Grateful thanks as always to Tony, Al, Mark and Phil!
Well as you'll see in this installment, No.1 has got her wings on (after a huge struggle as you'll read below!) But she's looking like a real plane now with only the prop and cowling to go. No.2 is still wingless at the moment but only because of all the extras and a whole lot of forward planning so I don't have to go through that torture again (I have a cunning plan - it'll either be easier or a whole lot harder! )I've been wondering about the display phase too! I have a rough idea which involves a small section of HMS Furious' launching deck - may have to get some more wood though!

Anyhow here she is......



The first part of the wing structure to be cut out is the central spar, which holds the wing together and in place after it has been fixed into the fuselage. Photo 1 shows this long component together with one of the straightest of my Costa Coffee wooden stirrers – this will be used to make the spars for No.2’s wings. This piece is again glued onto the 1mm card backing before cutting out, as are the wing ribs, which follow on. Note that the spar isn’t completely straight – the part which is glued into the fuselage is tilted up at 12 degrees as the lower wings have a 12 degree dihedral (kinked up from level). The actual base of the wings is shown in Photo 2, this is just the paper (actually 140gm card but more like a thick paper anyway!) I made a slight boo-boo on this one (rectified in No.2 I’m glad to say), those thin strips below the dotted lines at the trailing edge of the wing base are supposed to be folded back over themselves and I completely forgot to do it! Fortunately it doesn’t make a great deal of difference to the wing construction, just makes it slightly stiffer at the trailing edge when you actually follow the instructions!
Photo 3 shows the main components glued onto the wing base – the ribs are in two halves, forward and behind the spar, two are identical but the third is printed with the side edge of the cut out for the ailerons. The main coloured paper skin of the wing is illustrated in Photo 4. Note that thin brown strip at the bottom right, that folds up at right-angles to cover the aileron cut out. The first step is to glue the skin to the underside of the wing base leaving a 2mm space at the trailing edge and butting the aileron strip up against the internal 1mm card former. Of course, I haven’t got that 2mm space because I didn’t fold back that dotted line flap! The front edges of the ribs protrude out from the wing base as shown here in Photo 5 and the paper skin folds around them to create the wing leading edge. Once the lower skin is glued in place there is a small piece of ‘under skin’ which has to be glued on as shown in Photo 6. This covers any gap, which might occur after the separate wing tip upper skins are glued on later. The Ailerons themselves are completely paper made as shown in Photo 7, a simple ‘box’ construction with their own little fold back flap to match the main wing profile. Photos 8 and 9 shows the top skin glued in place with the aileron placed alongside. Note the tiny wire ring bolts glued in place for the eventual rigging of the wings. Each main wing strut location has three holes ‘needled’ into the paper skin – two for the ring bolt attachment points and one for the brass rod of the strut – more on that later!
