Welsh Models 757 Iron Maiden

[tomprobert]

Top drawer modelling going on here, Kev - I have one of these in the stash but I must confess I'm leaning more towards the Zvezda offering after seeing this!

 

Tom

[LSP_Kevin]

17 minutes ago, tomprobert said:

Top drawer modelling going on here, Kev - I have one of these in the stash but I must confess I'm leaning more towards the Zvezda offering after seeing this!

 

Tom

 

That's a good call if you can find one!

 

Kev

[LSP_Kevin]

That said, you may actually have the newer, revised release, Tom. This one is the original, whereas the revised version has resin wings, engines, and landing gear, and a corrected fuselage shape.

 

Kev

[LSP_Kevin]

I've started working on the resin engines from Bra.Z, and I have say that they're a bit underwhelming. They're old-school resin products with soft details and some pretty substantial casting blocks:

 

 

I've already removed them from the pair on the right. To be fair, this set has been around for a very long time now, and probably can be forgiven for not being up to today's standards. It's just a shame that they were never improved or redone as 3D parts.

 

The disappointment continues with the fit of the two components, which is average at best, and actually varies between the two sets. I did manage to get them together though, with the help of some black CA:

 

 

And here they are after the joins were taped off and vigorously sanded back:

 

 

The most frustrating discovery, however, is that the moulded-on pylons have no hope of mating to the Welsh Models wing:

 

 

The kit part is on the left, and shows the extent of the curvature required for even a moderate fit. I have two options here: ditch the Bra.Z parts and just go with the equally underwhelming kit times, or mix'n'match the two by using the rear section of the kit pylon to replace the flat Bra.Z part. I'm leaning towards the latter, mainly because I paid for these engines, and I'm determined not to have wasted my money!

 

I predict more filling and sanding in my future...

 

Kev

[tomprobert]

I have the exact same boxing as you, Kev. 
 

Re. the pylons, I’d suggest a small shim of plastic card to build up the rear height a little, and sand the forward part slightly to blend the shape. That might solve your problem. 
 

Looking at both engines, I’d bet my bottom dollar the Braz engines are a slightly more accurate representation of the real thing… 

[LSP_Kevin]

1 hour ago, tomprobert said:

Re. the pylons, I’d suggest a small shim of plastic card to build up the rear height a little, and sand the forward part slightly to blend the shape.

 

I wish it was that simple, Tom! Adding more plastic at the rear will only exacerbate the already problematic upward tilt of the engines. It's difficult to see the problem without showing the parts in context, but impossible to photograph this arrangement without 4 sets of hands! But basically, if I attempt to match the forward contour of the pylons to the wings, then the engines end up with a nearly 30° upward tilt, with the pylon pointing towards the floor at a reciprocal angle. And if I try to match the rear contours, they're just about flat, but the wing leading edge curves up and away from the flat pylon by about 2mm. If I average them out by getting the middle section lined up, then I end up with smaller versions of both problems. Building the rear of the pylon up to meet the wing in that scenario would make it comically large. I figure the kit pylon is already shaped to handle those contours, and will allow me to focus on getting the forward part sorted out. If I can manage to tape it all together so it holds in place long enough, I'll try to snap some photos.

 

Of course, I could cut and swap the entire pylon from each engine, but if I screw that up, I'm left without any engines at all!

 

Anyway, there's still time before I commit to anything.

 

Kev

[tomprobert]

Ah - I see. I’ll be keen to see how you overcome this as one day I’ll no doubt be facing the same problem…

 

You'll crack it, of that I’m sure. 

[LSP_Kevin]

While it might not look like it, quite a lot of work has gone into this one since the last update. Mostly filling, sanding, and priming! The cabin windows are mostly sorted now:

 

 

I've also finished with the wing box on the underside:

 

 

And that leaves just the awful forward section of the wing roots to take care of:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a reminder of what the real thing looks like:

 

 

I don't plan to replicate this on the model, as it's just too much work, and perhaps not even really possible. Instead, I just plan to bulk out the area with some Milliput, such that it will take with wing root light and not look silly.

