Great work on the rotary engines Robin!

Regards,
Phil W.

Many thanks indeed to Kev, Ian and the Phils!

Well, after weeks of resin casting and re-casting it's back to the basic paper and card again (with a little brass thrown in!)

The construction of the undercarriage begins with the first two paper components; the vertical struts. These are formed in a single piece for each side as illustrated in Photo 1. After cutting the pieces out, the 1mm axle hole was then neatly punched out using my new set of Leather hole punches mentioned earlier in the build (so much easier than cutting or trying to drill out the holes!) The next step was to use the wire diagram in the book to form two 0.7mm brass rods into the ‘V’ shape, which forms the support for each set of struts as well as the locating pins to fix them to the fuselage later. In actual fact the book specifies 0.8mm for these rods but I’ve only got either 0.7 or 1mm brass rod to hand and the 0.7 does just fine here. The rod is shown being glued into the first of the struts in Photo 2, note how the brass rod is curved below the axle hole, this becomes even more important in No.2’s up-graded struts later on! Photo 3 shows a completed strut section. The folded over left hand strut is quite easy to get lined up but the other side being essentially two separate pieces of paper is a lot more tricky. Even perfectly lined up however we still have that white edge to the sides of the strut caused by the thickness of the paper and so I’d already decided, rather than simply trying to colour over the edges I would just repaint the whole assembly as seen in Photo 4. The paint used was Vallejo Saddle Brown. This also gave me the opportunity to repaint the little triangular area where the two struts meet at the bottom. In reality this is a hollow area with two welded rods joining the ovoid struts so I repainted it in the colour of the wheel hub – a basic light tan. The two sets of struts are joined at the bottom by a flat (actually aerofoil shaped) cross beam shown in Photo 5. This is folded over and glued together enclosing a 1mm brass rod, which acts as the wheel axle and also ties all three pieces together. I’ve seen some examples of this piece in shaped wood but I’ve not been able to find out if this was how it was originally constructed or not – most other examples are of pre-formed metal casings (as are the vertical struts), the wooden one may be a modern replacement or even an entirely modern reproduction Pup! That grey bar down the middle is the axle itself. I repainted the cross bar before assembling the whole thing together and the result is shown in Photo 6. Despite being predominately paper, the brass wire inserts make this framework quite strong once it’s all fitted together. There is one thing in this assembly, which is essential to get right – those two ‘V’s made by the struts are not, as it turns out, symmetrical! There is a front and back to them and if you get them (or rather, just one of them) the wrong way round when the axle bar is put on it won’t lie straight at right angles to the fuselage. When the struts are first constructed one side of them is fairly flat and the other has a pronounced bulge covering the brass rod. Having glued on the first one with the bulge pointing inwards I naturally assumed the other set went on with the bulge pointing towards the first one. Anyway, it took me ages to figure out why the axle wouldn’t line up but once I’d turned the second strut around everything was fine again! As you can see in Photo 6, both wire bulges point the same way! This was the point where another major boo-boo came to light. I’d painted the struts a dark brown, they should have been a dark grey! This time it was Revell Aqua Colour to the rescue with Blaugrau or Greyish Blue 79. Having re-re-painted the struts and bar I then had to create some means of attachment for the bracing rigging wires. This was done with the 0.2mm electrical wire strands as shown in Photo 7. If I thought making the rings for Frederick’s ring-mail was bad enough, these are even smaller at 0.7mm diameter (Frederick’s were 1mm diameter!) Incredibly, this 0.2mm wire is too thick for No.2’s rigging points – they will be having 0.5mm brass micro tube turnbuckles which need 0.1mm wire to form the rings with, delivery of that is awaited! What I will be doing on most of the rest of No.1’s rigging is to create and fit ringbolts rather than simply just gluing the rings themselves, these rings are at about the limit of my magnified vision and its easier to make a tiny hole and insert the twisted tail of a ringbolt than it is to grip these little um, things! (A set of better, precision tweezers are also on the way!)
The newly Blue-Greyed undercarriage is shown in Photo 8 along with the bottom set of three rigging rings (the right hand one is hidden in the shadows!) Also shown here is a new axle. I was able to paint neatly up to the printed axle the first time around, but with the undercarriage fixed in place that became much harder to achieve. In the end I painted the whole cross bar in the blue-grey and glued on a new axle made from stretched sprue which, just happened to be the right colour without having to paint it! As you’ll see later in No.2’s undercart, the actual undercarriage is a little more complicated than this set!
The upper three rigging rings are shown in Photo 9 whilst in Photo 10 the first central rigging wire is in position. This is the standard size Uschi Rigging Thread and to say it’s fiddly at first would be an understatement! At 0.005mm (five thousandth of a millimetre) the one thing you really need (apart from a magnifying system) is a good set of tweezers (which is why I’ve got a new set on order) if they won’t grip exactly at the tips they’re next to useless for this job! I tied a simple ‘granny knot’ on to the top ring, securing the joint with a tiny drop of super glue and then, after much cursing and threatening the skylight as its next point of exit, I managed to thread the bottom of the Uschi thread through the bottom ring. I tried to tie another knot down there but gave up in the end and simply pulled the thread through and using a spring tweezer gripped the thread back on itself applying another drop of super glue to bond the threads together. Once it was set I could then gently pull on the loose end of the thread, stretch it a little and snip off the excess down close to the join with the micro scissors. Once cut the joint is pretty much invisible. To finish it off I applied some thick and gloopy Humbrol Acrylic Brass with a small pointed brush to simulate the brass turnbuckles. Finally, and apologies for the picture quality, I didn’t notice the flash went off, damned thing supposed to be on manual, Photo 11 illustrates all three bracing wires in position. On this basic Pup I’m going to leave the rigging in its natural black colour but on No.2 I’ll be giving them the chrome ink pen treatment.
In the next instalment, using paper and card on a rotary tool to fashion the pair of wheels!
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Superb detailing Robin you must have eyes like a hawk for this minute work.

