralty Yellow Ochre. All parts of the chair were super glued together. After the cushion was glued in the whole thing was given a coat of
Revell Aqua Colour 36/89 Beige as a final sealer as seen in
Photo 7. Before beginning to construct the silicone mould for casting the chair, I first cut another scrap of 1mm plasticard about 1mm smaller than the base of the chair together with a short piece of wooden square about an inch in length. The plasticard was glued to the bottom of the chair and then onto the top of the wooden square. This would create a ‘peg’ with which to pull the cast chair from the mould together with a groove around the underside, providing a guide for a razor saw to cut the chair off the ‘sprue’. (Not my idea I hasten to add – I saw this method used on some commercial chair castings!)
The mould box was made up from the lego bricks bought specifically for this with a base of blue modelling clay with a hole cut out for the wooden plug, see
Photo 8. After making the polygonal depressions for the mould locators I filled up the lego box with the
DWR Plastics RTV Silicone Moulding Rubber pre-mixed with 3% catalyst. When that had cured overnight (although a couple of hours would have been sufficient), the box was taken apart and the blue clay removed. The exposed bottom of the rubber mould was then painted twice with
liquid wax release agent (again from DWR) and the lego box rebuilt around the now upside down rubber mould. After pouring in a smaller amount of the rubber I was left with the original chair embedded in a now, two part mould. This mould is seen in use in
Photo 9, resin is poured into the chair cavity and the square mould is gently squeezed to remove any trapped air bubbles (but not always successfully). The second part of the mould is then popped on top and the left over resin poured into that to fill up the plug. The resin begins to cure and change colour after about three minutes. Surprisingly, larger areas of resin cure quicker than thinner ones (chemical reactions and heat etc etc) so the plug goes a pretty tan colour first. Because the chair itself is quite thin it’s best to wait about thirty minutes before pulling it out of the mould. The cast resin chair is shown in
Photo 10 along with the remains of the original which was destroyed removing it from the rubber mould – one of the dangers of using a single silicone mould (the second part of this one is just the wooden plug ‘overflow’ – the entire chair is in the bottom part of the mould.) The motley brown spots on the cast chair is some of the beige paint which was pulled off by the silicone mould rubber, as successive chairs were cast, so the brown diminished and eventually disappeared. The other essential item which the wicker chair was going to need before it could be installed, was a safety harness. Known as a ‘
Lap Strap’ this was a very rudimentary device consisting of a simple belt made of leather and canvas, which, as the name suggests, just fitted around the pilot’s waist or lap. An actual surviving example is shown in
Photo 11. The shorter piece is on the pilot’s right with the longer one on his left. What is not shown here is the wire cable which passes through the two holes on the left of both straps and is connected to a metal clamp which is in turn fastened to the wooden fuselage cross beam under the chair. The operation of the Lap Strap is quite simple, the leather part with all the holes in it is pulled tight across the lap and under the leather band on the shorter right hand section, engaging the three metal prongs into whichever set of holes fits best. The lower metal bar (which you might notice has a small ring on the end) is swung up, locking the leather belt in place and the little sprung curved spike on the top of the short belt passes through that ring locking the whole assembly in place. The only problem with the Navy Pups that I can see is that the pilot may have had to release the belt in order to reach the ammo drum on the Lewis gun to reload it! (Hopefully not rolling the aircraft in the process!)
The create the belts I decided to use an old favourite medium of mine –
DecraLed self adhesive lead strip.
Photo 12 illustrates the longer strap in the process of creation with a single large strap complete with the rows of holes pierced through using a sewing needle and then fitted up with a series of thin strips to provide the edging and re-enforcement pieces.
Photo 13 shows the smaller strap together with a piece of plastic mesh, which was supposed to provide the wooden grating on the
DelPrado Victory! I spent a long time trying to work out how to make the three prongs on the end of this section – stretched sprue? brass rod? Plus many others. In the end the solution was so easy – the size of this mesh exactly fitted the size of the prongs, all I had to do was to razor blade off a triple set from the mesh as shown in
Photo 14 and super glue it onto the end. The attachments on the end of each strap were made from the single strand wire and a couple scraps of plasticard, carefully cut to shape and sanded down thinner. Plasticard also provided the long and short locking arms. These are the white pieces shown in
Photo 15 with the completed lead straps alongside the original kit paper ones. Both straps and the wicker chair were then given a good spray of the
Poundland Grey Primer to prepare them for painting as shown in
Photo 16.
And now the finicky bit! In
Photo 17, the three parts have been given their respective basic coats. The wicker chair, now ironically temporarily glued to the same wooden plug used to create it’s master has had a good thick coat of
Revell Matt 88 Enamel, whilst the two straps have got leather parts in
Vallejo Model Color 70.818 Red Leather with the canvas sections picked out in
Admiralty Yellow Ochre (which by coincidence is exactly the same shade as the Revell 88) The metal parts are in
Citadel Bolt Gun Metal. Once the basic scheme was fully dried I could then get to work with the shading and high-lighting to bring out the textures and details. The chair was given depth with a wash of
Citadel Rust Brown Ink (thinned right down) with the darker
Skaven Brown Ink used to deepen the shading around the cushion and the rounded edging at the top. When that was dry I used a mixture of
Admiralty Yellow Ochre and
Humbrol Matt White Acrylic to dry brush the raised detail of the wickerwork. Finally for the chair, the seat cushion was painted with
Humbrol Aqua Color 361/79 Greyish Blue (the RAF uniform blue-grey) to represent a leather cushion. This was finished off with a thinned down
Citadel Black Ink wash for the creases and the RAF plus a little white mixture to dry brush the edges.
The straps also went through the wash and dry brush procedure. As you can see in
Photo 18, the canvas sections were dry brushed with a lightened Yellow Ochre, followed by a Skaven Brown Ink wash to shadow the inner edges of the straps and the matt Vallejo Red Leather was gone over with
Humbrol Satin Acrylic varnish to give the leather a slight sheen. Finally, the metal parts were given a wash of
Black Ink to pick out the raised details. Rather than gluing the ends of the straps to the wooden frame member as I’d originally intended, I came to the conclusion that if I did it that way, there was no guarantee that the chair would fit between them! It was far easier therefore to bend the pliable straps over the chair sides, ensuring the ends were at ‘ground level’ and gluing them in place with a drop of super glue under the curves.
Photos 19 and
20 illustrate the completed chair assembly ready for fitting into the cockpit, which I’m relieved to say, it did – but only just!
With the chair firmly in place I then discovered that the brass air pump for the fuel tank wouldn’t fit in place. This was due entirely to the false cockpit floor pushing everything up by about 5mm. The only solution is shown in
Photo 21 – instead of having the pump with its handle open, I had to cut off the handle shaft and model it in the closed position. (I also had to mount it a little more forward than I intended too!) Now I’ve just got to make up the little fuel tank pressure gauge and glue that in before you can see the finished cockpit ‘before and after’ photos in the next instalment.
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All.
Robin.
Plymouth57 attached the following image(s):
First wooden ship:
The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second:
Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third:
HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale
Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault
Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
US