 

The engines on this livery are blue, like so:

 

 

So I used the kit engines as a testbed, and sprayed some Tamiya X-4 blue enamel to see what it looks like:

 

 

Close, and perhaps good enough, but certainly not an exact match. The real colour seems slightly lighter, and perhaps a touch more towards purple - but I don't really have much of an eye for these things. I've got plenty of time to experiment, however!

 

That's all for now. Thanks as always for checking in!

 

Kev

[Iain]

That looks great Kev - going to be a great canvas for the paint once you've sorted the wing roots...

 

That blue looks pretty good to my eyes - at least allowing for variation between screens - and objects photographed in differing lights.

 

Iain

[LSP_Kevin]

Thanks, Iain. I'll definitely be sleeping on the colour, and if it looks close enough tomorrow, then it'll do. I should compare the paint to other photos of the aircraft, too, and not rely on just one - even though it's a great close-up shot!

 

The other main area still to be tackled is modifying the engine pylons so that they'll fit the wings. The plan at this stage is still to graft the rear of the kit pylons to the Bra.Z engines, which I can do now that I've finally got the engines themselves sorted out. Lots of filling, scribing, and sanding there too!

 

Kev

[LSP_Ray]

I think the blue is pretty darn close myself. It looks like it appears darker due to scale effect? (Colors look darker on smaller objects) So if you want to take that in account you could lighten it a tad.

[LSP_Kevin]

Thanks, Ray. It's not something I intend to give myself a headache over, and I do agree that it's probably close enough. I just hope the yellow decal goes down over the top OK!

 

Kev

[LSP_Ron]

I'd say the blue is a go

[LSP_Kevin]

So, with the Minicraft build on hiatus for a few days while I let the clear coats harden as much as possible, I thought I'd press on with this one, as it stills need a lot of work. While there are still some other areas that need attention, the last major construction hurdle with this build is getting the engine pylons to fit. In an earlier post I discussed swapping the rear of the Bra.Z pylons with those from the kit engines, but the more I looked at this as a possible solution, the less of a solution it appeared to be. And then it suddenly struck me that the major issue I was facing was that the angle of incidence of the wings was too high, meaning that the pylons are at completely the wrong angle to the wings in order to achieve the correct sit.

 

Armed with this knowledge, and discounting the Welsh pylons as completely inadequate in terms of overall shape, I set about modifying the Bra.Z pylons to suit. Firstly, they're much too short, so I decided the best approach was to cut the rear sections off, and place them separately in the correct positions on the wings:

 

 

This left the engine pod with very little contact with the wing surface, so I elected to drill and pin them:

 

 

Apologies for my awful rescribing! My favourite scribing tool is now a bit worn out, and no longer producing clean lines. I'm currently in the market for some new ones, and happy to take recommendations!

 

With the engines now dry-fitted on their pins, you can see the respective gaps between the rear of the engines and rear section of the pylons:

 

 

The oddest thing about this is that one of the gaps is noticeably larger than the other! So either the Bra.Z pylons are different lengths left to right, or the Welsh wings are different in chord left to right. Either way, I now have substantial gaps to fill.

 

Here's what it looks like right way up:

 

 

These mods should work, but won't do anything to improve the "757-ish" look of the finished model. I am left with a bit of a conundrum, though. From a construction point of view, the easiest approach here is to glue the engines in place, break out the Milliput, and fill and blend everything together. However, since the engines need to be blue, painting them properly will be much easier before they're attached to the model. The usual "have it both ways" solution here would be to lay down some self-adhesive foil where the pylons sit, temporarily glue the engines in place, fill-blend-sand-etc, and then remove them for painting. I'm just not sure if this approach will work with regard to filling the large empty spaces in the pylons themselves. I think it might be better to build those sections out with styrene or lumps of resin (from old casting blocks).

 

I guess I can but try. Stay tuned!

Kev

[LSP_Ray]

Geez, good luck!