Al

Just get`s better with each update top work Robin regards Phil

Nice work Robin always a pleasure to read your updates.

Al

Fantastic work Robin. looking really good.
Ian

Excellent work as usual Robin. Who knew Tesco Costa could be so adventurous.

Mark

Many thanks as usual to Ian, Alan, Mark and Phil! Those Tesco cafe stirrers are brilliant - just a half dozen on each weekly visit, I'm almost embarrassed by how many I've got now! One day I might plank an entire ship with them (just because I can! )

On with the undercart then!

The brass and wood new undercarriage was first given a couple of coats of matt dark grey enamel. I’ve no idea what the name of the colour was, but it is Revell Enamel Matt 78 as seen in Photo 13. This dark grey was simply the undercoat however for the Uschi colouring powder or to give it it’s full title: Metal Polishing Powder Steel Type. This was applied to the matt grey using a cotton bud and polished or burnished up to give the lovely metallic effect as shown in Photo 14. What I completely forgot to show here was the photo of the fuselage all kitted out with green Frog Tape to mask off the paper fuselage around the rear strut. I had taken a photo however and that’s coming shortly! Now I had intended to carefully remove the undercarriage from the fuselage, and give it a spray of matt black primer before adding the steel powder. Unfortunately the ruddy thing began to fall apart as it was coming out so I had to super glue it back into place, gluing it to the fuselage in the process which is why I then had to mask it off. Before gluing the cross bar in place I had carefully drilled small holes in the top surface to take the tiny brass turnbuckles, again, unfortunately, since I had to give the wooden bar two coats of thick enamel paint I never saw those holes again! Instead, I was forced to drill corresponding holes up through the bottom of the bar; fortunately they are so small they’re almost invisible to the naked eye.
So before the brass turnbuckles could be added, I had to make them up first! Photo 15 illustrates the simple scoring jig made up to cut the micro brass tubing to length. This is simply a scrap piece of plywood with scraps of plasticard super glued in place and filed down into a V shaped channel. A brass pin acts as a stop for the brass tube which is laid in the V groove whilst a sharp blade (safety razor is best) is run along the sideways groove. The brass tube rotates in the groove creating a score mark around the circumference. The tube is then removed and the scored line acts as a guide for the blade to re-score the tube on a flat surface until the tube splits apart. A 0.3mm drill bit is then used to open up any deformation of the tube ends. Photo 16 shows the initial scoring under way and Photo 17 shows the first two tubes cut to size up against the razor’s edge. In Photo 18 we have an illustration of the almost microscopic size of this 0.1mm copper wire alongside the two pieces of tube. In the background is a length of the 0.2mm wire that was used to fabricate Frederick’s ring-mail last year! Before continuing with the turnbuckles, here’s that missing photo of the Frog Tape masking off the struts before applying the steel powder (Photo 19). The tape was ‘second hand’ in that it had already been used for something else and had been left sticking to the edge of my worktop. As such it was slightly less tacky than unused tape, just what you need on delicate paper!
When I made Victory’s Ring Bolts, I gripped a loop of the thicker wire in my pin vice, threaded it over the brass rod former and rotated the vice to create the ring. The new method used on this build is far less cumbersome I’m glad to say and was pinched from examples seen on Youtube! This time I’ve made another new tool consisting of a length of the brass rod which gives the ring diameter bent into a hook and glued into a cut off tip of a cheapie paint brush to form a handle. Instead of having to manually grip the wire loop in the vice each time, the ends of the loop are now just gripped in the jaws of a pair of long nosed pliers as shown in Photo 20. The little hook tool is then placed into the loop and twisted creating the tightly wound tail to the ring as shown in Photo 21. The ring and its tail are shown against the brass tube in Photo 22 and in Photo 23 one turnbuckle is finished and the other is held in sprung tweezers awaiting a drop of thin super glue to be applied to the end of the tube where capillary action will draw the glue into the tubing fixing everything together.
