the quality of your work is superb Robin the detail on each is amazing great job regards Phil

Hi Robin.
Another fantastic update. looking superb.
Ian

Great work Robin, the thing is, they don’t look like a paper card models.

Mark

One word , superb.

Mark

Hi Robin
Just caught up this build, amazing work and incredible detail and updates as always.
Regards
Paul

Thanks again to Mark, Chris, Paul and Carl for all their wonderful comments!
Time's nearly up and although its nearly done now its the diary having to catch up with the build from now on!
Ok then, tonight the Pups get their teeth!

Photo 1 shows the various paper components for the basic kit propeller, not shown here (because I forgot it was a part of the construction) is a grey rectangle with two thin black lines down the middle. The construction begins with the boss which is the central part around which the blades rotate. This is shown being glued together in Photo 2 with the paper cylinder wrapped around one of the set of Leather/Paper punches I bought to punch out the tiny disks in this kit. The two ends of this disk together with the optional central nut are the only parts which are first glued to the 1mm card backing as shown in Photo 3, the rear disk has already been pushed down into the paper cylinder here, this is the easy part as it can be glued ‘in situ’ once pushed down flush with the cylinder bottom. The front disk is another matter and great care is needed to glue that one in position – you have to gently push it down into the cylinder and once flush with the top apply a little glue around the edge. If you try to put the glue around the inside of the cylinder the disk won’t slide down and if you use too much force the paper cylinder can simply fold in and collapse. The completed boss is shown in Photo 4 along with that grey lined rectangle mentioned earlier. As you can now see in this, and the following Photo 5, the rectangle is actually a tube (flat packed) which becomes the core of the propeller blades. The two thin lines mark the edges of the boss once it is inserted through the two punched out holes. I did find however that I couldn’t quite get the tube down thin enough to slide through the holes and ended up slicing off a thin strip to reduce it down a little. In Photo 6 we have the four parts of the propeller blades themselves. These are curled over a thin dowel (one of Victory’s eventual masts/spars I think) until they have that slight curve across their widths as illustrated here. Before attaching the blades to the boss and tube, the paper tube is flattened out towards the ends and also twisted in opposite directions to give the ‘airscrew’ effect. The object is to get the blades rounded at the boss and flat at the tips as, hopefully, you can see in the finished Photo 7. Here the edges of the paper blades have been touched in with Vallejo Mahogany acrylic to hide the white paper edges.
And so, on to the teeth of these Pups – the Lewis Light Machine Gun. The real thing is shown in Photo 8. This is the aircraft version which lacks the iconic ‘drainpipe’ cooling jacket of the Infantry weapon. The cooling jacket was designed to pull cold air in from the rear of the gun, expelling the hot air from the barrel-heating at the front. The trouble was, stick one in an aircraft pointing forwards and the speed of the airflow pushes the hot air backwards eventually causing jams or misfires as the breech mechanism heats up! The simple solution was to just remove the jacket exposing the barrel and let the cold air ‘up there’ do the cooling! Photo 9 shows the top of the ammunition drum. All the RFC and RNAS Lewis’ had these leather straps on the top of the drum to aid handling them to re-load the gun in combat. Notice how the strap is at right angles to the barrel – until this model’s research I’d always thought the ammunition drum rotated as the weapon fired, but it doesn’t! The carousel holding all the .303 cartridges rotates inside the drum – the drum itself is locked onto the breech! Now a resin upgrade of the Lewis was mentioned in the instruction book and although a paper version is included, as the kit designers had shown it in their finished photos I felt that was good enough for me! Photo 10 shows the resin components of the Eduard Lewis MkIII, together with the etched brass fret shown in Photo 11, the kit makes up two complete guns for about £6 or so plus p&p. There are ‘ways’ to make these even better value of course which is what I did (for personal use only of course! ) The brass fret makes up two sets of aircraft gun sights but this particular Pup appears not to have had them fitted so I’ve left them off. Photo 12 shows my pair of resin guns after a coat of thinned down Citadel Bolt Gun Metal acrylic. The bottom gun already has its handle in place and will be entirely ‘gun metal’ but No.2’s will feature a nicer brass handle section, which many of the aircraft Lewis’ had. That brown stick on the left is a length of stretched sprue painted with the Vallejo Tan Yellow and Woodgrain to cut the hand grip from and above are the two ammunition drums – on the left is the standard kit one and on the right one with the solid handle hollowed out under the strap. Photo 13 illustrates the two guns fully painted, Mahogany for the wood pistol hand grips and the gun metal washed with Citadel Skaven Brown Ink. The cartridges were painted with Humbrol Brass acrylic and given the Skaven Brown Ink wash when dry with Vallejo Red Leather for the straps.
And so the finished articles: Photos 14 and 15 show No.1’s and Photos 16 to 18 illustrates the slightly more advanced No.2. Finally in Photo 19 which I’ve added here as I had a blank space left over – the final component to finish off No.1 – her Pitot tube on the right wing leading edge. No.2’s doesn’t go here!
In the next instalment, No.2’s resin propeller (yes I managed it!) And the final bits and bobs to complete her too! (Oh and the base work!)