The upper wing follows the same form of construction except that it’s much longer being a single span wing. This one also has a dihedral element taken from the first rib out from the central hole. These are a double rib composed of two of the basic ribs glued together (you can see the same dihedral kink in the main wing spars). In Photo 10 one of the spars is glued in, the other one is ready to go. Photo 11 shows all the ribs in place (and those fold up trailing edge flaps done properly too!) The multiple ribs around the central hole are quite fiddly to get in as is the brass rod, which sticks through the gap in the hole. That brass rod forms part of the Lewis Gun support later. Photo 12 shows the three wing skins for the upper wing – two outers much like the lower wings with a central joining piece, as there are three sets of skins there are four sets of under-skins – the wing tip ones like those on the lower wings and another two strips for the joins on the centre section. That centre section skin is shown in Photo 13 having its white paper edges painted in, notice the difference between the brown painted edge and the bare paper. Without this edge colouring we’d end up with thin white panel lines all over the model! The centre section is shown glued in position in Photo 14. Actually this photo was taken later as part of No.2’s wing build to show a little alteration I made (No.2’s wing is sitting underneath) but you’ll see why later!
With the basic wing structure complete, it was time to move on to the wing struts. Their component parts are shown in Photo 15. Again these are just paper parts but they are glued together wrapped around a 0.8mm brass rod, which supplies the strength needed to support the upper wing. The struts are shown glued and painted in Photo 16, the edges of the wooden sections were painted in with a mixture of Vallejo Tan Yellow and Mahogany Brown to get a close match to the printed wood effect and the iron ends were painted over with Citadel Bolt Gun Metal acrylic. The brass rods will be trimmed back drastically before fitting into the wings – I left them oversized as convenient handles during painting. The first part of adding the wings is illustrated in Photo 17 as, with the help of those MDF disks again, No.1 becomes an Eindekker! This was the easy part! The Roket card glue was applied to the ends of the spars and all along the inside face of the inner ribs and then the wings were slid into the fuselage slots and pushed up tight to the fuselage. The pile of disks was then added under each wing to support the dihedral and left to dry overnight. You might have noticed she’s lost her wheels again – there’s so much pushing and prodding involved in this section that one of them came loose so I pulled it off and then removed the other one so she could sit flat on the undercarriage frame – much easier/safer.
The following evening was one of absolute hell! If you want to go completely insane build a paper/card biplane – I’ve no idea if there’s a ‘proper’ method of attaching the upper wing, the Polish instructions weren’t particularly helpful as the interpreter program ran back to mummy Polish every other word! I began with shortening the smaller inner or ‘Cabane’ struts, the ones attached to the fuselage first, glued them in and then tried to add in the larger main struts. Get one in place and a cabane falls out. Replace the cabane AND the main strut and add another main and so far so good. Try a third main strut and at least two of the others come adrift! Well you can probably get the idea. My family ancestry may be Westcountry Celt but build one of these things and boy, you get really fluent in Anglo Saxon curses! I was only trying to get eight struts in place, another Polish company makes a card model of the Vickers Vimy Bomber in this same scale – that thing’s got over twenty ruddy struts on it! I’ve since found a few examples of biplane building adjustable jigs on the web, some expensive, some not so – all look extremely inviting at the moment!
Anyway, after a court order for bad language from some neighbour half a mile away, I ended up with the final Photos 18 and 19 – both wings in place and all struts (more or less) in their correct positions. I’m still ploughing through No.2’s wings at the moment, as mentioned earlier there’s a lot more in them to sort out so in the next instalment, another infuriatingly fiddly job is completed – No.1 gets her rigging wires installed.
Until then, as my sanity returns, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