With the first six turnbuckles made up it was time to fit them in place. The first set were for the cross beam as shown in Photo 24. As mentioned earlier, the holes previously drilled into the top surface of the wood had been obliterated by the thick coats of enamel paint and so I had to drill another set up from the bottom, as they are only 0.35mm in diameter they can’t be seen (unless you pick the model up and peer very closely!) These were glued in with a tiny drop of the Roket Card Glue, the two 0.1mm copper wires twisted together giving a fair degree of flexibility when fixed in, this allows the turnbuckle to be angled to follow the run of the ‘wire’ once fitted on. The second trio were then glued into the same tiny holes drilled through the cardboard fuselage bottom, each one nestled in its little ‘alcove’ punched into the aluminium cowling bottom as seen in Photo 25. The final task for this part of the undercarriage was to install the Uschi Rigging Thread. I started at the top centre turnbuckle, tying a simple knot with the thread and securing it with a drop of super glue. I then threaded the free end of the thread through the corresponding bottom turnbuckle and pulling it back with just a slight amount of elastic tension held the end of the thread as close to the first run as possible (touching together down at the turnbuckle) and another drop of super glue secured them together. After a minute or two the excess ends of the threads were stretched out away from the run of the ‘wire’ and snipped off close in with the micro scissors. Because it was under tension when cut, the snipped off part springs back in tight and is practicably invisible. Repeating this for the two cross wires I then carefully applied the chrome ink to the black threads, on the end of a cocktail stick down by the turnbuckles and simply with the pen nib along the rest. The result, giving a lovely effect of a steel wire is seen in Photo 26. All that remains now is to add the split axles and the pair of wheels, but as the wheels are another scratch built resin upgrade that’s a separate instalment coming soon! In the meantime, for the final two photos, here’s the item I completely forgot to include earlier – a wooden tailskid! The one thing that No.1 has taught me is that the integral card tailskid is extremely vulnerable to damage during construction! The skid is fitted in during the earliest stages of the fuselage carcase building and after that, everything else that is put on from the fuselage skin cladding to the undercarriage etc, puts it at risk of collapsing when pushing down to glue something in place and forgetting that the skid is sticking out. Because of that I decided to cut the skid out from its bulkhead on No.2, to be slid back in when all the pushing and pulling was done. Once it was cut out I then decided to go the whole hog and replace it with a wooden version, which could still be put in at a later stage. Photo 27 shows the original skid on its 1mm card backing after removal from the bulkhead. As you can see here, its removal simply leaves an empty slot in the bulkhead, which lines up with the cut out in the tail. Below the card original is a piece of well seasoned old wood on which the outline of the skid has been pencilled in. This was cut to size and sanded down, especially on the peg end, which has to just slide into the fuselage. Then the little black add on paper pieces which formed the iron re-enforcements on No.1 were used to cut replacement parts from the DecraLed sheet lead and glued into place as shown in the final Photo 28.
In the next instalment, creating those resin wheels and after that completing the undercarriage with my sewing kit!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.