Wing Staining & Rigging

Work on the wings continues...

Since the last post, I've finished the staining of the wing panels and then put a few coats of a semi-gloss water-based polyurethane.  This is to seal up the wood as well as to add some depth to the finish.  Overall, I am pretty happy with the way the finish turned out and it makes a fantastic contract to the white metal and copper parts.  Here is an image of one of the stained and finished lower wing panels:

 It did take quite a while to get the stain and poly on there, since it all had to be brushed on by hand.  I feel that the results were worth it, though.

 The next step in the process was to add the adhesive copper tape strips to the ends of the ribs at the trailing edge.  These are to simulate the bands of metal that clamped on the trailing edge on the real plane.  This was pretty easy, since the copper tape is very malleable, and can be smoothed down with a fingernail and the edges burnished smooth with some tweezers.

 Here is a photo of the aileron  edge with tape applied.  I really like the way the copper looks against the stained wood.







Next, I pulled out a few of the white metal parts and had a go at polishing them up a bit.  They come with a fairly matte finish and with some imperfections in the casting.  I bit of work with various sanding sticks and they shine up nicely.  Here you can see the aileron control horns attached to the ailerons, and also the fake hinges (made of strip brass) sticking off of the back of the parts.

Now, I am on to the rigging step, where all the turnbuckles and wires that maintain the internal wing structure are put into place.  I'm finding that some of my experience on the Armed Virginia Sloop model is coming in handy, in that I can reuse some of the rigging techniques that I learned on that project.  Here is a pic of the first part that has been completed:

This rigging stuff, while not too complicated, is a bit fiddly and generally slow-going.  I'm expecting that I'll probably spend the next couple of weeks on this, and will have another update once that is complete.  Stay tuned until then!

Wings Done!

Another long lost update to the blog!  Although this time I have a better excuse.  I haven't updated before now because everything that I have been doing in between this and the last post has been pretty boring.  Not that it's been boring to work on, per se, but rather it's almost the exact same tasks I've already blogged about, just more so.  So rather than post about how I've sanded ANOTHER 40 ribs, I figured I'd just wait until there was something more interesting to see.

I've finally finished the main construction on the four wing panels.  This includes most all of the wooden parts, and just a few metal bits.  The only metal parts that are on there at the moment are either structural (like the trailing edge wire) or would be too tricky to install later in the construction process (like the little eyelets in the middle areas).  So with that taken care of, I can finally apply the stain and polyurethane to the wings in preparation for further construction.  Below you can see the completed wing panels.

Once the stain and poly are applied, I'll be able to rig the internal wires on the wings and apply various other braces and supports.  Here is a snapshot of the wing panels hung up to dry after being stained.

Stay tuned for more action-packed adventure! 

Long Lost Update...

 At long last, I'm updating the blog again.  In the interim, I spent a week in Hawaii, played through Fallout: New Vegas, and have just been busy with life in general. But last weekend, I finally got back to working on the model again.  Here is where things stand thus far...

I've finished the wood work on one of the upper wing panels.  This includes both the wing panel and the aileron.  While the penal isn't DONE yet, it's reached the point that I'll need to stain and seal it, so I decided it would probably be best if I built all the wing panels and THEN did the staining and sealing.  Once that is done, there are a variety of metal and string parts that go on the wings as well.

As you can see in the various photos here, I'm making slow but steady progress.

Starting on the next wing panel, I'm taking a bit from what I learned from the first and making sure I have much of the sanding and fitting done beforehand.  This means that I've got to do all the monotonous filing first, but it should make assembly go much faster overall.

Here is a photo of a before and after wing rib.  You can see how I'm also sanding off the blackening on the edges of the cutouts.  This blackening is from the laser cutting of the parts, and I feel that removing it will add a bit to the scale fidelity of the model.  The drawback is that it's a royal pain in the butt, and some of these wing ribs are pretty fragile and are easily broken while sanding.  Hooray for super glue!

Stay tuned for further adventures in modeling!

Curtis Jenny Progress

Here is a little update on what I've been up to.  I've started a new project.  This time it is a wooden/metal kit instead of plastic.  It is a World War I era biplane, and will end up as a static display (non flying) model with all the internal details visible.

