LSP_Kevin Posted February 25, 2017 Share Posted February 25, 2017 I'm full of unbounded admiration for what you're achieving with this build, Craig! Thanks for all the inspiration. Kev brahman104 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brahman104 Posted February 25, 2017 Author Share Posted February 25, 2017 I'm full of unbounded admiration for what you're achieving with this build, Craig! Thanks for all the inspiration. Kev Always a pleasure Kev! Even though I do have some fancy tools (like my printer), metal and shapes like what I have done with the majority of the bay has been with nothing more than a knife, beading tool and a set of long nose pliers. Yes the toys can make your life easier, but I always think of what Peter has been been able to do with simple hand tools. I think everyone should have a go with metal! Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClumsyDude Posted February 25, 2017 Share Posted February 25, 2017 Craig, this just gets better and better. Great stuff! Jim brahman104 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JayW Posted March 2, 2017 Share Posted March 2, 2017 Dang it's like looking at a real live restoration. brahman104 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brahman104 Posted March 2, 2017 Author Share Posted March 2, 2017 Thanks very much Jim and Jay. I'm hoping to continue this kind of work into the rear fuselage. It's an awful lot of work, but I think the results are worth it. More progress soon I hope! Craig ClumsyDude 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hacker Posted March 15, 2017 Share Posted March 15, 2017 l was just thinking about this the other day.l came across my 1/72 academy kit of the B. l looked at the rear thinking about how l would go about adding detail when l thought of this build. Press on Mac Duff as it will be awesome when it is done Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richdlc Posted March 15, 2017 Share Posted March 15, 2017 even though I doubt I'll ever be tempted to build another Fortress myself, I love looking at this thread! Fantastic work again.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brahman104 Posted March 19, 2017 Author Share Posted March 19, 2017 l was just thinking about this the other day.l came across my 1/72 academy kit of the B. l looked at the rear thinking about how l would go about adding detail when l thought of this build. Press on Mac Duff as it will be awesome when it is done Well when you figure it out please feel free to let me know! I'm always open to suggestion and I actually don't really know what I'm doing..... even though I doubt I'll ever be tempted to build another Fortress myself, I love looking at this thread! Fantastic work again.. Come on Rich, you know you want to......... Well it's been a few weeks and not really much earth shattering progress to show, but I'm chipping away at a few things so I figured I should share them. When I left last time I was just about to cut into the nose section to make room to work in there once the fuselage halves went together. That's obviously not going to happen for a while but it did allow me to start forming the soundproofing in there. I then added I beams to act as "thicknessers" for the soundproofing. This also had the added advantage of stiffening up the nose, so the final shape should now be a bit more predictable for the purposes of attaching the nosecone. Then it was a case of adding rows of putty and smoothing them out to hopefully look like the segmented stitched sections. This will take more work, but it's the base that's important at the moment. It's starting to get heavy now too.... perhaps this will be a world first case of a "nose-sitter!" I then went and ran 20km as I'm also training for an ultra-marathon in Canada in August. North Queensland is not only extremely hot at the moment, but also not raining like it should be, except from my face..... Eventually, I'll make some brass templates for the window shapes and clean them up properly, but for now they'll do. I also tried to nail the colour of the soundproofing, which seems somewhat difficult. I feel that's close enough for my purposes I finally pulled my finger out and skinned the inside of the left fuselage half, as I need to start the ribbing work. Given that I'm about to do an awful lot of riveting work (no pun intended) with the rear fuselage details, I was looking for a tool that might save me a little time, so I came up with this.... In my mind it was going to be awesome and reduce the time taken to rivet significantly. Unfortunately, there were some ever so slight differences in the heights of each spike, so despite careful application of hand pressure, the rivets would not come out equal. There was also too much flex (I even tried another variation having longer stems for each to make them more rigid) and the patterns came out rubbish. I have resigned myself to doing them individually, although Peter's excellent template does do a fantastic job.... Live and learn! It's one thing to make ribs for each side in the same fashion as the bomb bay, but there's some main bulkheads in the rear section that will need to be made in one piece, so I was in need of some accurate templates now that I had skinned the rear section. I remembered Paul Budzik's video on using hydrocal to take the impression of the half, so I thought I'd give it a go. Obviously, this is a little different to his approach as I'm doing the whole half of each side, but I think I'll be able to use it to derive the longeron shapes/sizes if I'm clever about it too. So first of all, I applied bulk tape to protect the litho. Then, and not like in Paul's video, I mixed up some hydrocal (my first time using it) and poured it in. I can see Paul rolling his eyes at my amateurish approach.......... Oh no! I hear you say. But doesn't it get hot? Could it potentially melt the fuselage? All good questions my friends which didn't actually occur