1/12 partial F-104G

[Thomas Lund]

On 5/26/2022 at 11:26 AM, LSP_Kevin said:

Nice to see this one back, Thomas - and you along with it!

 

Kev

 

Thanks mate - limited time leads me to build rather than surf the web :-)

 

I am somewhat behind in showing off what I've actually done lately... promise I will get to that

[Thomas Lund]

Ok, slow - very slow - but steady progress on this one.

 

Last I posted I had had some shapes to vacuform over 3D printed by a mate. I did a little playing around with the windscreen so see what it would look like with framing on

 

 

The windscreen was not correct, because I could not do what I wanted in the 3D software, so it was done with styrene and filler.  Eventually I got to the point where I was happy with the shape and they were ready for another mate that would vacuform for me. Don't be fooled by the slightly ragged color of these plugs - they were sanded with high gain sandpaper to a baby-bottom finish, but here and there i went through the top coat.

 

 

So off they went and just yesterday I got them back... but not all was well. The first vacuform pull was great

 

 

But during the second one the plugs couldn't handle the heat and deformed. Maybe it was not such a good idea to 3D print shapes to vacuform over...

 

 

 

Oh well - I got ONE good canopy so I decided to do some testing on the various processes on the melted one and keep the good one for the final try. So naturally looking at the following pictures it doesn't look too good...

 

First - fitting vacuform parts to the fuselage

 

 

Went allright, so I decided to try and do the frames. These are to be made in some thing metal plate I got hold of - embrossing foil is the direct translation, maybe the right name is something else in English. Anyway, I traced the frames on a tape covering of the windscreen, removed the tape and cut out the shape. This was mounted on a piece of these metal plates - and scanned for later use

 

 

I cut out the shape and test mounted it on the (bad) windscreen. Just test mounted because I need to work out how to make the foil less shiny and I want to add some rivets to it before I commit to glue...

 

 

 

 

 

[brahman104]

Nice work Thomas! I had the same issue when I used 3D printed parts on my B-17 for vac forming. I ended up using them as a master to cast a copy in hydrocal (or any other plaster based product) and used that for the pull. While it doesn't end up as smooth, due to the porous nature, it won't melt the master and the result can be polished out. Bit late for now I know, but next project.....

 

You should be able to knock down the shine on the foil using steel (or wire) wool. 

 

Looks great though, cool project!

 

Craig

[Thomas Lund]

21 hours ago, brahman104 said:

 

You should be able to knock down the shine on the foil using steel (or wire) wool. 

 

 

Thanks Craig - will try that