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Scratchbuilt Hawker Sea Hawk


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I'm pitching into this GB with one of my all-time favourite aircraft, surely one of the prettiest 1950's jet fighters, the Hawker Sea Hawk. I'm lucky to live only 40-odd miles from the FAA museum at Yeovilton, so I have already taken quite a few pics of the aircraft on the Carrier Deck exhibition there, as well as rounded up a fair bit from on-line sources. With several injection moulded kits already available in 48th and 72nd scale, there are plenty of reviews and add-on products to study. I also picked up a couple of CD copies of some of AP4328, the air publication refering to the aircraft, as well as a fair few magazine articles. My main reference is the excellent 4+ publication, which has some splendid drawings covering all the main versions and their differences, stores, and some marking information.

 

My intention is to model the airframe in Rhinoceros, a 3D CAD design program, them prepare some vacform tools to mould the major components in polystyrene sheet. The rest of the model will develop as I progress!

 

As a test, I drew up the later circular section drop tanks and their wing pylon, prepared a CAD model of the mould and cut this on a CNC machine. The mould material is called 'Metapor', and it is used industrially for making vacform tools. It is a porous aluminium resin mix, and is hard enough to hold a good edge, will take the elevated temperatures needed to form the plastic, and self-vents, so no need to drill lots of tiny holes in it!

 

Anyway, it worked!!

 

SeaHawk_first_droptank_CAD.jpg

 

SeaHawk_first_droptank_mould.jpg

 

SeaHawk_first_droptank.jpg

 

So, no excuses now, I just have to crack on....

 

Looking forward to seeing some fantastic projects in this group build,

 

Tim P

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Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant - on all levels! :)

 

Will you be selling the vac parts when done?

 

I sooooo want a Sea Hawk... :wub:

 

Iain

 

I was thinking the exact same thing!

 

Great work Tim.

 

Kev

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3D CAD, CNC machines - wow, Heavy metal at work :bow:

 

Where are the good old days, when a man just had it's styrene, putty and a sanding tool? :D

These are modern times, indeed. Just waiting to see the first 3D-printed LSP model to appear at the forum (yes, I know about the Hind over there at Shapeways) B)

 

Keep on runnig the project! :goodjob:

- dutik

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Just waiting to see the first 3D-printed LSP model to appear at the forum (yes, I know about the Hind over there at Shapeways) B)

 

Actually, Eric's master for his upcoming V1 kit is exactly that! Of course, it's a prototype for the resin version, so perhaps not exactly what you were referring to dutik.

 

Kev

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Thanks guys for the comments. I hope I keep up a head of steam enough to finish it! Martin, you beat me to it ref the Espor. I've not tried that yet, we use the Metapor block material and I have kept a few offcuts for just such a project as this. Ref Rhino, download the demo and have a play with it. I'm hoping to qualify as an official trainer in Rhino later in the year, if I can get the funds together to get to Barcelona for a few days! But I've been using it for 12 years or more, so I'd be happy to help you if I can.

 

Ref selling copies, well, lets see if I finish it first! But if it works out, I'm sure we can come to some arrangement....

 

Onwards!

 

Tim

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That's a kind offer Tim.

I could only do anything with Rhino if I had a book or a starter of some kind. Making the first lines are usually the problem for me.

And scaling, doing stuff the right size as I would intuitively with a pencil.

 

Having no access to a CNC machine means I have to stick with the chisels for now, so the pourable Espor sounds too good to be true. I wonder if that's what John Adams uses as he implied in "another place" that he didn't lots of tiny lil' 'oles in his moulds.

 

 

Cheers,

Martin

Edited by GuildAero
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Martin, the tutorials that come with the Rhino installation will get you a good way to understanding how it works. The help files are brilliant too, almost all the commands have little mini videos to quickly indicate what is going on. Start small, get to know how the snaps function works, give it a go. We usually find modellers 'get it' really quickly, because it works the way they think. Any Rhino questions, pm me.

 

Tim

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