to me until after I'd poured it..... hmmmm. Luckily, even though it got pretty warm, it was nowhere near the 260 degrees required to melt ABS and I'm thinking that with the litho in there it also acted as a barrier for the plastic. In any case the fuselage is still alive and well and no distortion....... Lucky me! Anyway, there's a bit of everything going on here. If the casting works out okay, I should be able to forge ahead with the rear fuselage details, although there's an awful lot of metal work to do in there! Till next time, Craig TorbenD, Dany Boy, Shawn M and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClumsyDude Posted March 19, 2017 Share Posted March 19, 2017 Mate, what an update ... looking really nice in the nose section. Where in FNQ are you? Must be fun training for endurance stuff up there this time of year, I used to do long triathlons before the kids arrived, and did eight months out of Singapore - nothing like the humidity in the tropics. Cheers Jim brahman104 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted March 19, 2017 Share Posted March 19, 2017 Amazing stuff, Craig - on both the modelling and marathon fronts! Kev brahman104 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brahman104 Posted March 20, 2017 Author Share Posted March 20, 2017 Mate, what an update ... looking really nice in the nose section. Where in FNQ are you? Must be fun training for endurance stuff up there this time of year, I used to do long triathlons before the kids arrived, and did eight months out of Singapore - nothing like the humidity in the tropics. Cheers Jim Thanks Jim, I'm hoping the nose will come out okay, as Terry said, this is where it all started for me, so I want to do it justice. Having said that I'm really looking forward to a lot of metal work in the rear, which hopefully will come out looking okay. Time will tell of course! Yes indeed, the joys of the tropics. I'm in Townsville and our wet season has been particularly rubbish this year. Lots of build up, no rain. 8 months is Singapore? That would have been fun, I love that place! Amazing stuff, Craig - on both the modelling and marathon fronts! Kev Thanks Kev! I'm not sure which one I'll need more luck with. I'm guessing they don't call it the "Canadian Death Race" for nothing. Perhaps if I don't make it, I can leave this to Peter to finish this one off for me I've just been reading the latest copy of AIR modeller and marvelling at your Airacobra too, splendid work Sir! Luckily, I managed to pop the set hydrocal out of the fuselage without destroying anything. Now I just need to figure out how to clean it up and trim it back to the correct dimensions....... hmmm, may have to watch Paul's video again! Cheers, Craig ClumsyDude and LSP_Kevin 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brahman104 Posted March 22, 2017 Author Share Posted March 22, 2017 So I did watch Paul's video again and everything became a little clearer..... First of all, the hydrocal should be mixed to a consistency that allows you to build it up, much like a soft plasticine, instead of me just filling the whole section with a watery mess and wait for it to dry. Obviously, that will work, but only for doing a proper female type mould. I needed to get accurate shapes for three main bulkheads which will be prominent in the rear fuselage. So, mixing a newer, thicker batch, I piled three lumps up over where the join lines for the litho sheets were. I was hoping that once dry, I could just pop it off the litho sheet without it sticking too much. In retrospect, I should have built up some plasticine "dams" to hold the hydrocal in place, as I'd still made it a little runny, but I managed to get the above done okay. Happily, the now dry hydrocal casts did just pop neatly off the litho, leaving a beautiful clean impression of the shape for me to trace. The join gaps between the litho plates gave me an easy line to sand back to. This is all I had to clean up after dumping wet hydrocal straight onto the surface. A bit of steel wool and about 5 minutes of work and it was all gone Cleaned up, you can see they fit very nicely back into position, so hopefully that means the formers have the best chance of success too. The hardest bit was trying to get things nice and neat in line with the fuselage half, so each side could be glued together to form the whole. Once again, I think it's pretty close. Doesn't look pretty, but it's the outer shape that's important! And here's all three, ready for tracing onto litho to make the compartment bulkheads. Having never done this before I can see the definite benefits of using this method, and might I say I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. It's (relatively) straight forward once you get the hang of it and it does give you a beautifully replicated shape to work with. All the remaining ribs in between will be rolled to approximate shape and glued in on each side. Thanks for looking and I should have some more progress soon. Cheers, Craig Derek B 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DonH Posted March 22, 2017 Share Posted March 22, 2017 Nice update and some interesting techniques that are useful to know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kagemusha Posted March 22, 2017 Share Posted March 22, 2017 Wonderful, utterly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Barry Posted March 22, 2017 Share Posted March 22, 2017 Wow! This is a lot to catch up with here Craig (me being new and all). Excellent work and BOLD. You have many great ideas going on. I was ALSO impressed to see you are also working on your athletic dreams. I try to balance by geeky bench time with training for bike races and triathlons and think they compliment each other. Pushing it/ Suffering in the toil and exploring your boundaries.... and after all the hard work.....pride. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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