I completely forgot to explain the near disaster that occurred building the lower wings - I'll do that next post!

Excellent work as usual Robin, looking fab....

Regards

Alan

Well done Robin, just gets better and better.

Mark

Many thanks again to Tony, Alan, Phil, Mark and Al, gratefully received as always! You're right about the wing construction Tony, the main difference is the original Pup has eight ribs per wing plus two 'riblets' at the leading edge between each full rib - fortunately in paper world we get away with just four!
So here's all that tricky rigging. Although No.2 is more detailed, I think overall she'll be the easier of the two to fit the rigging onto as all of the attachment points are pre-fitted along with some of the threads attached to the little brass turnbuckles which, together with a little extra help I've been thinking up should mean less having to reach inside the wingspan into awkward places. That's the plan anyway!

Diagram 1 is taken from the instruction book and shows one of the rigging layout drawings. There are five drawings in total, this one with the aircraft ‘ghosted’ out to make the rigging clearer, the same view with the Pup shown in 3D and a set of traditional plan, side and front views. As you can see, things get complicated from here on!
I began with the Cabane strut arrangement, starting off with the front ‘X’ as shown in Photo 2. (Incidentally, on the Vickers armed Pups this 'X' wire was also used to fix the machinegun sight to!) Because of space limitations I didn’t have any attachment points for the Uschi Rigging Thread on the bottom of the Cabane struts (unlike the forthcoming No.2 whose brass replacement struts will have tiny attachment tabs as part of their construction), so I was forced to simply tie off the thread around the bottom of the struts, securing the knots with a drop of super glue. Once the bottom was secured, the thread could then be taken up to the top of the opposite strut where there were little wire ring bolts waiting. This is where it got really fiddly again. That thread is great once its through the ring (except for the umpteen occasions where the thread, having been carefully placed through the ring, stuck to the end of the tweezers which were prodding it further in and pulled out again!) The trouble is, the thread has no ‘body’ to it whatsoever – its as limp as a dead whotsit and anything beyond about a quarter of an inch beyond the tweezers and it just flops about. Although it glues really quickly with super glue, unlike normal cotton thread (ship’s rigging type) it doesn’t seem to stiffen up the end when dipped in the super glue. Eventually the Cabanes were all rigged in and I could then begin on the wings. I began these with the double wires that start in the lower wing surface up by the fuselage and pass back to the rear main strut. The ‘poke in the hole and apply glue’ technique was used for these and once the wing location was dry the thread was taken up and through the upper wing ring bolts and glued in place under slight tension. The rigging was followed through trying to do all the hard to reach inner runs first and working outwards to the easier ones last. The final sections were the double wires running from the front top of the main struts to the forward undercarriage frame and the ‘X’s between the pairs of main struts (not that easy to get at with all the other wires in place. I only had three ‘calamities’ during the rigging – twice on the long wires from the bottom of the main struts to the Cabanes when I accidentally cut the ruddy threads I’d just spent all that time fitting in, whilst trimming off the excess thread, and once on those same wires when I trimmed off the excess and cut through one of the Cabane wires at the same time!
The remaining photos (Photo 3 – 8)are self explanatory really, just lots of different views of the entire rigging in place, note in the later pics the Humbrol acrylic brass paint on the ends of the threads to simulate the turnbuckles. The trouble with the rigging process is you need both hands (more would have been helpful) throughout the entire procedure, and there’s no way to take any photos during it!
Finally, before beginning the far more complicated wings on No.2, here’s that messed up mistake from the very first of No.1’s wings! As shown above, the first step in attaching the wing skins is to glue the underside to the base and once dry, glue the edges of the top skin and the tops of the ribs and spar to pull the paper tight over the wing. Photo 6 in the wing building section from a couple of weeks ago. Well, I really messed it up on the first wing! I glued the underside on perfectly ok, but when I was brushing the paintbrush loaded with the Roket glue along the edge of the top skin, I accidentally went under the paper instead of along the top – the result was that nasty glossy stripe seen along the edge of the wing in Photo 9. I tried wiping it off quickly with a damp tissue but no matter what I did that stripe remained. The final attempt involved painting the entire top surface with a spirit based matt varnish, which, as you can see in this shot, turned everything white, except the ruddy stripe of course! I’ve used that stuff before without this effect, so maybe it reacted with the aerosol matt lacquer I tried on the wing before it? Anyway, that wing was ruined! As I mentioned at the beginning, I took the precaution of scanning the book of parts before I began – for just such an emergency in fact. I was therefore able to print off a replacement wing section and managed to peel off the top skin which is shown here. The new skin was unfortunately slightly different in the shade of brown (and the underside was a deeper cream too) so if you look back through these pics you’ll notice one lower wing is browner than the rest of the plane! Fortunately not too far off though (they used a new tin of dope on that wing!) No.2 has carefully avoided such problems (very carefully!)
In the next instalment, beginning the construction of No.2’s wings (including whistles, bells, wires and pulleys – well, minus the whistles and bells!)

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Brilliant update Robin.

Your detailing, especially in that scale, is amazing.

Really enjoying seeing these come together.

A work of art Robin, incredible work....

