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1/32 Matchbox PK-505 Tiger Moth Floatplane G-AIVW

Archimedes

By Archimedes
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Archimedes

Archimedes

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Hi Everyone,

 

To get over my rigging worries (chiefly driven by the horror of potentially stuffing up one of my WNW kits) I decided to have a go at building this bad boy:

pmnWG1Hyj

 

Due to my abiding love of aircraft wearing clown shoes I specifically wanted to build that sweet little machine shown in the bottom left corner of the box top: G-AIVW. 
 

pmDU0IrSj

 

I bought this particular example from a car boot sale for the princely sum of £4.50 so I am not too concerned if I make a mess. The idea is for me to get a good sense of how to rig better.  The kit was already started when I got it as the previous owner had a go at painting the cockpit area and assembling the seats to the floor of it.


In preparation I had a good look at the impressive in-progress builds by Max Williams (Mozart) and Alain Gadbois as well as a great deal of actual Tiger Moth photos. Let’s see how I got on then….

 

As with most modellers’ common practice I started with….the floats!:rolleyes: 

 

I began by glueing the two floats together, shooting some Tamiya gray primer over them and rubbing down some imperfections. At the same time I reshaped the cleats at the front of the float as they are very much over-scale. 
poBbboY2j

There is not much in the way of detail here…

pn5tE0k2j

 

When one compares it to the mechanism at the back end of any kind of real float that controls the water rudders it is clear it needs to be better.

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as the primary purpose of this build was to learn to improve my rigging skills at first I thought “I’ll just thin the ridiculously over-scale thickness water rudders down. 
pn3Xzbmjj


Errr no. :unsure:

 

That will not do. At this point I could hear the ghostly voice of my late lamented grandfather saying “We’ll have to ginger this one up a bit lad” so I cut off the kit water rudders and headed for the lathe (actually this lathe came to the bench as it is a weeny Emco Unimat 3) :D. I chucked a piece of brass bar, turned down a length and cut two short sections from it.

pnjH2aDpj

 

I raided the spares box for some brass sheet and some 0.1 mm evergreen stock and cobbled this together:pn90hzdgj

 

So a fun start! More to follow soon. 
 

Best regards,

Paul

 

Edited by Archimedes
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Archimedes

Archimedes

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Dammit Kevin!

 

Now I am embarrassed: I forgot that I also looked hard at your build which is great! I had not seen an air ambulance like that before.   You can get it over the line I am sure. Weirdly all of the Tiger Moth builds I have looked at have not yet been finished.  Maybe we should have an unofficial group “Let’s finish these Moths off” build? Mine has been going along very slowly for a while but I have begun to pick up a bit of pace which I’ll post now that I have my new compressor and can post pics here. :D

 

Totally impressed by your air ambulance!
 

More to follow soon. 

 

Best regards

Paul

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Archimedes

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Thanks for the kind comments guys...baby steps for me here. 

 

So, more progress was made on the floats. I noticed when looking at photos of floatplanes that often the floats had raised seams running longitudinally along the top. This Tiger Moth G-AIVW is no different. It also has some raised seams running along the inside edge of each float before the step.  I found two glorious images from the early to mid sixties (judging by the Commer van in the picture) when it was painted in a glowing all over yellow scheme (photos attributed) which show these clearly.

pn0YjDgcj

pnTHNen7j

 

So, out came a ruler, a pencil, a roll of kabuki tape and a razor saw.

pmTJv6CEj

That took care of slots for seams for the tops of the floats.  The curved splash seams required a different approach.  

 

At first I cut some kabuki tape in a fair curve and laid down several layers as a guide. this didn't work too well.  Then I broke out a woodworking thickness gauge and used its guide to strike a line very faintly.  I then kept going over that line until I had a reasonable groove. I reapplied the tape and then deepened and widened it with a dental scaler until it was roughly the same depth and width as the straight grooves on the tops of the floats. I then inserted 0.1 mm thick evergreen strip into the grooves. This was the result:

pohLsWJ3j

 

There is an ugly gap showing where the scribing ent wrong which will be filled in later.  But overall a reasonably successful result even if the 'seams' are a bit overscale. 

 

Finally I attached my water rudder on one float. It is a bit of artistic licence but I have seen so many mechanisms to control them (and could not find a definitive shot of a Tiger Moth's water rudders close up) that I decided that a mechanically credible assembly would be the way I would go.  This was the result:

pmfyrKoVj

So now control horns are there to attach the 'cables' to when it comes to rigging. 

 

The next problem to solve was how to best represent the access panels for the sections within the float.  The best shot I could find of these was on the flyby below which shows G-AIVW some time later in its career (mid 1970's?) when it is in red and silver but the floats remain in their original yellow.  This shot shows the access panels between the top surface seams:

popyVvyDj

 

More to follow on the solution for that.

 

Best regards,

Paul

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46 minutes ago, scvrobeson said:

Great start!  A small square of plastic should emulate those access panels pretty easily.

 

 

 

Matt 

Thanks Matt. Its not the black rectangles I was referring to which I think are step areas for the crew - it is the circles along the length between the seams.  I agree however that the step areas would be best represented by an evergreen rectangle.

 

Thank you for the kind words.  Let's see if I can get it all the way home....

 

Best regards,

Paul

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Archimedes

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Hi all, Tonight’s update;

 

I broke out the punches and some 0.1 mm Evergreen sheet ( good recommendation from Matt btw). This is the result;

pn2lT2jJj

 

The floats are not actually connected at this point, I had actually just dry fitted the assembly.  I have however attached both of the water rudders with thin CA glue utilising spare PE parts that I cannibalised from a 1/350 IJN Mikasa. The water rudders are not therefore a truly accurate representation of those on G-AIVW (as I have come up dry on pictures that have enough detail), but rather are meant to be a more convincing representation of the mechanism used to raise, lower and steer them than the kit moulding. 
 

In the background you can also see my first experimental attempts at redoing the cockpit framing but I’ll post on that another time.
 

More to follow over the weekend!

 

Best regards,

Paul

 

 

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Hi Everyone,

 

Thanks as ever for the comments!  Alain; your build has really helped me in planning the cockpit reconstruction.  So now to the first bit of rigging.  This build is for me to experiment with this and so I planned to use a variety of materials from the beginning.  The first piece of rigging is the horizontal cross bracing  between the floats. The only good photo I can can find of this is this picture:

pnvikn7Rj

 

In the interests of structural rigidity and to try out a new material for me I elected to utilize 0.09 gauge guitar string for this cross brace. I have read a great deal about how difficult this is to work with but maybe because I have the right tools I was fine cutting two pieces to just over length. I glued the cross braces first and left those to set while in a lego brick fixture to hold the floats level. I drilled out holes in the intersection between the float and cross brace and installed the wires with CA gel.  I didn’t add any detail to represent turnbuckles as they are not obvious on the image above. The result is below. The wire looks a bit overscale to my eye comparing it to the photo above but the so do the added top and splash seams. That said, I am enjoying the progress and I was relieved to find working with metal wire was easier than I had anticipated! 
 

pmTdpz5Zj

The other thing I noticed after taking this photo is that the port water rudder hasn’t sat down properly on its mount  in the way yet starboard one has so that will be redone.  I have set them both to port as, on the finished aircraft I will also have the air rudder set to port and the elevators set down to give the model more visual interest.  I also noticed how wobbly the seams are but they will have to stay (I’ll blame that on the riveter ;)). Next up will be the braces and rigging between the fuselage and the floats. As everyone will have guessed, I am treating the kit instructions only as someone else’s opinion! :D

 

Best regards,

Paul

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