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1/32 Short Stirling


tomprobert

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On 11/9/2023 at 4:26 PM, Alain Gadbois said:

Beautiful work on the flaps, and what a perfect fit!

I am still impressed by the massive bomb bay, stretching along almost the whole fuselage!

 

Alain

 

Hi Alain,

 

Yes it’s huge - the only problem was due to the centre beams running down the length of the main bay it couldn’t carry the larger bombs, meaning the Lanc and Halifax were left to do the really heavy lifting. Saying that, a Stirling could carry a hefty 14,000lbs. 
 

Our resident @wunwinglow has sent me a set of his excellent 3D printed 500lb British bombs so she’ll be fully loaded when she’s finished. I also scratchbuilt some incendiary carriers when I did the ID Models Lancaster years ago so I may well mix it up a little…

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Having returned from Telford (which was absolutely fantastic!) I've been all enthused/inspired and have made some more progress on the Stirling...

 

The elevators were my next job - the molded hinge lines are often quite poor vacs such as these so I removed them when I made the stabilisers and planned to try to improve them a little. This also gives the advantage of being able to model them drooped like they usually were when the Stirling was at rest. Thankfully, I saved myself a bit of bother when I cut them away from the sabilisers and remembered to label which part of non-descript plastic was which...

 

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These were then sanded to reduce the thickness of the trailing edges and ensure the fit to the sabilisers was as good as it could be - I made a basic spar for each to get the thickness at the leading edges correct with the reduced taper as they progress outwards towards the tips. These were then attached to the stabilisers. 

 

The surface detailing is somewhat lacking, but looking at pictures of the real thing there is a very subtle fabric effect on the control surfaces, so I decided to do a little experiment. The ribs produce a very slightly raised line, with the unsupported fabric spaces between then sagging slightly. Therefore, I carefully cut the areas in between where the ribs would be with masking tape, and stuck these to the upper and lower surfaces:

 

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Three coats of primer were then applied:

 

53333877155_5a99cd0eb2_b.jpg

 

...before removing the taped areas to leave very subtle raised ribs:

 

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These will need a very gentle sanding once the primer has cured for a couple of days, but I'm confident that under paint it will have a really good effect. Far better than anything I could have scribed, anyway! With this success I think I'll do the same for the ailerons and rudder...

 

Next up will making the fairing around the mid-upper:

 

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Until next time,

Tom

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Tom - this is so fun to watch.   I love scratch building efforts.  Man - that is one large model.  with a 100 foot win span, that works out to be just short of a full meter.  How can you work on such a monster without knocking it against something?  I remember with my 1/18 P-38  (34.5 inch wingspan), I could not find a place to put it down much less work on it.  Thankfully the outer wing sections could be removed. 

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