Until then, tick, tick, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

They are outstanding superb work Robin regards Phil

So here we are at last – the final instalment of A Pair of Pups! In this last posting we bring the vastly up-graded and time consuming Pup No.2 to completion with the addition of her air-speed probe better known as the Pitot Tube and the Rotherham Air Pump together with a couple of low tech landing devices commonly known as ‘Old Rope’!
Whilst No.1’s Pitot was simply a length of stretched sprue stuck into the wing leading edge (like a WW2 fighter in fact) No.2’s is far more complicated. Photo 1 illustrates the actual Pitot tube. This is in fact a modern reproduction used on reproduction WW1 aircraft or to replace worn out pitots on authentic ones. Although this one has tubes of the same length, some older versions have long and short tubes as well. The model version begins in Photo 2 with a piece of brass micro tube the same diameter as the wing struts squashed down in the Strutter and with another brass micro tube of 0.4mm OD which has been bent around a drill bit shaft to produce the 180 degree curve plus another ‘kink’ in the shorter tube as shown here. With the tiny tube pushed up inside the larger one the next task was to crimp it in place. Those huge crushing jaws in Photo 3 are actually my finest electrical wire cutters, used to carefully crush the main tube in between the pitot tubes as seen in this shot. Finally I used my finest micro-scissors to carefully cut open the rear of the larger tube to create the four legs which will grip the wing strut as shown in Photo 4. These are the precision scissors I bought last year to make Frederick’s ring mail – I hate to think what this is doing to the poor things! After trimming the legs to a thinner profile I then used an offcut of the flattened brass tubing to fit the legs to it, this should ensure it fits onto the wing struts later. (Photo 5) The finished Pitot Tube was then painted with Humbrol Steel Cote for the body and Humbrol Acrylic Aluminium for the tubes. After gluing the Pitot to the strut with super glue I then cut a length of copper wire to fit from behind the Pitot body to the underside of the upper wing. This represents the cable which runs from the Pitot, back through the wing framing and along to the air speed indicator instrument in the cockpit. The copper cable was fitted with a pair of DecraLed brackets as shown in Photo 6.
The last gizmo to build was the Rotherham Air Pump, an actual example of which is shown in Photo 7. If you can remember back to the cockpit building, I made a resin hand pump which was used to pump up the internal pressure inside the petrol tank to force the fuel into the engine. As I mentioned back there, that pump was only used on start up and once airborne a little air pump took over – well, this is it! The screw thread at the top connects to a copper tube or pipe which pumps the air back into the fuel tank to pressurise it, the round shaft sticking out to the right is fitted with a little miniature propeller to provide the mechanical energy to work the pump. In Photo 8 we have my version of the Rotherham, built out of aluminium tubes, plastic rod and that Plastruct Hex Rod for the nuts. The size of this thing can be judged by the razor blade alongside. Photo 9 shows the little pump with its associated brackets and propeller (with nut). It took me ages to decide how to make those brackets, there are many different designs to them but in the end the plasticard proved the easiest to work with. The propeller was another short length of the 0.4mm micro tube and although this photo doesn’t show it very well, the ends have been crimped to flatten them out and each blade is twisted 45 degrees. The pump really comes to life with a coat of paint – in this case Humbrol Aluminium acrylic for the main body with Acrylic Brass for little details and Humbrol Steel Cote for the brackets. The propeller was Vallejo Mahogany as seen in Photo 10. The Rotherham is shown in position in Photo 11, fitting the little b.. er, thing in place was almost as frustrating as No.1’s wing struts! In the end only super glue gel would keep in position long enough to set. Once again a copper wire is added together with its brackets, this time going downwards into the engine bay (getting that to stay put wasn’t much easier either!) As far as the location of the Rotherham goes, if you don’t have photographic evidence for a particular aircraft – anywhere you like! They could be fitted to any of the four Cabane struts either pointing forward like this one or backwards with the propeller reversed. Some pilots preferred to have them fitted to the undercarriage struts however, again back or front. Some other pilots liked them ‘up top’ however where they could keep an eye on them to check they were still going around and keeping their tank pressure up. Finally, those hangman’s nooses back in Photo 10. One is shown trimmed to size whilst the other is still waiting the snip. These are the external landing appliances – actually rope handles hanging off the underside of the lower wings! As the Pup swerves sideways over the ships bow, the landing party grabs hold of the handle and pulls the Pup down to the deck. These should be another four on the mid fuselage but the rigging thread was proving too difficult to glue into ‘hoops’ so I might add these afterwards possible made from twisted wire to get an authentic ‘droop’ to their shape.
So there we have it, both Pups completed on time (phew!) Tomorrow I’ll put up the finished build pics for both of them. This has been a fascinating new media for me, one I’ll definitely be returning to in the future. In the New Year, as a little side project I’ve got a mind to search through my stock of recently rediscovered Airfix Multipose and Tamiya figures to try and scratch build a 1/32 scale model of E. H. Dunning himself to place beside his aircraft. Who knows, that one might be a resin casting too!

Until tomorrow, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin

Just incredible to watch Robin top work regards Phil

Thanks again to Mark, Phil and Tony! It was tight again but I managed to complete No.2 last evening and took all the finished shots by 10pm. That ruddy Rotherham pump nearly drove me insane trying to get the thing to attach to the cabane strut - could really do with an INSTANT instant super glue!
As my silicone moulds have evolved I've gradually moved away from the true '2 part mould' in the sense that the two halves are equal. If you look at the photo of the propeller mould an installment back you'll see that one half has a deep impression, the other only a shallow one. This was unavoidable as the paper prop blades are too flimsy to push down into the plasticene base - but it also has a great advantage in casting the prop! What I do is mix up the resin and then flex the mould over a dowel opening up the left hand blade part and dribble the resin in. When the mould is released it closes up again expelling the excess resin AND any air pockets too. Then I flex the other side and dribble the resin into the right blade again expelling the air on closing up. Finally I can put the other half of the mould on top, stand it upright (lengthways) and pour the rest of the resin down the shaft to fill up the mould entirely. Since following this technique the failure rate is almost nil. If the mould was filled by simply pouring down the open shaft the tips of the blades would never receive any resin (as happened on the first attempt)
I love this resin! I'm going to try and make resin crew for the Victory next!

Many thanks to All for their encouraging comments over the last year and best of luck to all the entries!

Robin.