Regards

Alan

Photo 29 shows the first of the DecraLed turnbuckle plates in position with the next one on the tip of the lead strip. In reality, these plates were an integral part of the wooden strut brackets – the bottom part was concealed under the fabric skin where it was bolted to the wooden framework whilst the top section visible above the fabric was the anchor point for the turnbuckles and rigging wires. Most of the metal brackets had three anchor points, some had only two and I’ve made up an easier method of fitting them all in at this scale: the long wires are fitted onto these lead plates whilst the shorter wires are connected to a separate plate built into the strut itself – more on that shortly! The holes into the paper skin were made with a small drill bit (0.35mm) followed by two sizes of sewing needles to enlarge the holes up to the size of the brass rods over which the struts are formed which are 0.8mm. The lead plate was itself drilled out to 0.85mm and in Photo 30 you can see the simple method of gluing them in place – a short length of the 0.8mm brass rod is pushed through the plate as shown here, a drop of Roket Card Glue was applied to the hole in the paper skin and the brass rod inserted down into the hole. Then, using tweezers the lead plate was gently pushed down onto the skin and once down flat and aligned, the brass rod was pulled out leaving the plate in place, lined up perfectly with the hole. Photo 31 illustrates the plate now equipped with a pair of 0.5mm brass tube and 0.1mm copper wire turnbuckles, the tails of which are just pushed down into the small holes in the plates (and the paper underneath) and secured with a drop of superglue. Those transparent pulley windows have also been equipped with a frame of DecraLed too.
On to the wooden wing struts now! Photo 32 shows the set of long struts alongside one of No.1’s brass rod and paper originals. These were constructed in exactly the same way as the undercarriage struts, brass micro tubing was threaded through with the 0.8mm brass rod and squeezed out into the aerofoil shape in my DIY version of the “Strutter”. Unlike the slightly rounder undercarriage struts, these are flatter so a little thinner. The ends were ground off with the diamond dust wheel to leave the ‘chamfer’ at each end and the protruding brass rod then bent at an angle so that they will go into the lead plates and paper wings at right angles. Once the shape and size was just right I then used the soldering iron to heat up the ends and fill them with solder, fixing the rods in place and creating a solid end to the strut. The rough solder finish was then ground and filed smooth. You might notice on the left brass strut there are a pair of prototype brackets – these are the other turnbuckle anchors mentioned earlier. Their construction is shown in Photo 33. Using the same diameter micro tubing as used to make the struts themselves, a tiny ring was cut off the end using the safety razor to score the tubing until it just breaks off (a), then the resulting ring was placed over the off cut of 0.8mm rod and squeezed shut around it with long nosed pliers (b), next, the flat part was drilled out with a 0.4mm micro bit (the first couple were 0.35mm holes – guess what happened to the drill bit! ) Finally, the bracket was fitted to the end of the strut and super glued in place after the square corners were first filed down and rounded off a little. As I didn’t have my favourite penny around and just to show the size of these little tweezer hating things (yes I made more than I got to use ) Photo 34 shows one of the little ‘um, things, sitting on my index fingertip. The full set of completed struts is shown in Photo 35, smaller Cabane struts on the left and the longer main wing struts on the right. The sets were first sprayed with Poundland Grey Auto Primer as shown in Photo 36, (fixed into little holes drilled into a bamboo skewer) and then undercoated with Vallejo Tan Yellow Model Color (70.912)(Photo 37) The next technique was a first timer for me, I’ve painted lots of woodgrain effect in my time, always using a two tone system in either acrylics or (much earlier) enamels, using ridiculously small paint brushes to achieve the woodgrain effect. This time however I tried a new way using Vallejo’s own “Wood Grain” 70.828. This is just painted in a thin coat over the Tan Yellow undercoat and then, using a dry ¼ inch flat brush with stiff bristles you just quickly slide the brush over the thin coat where it removes the wood grain paint where the bristles are touching to expose the undercoat below. I must admit I’m very impressed with this Vallejo system and as you can see here in Photo 38, the result is a very convincing wood grain effect (just like it says on the bottle!) Although you can’t really tell here, the brackets on the ends of the struts have been painted with Humbrol acrylic Aluminium – this colour is a dead ringer for the ‘raw’ DecraLed so both plates and brackets blend in together nicely.
My brainwave to help with the fixing of the upper wing after the difficulties experienced with No.1's is shown being marked out in Photo 39. I used one of my printed off spare sheets to cut out the exact copy of the central section of the wing skin and used that to create a clone in Plasticard. Using the paper copy as a template I could then mark and drill the locating holes for the Cabane struts and then, after gluing on their turnbuckles as shown in Photo 40, the Cabanes could then be glued into the fuselage top and their brass rod pins stuck through the plasticard template to keep them in the right position as they dried. The process is seen in operation from the side and rear in Photos 41 and 42.
I’ve only just realised that from here on, most of the pics of both Pups have the engine cowlings in place! So before continuing on with No.2’s wings the next instalment will show the basic paper kit cowling coming together, and then after that, No.2’s infuriatingly difficult multi media version!
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Fantastic update Robin. there looking great.
Ian

Robin

A really treat following along with your builds.

So many varied techniques and ideas - its incredible just how much you are putting into these builds.