This one is both similar and quite different from the wooden ship that I previously built.  This project has generally the same raw materials:  laser-cut wood, stock strip wood, cast white metal, etc.  The big difference this time around is that I'm not following a course on the projects construction.  This just means that I have to follow the somewhat rough instructions that come with the model itself and do much more deciphering of the sheet plans.  This isn't a bad thing, just a different challenge.

So, I've decided to start with one of the top wing panels, in order to go through most of it's construction, and learn what I can in the process.  In theory, this should confine all my screw-ups to just one wing panel, making for less fixing later and smoother/faster construction of the other three panels.  With that said, here are some photos of my progress thus far:

Initial wing ribs layout.

Photo-etched fittings for later wire rigging.

Bending the wing tip rib.

More wing tip construction.

With the thin plywood leading edge cap strip.

Progress has been a bit slow so far, as I've not had as much free time as I would like.  But, stay tuned for more progress, some wood stain color tests and further adventures in modeling!

GT-R Complete & Photos

I've wrapped up the build of the Tamiya GT-R kit.  By the time I was finishing up this kit, I was remembering why is was that I tried a wooden kit in the first place.  I get worn out on all the painting, the frustrations of various paint types not agreeing with one another, and the fragility of decals.  Although at least with this project, I took away a few valuable lessons that I can keep in mind for future similar projects.  Here are a few tidbits to remember:

- If it is going to be shiny, use lacquer.  Tamiya's gloss acrylics just never behave when airbrushed.
- Don't use the microSOL (aka Decal Melter) until the decal is in it's final place and already partly dry.
- If some of it will be painted over, remove the underlying chrome plating first, otherwise, the paint will just chip off, despite using primer.
- Give the aforementioned lacquer PLENTY of time to dry before putting masking tape on it.  Probably should wait 24 hours before trying.
- One should probably order a second set of decals for a project like this, as some are sure to be damaged.  Alternately, perhaps one could scan them, and buy a self-print decal sheet so one could make replacements (although I'm not sure about the quality difference here)
- Third party racing harness kits, while pretty cool, might not be worth the effort unless the car is an open wheel type.

Anyhow, with this project completed, I spent a few minutes photographing but this car and the last project (WWII BMW r75 motorcycle).  I recently purchased a new lens, which has some macro capabilities, and tried that out on this shoot.  I am pretty pleased with the results.  Here are a few images of the completed models:

The full galleries are online and can be reached by either following the links on the right sidebar (new feature!) or by clicking the links below:

http://www.hello-napalm.com/photo_cols/bmwr75/
http://www.hello-napalm.com/photo_cols/calsonicgtr/

Also, as you may recall, at the beginning of this project, I set up a web cam that would allow me to both stream images to a web page, as well as do a bit of a timelapse thing of the entire build.  As a result of that, I've collected the images, put them together and made a fancy little video.  Check it out (click on the link under the video to see the larger version):


Tamiya Build Time Lapse from Nathan Fariss on Vimeo.

Next up:  Model Airways' Curtis 'Jenny' wooden plane.  Stay tuned for more model adventures!

Model Desk Renovation & Tamiya GT-R

Since the last post, I've done a few things to make my workspace a bit better.

First I built myself a little shelf, so that I could have better access to my various paints, glues and other toxic chemicals.  I just picked up a small sheet of thin plywood at Home Depot as well as some little 1"x1"x12" blocks of pine.  I worked up some quick plans, drew them out onto the plywood, busted out the jigsaw and started cutting.  After some gluing, drilling, a few wood screws, and a couple coats of gray spray paint, I now have a nice little shelf for my desk (you can also see here the monitor for the cam/computer setup I mentioned in the previous post):

Next, after knocking over my bottle of high-power plastic cement, and melting all the lines off the middle of my cutting mat, I thought it might be a good idea to make sure that doesn't happen again.  Especially since this was not the first time I had knocked this same bottle over.  After rummaging around a bit, I found some nice wood I had left over from the base I made for the Panzer project (red oak, I think).  I cut a couple squares of this, glued them together, and then, using a hole saw, drilled a hole just a bit bigger than the glue bottle.  A couple coats of polyurethane, and now I've got a little block that keeps my glue bottle from falling over and doesn't look too terrible.

Before I jumped into another long-term wooden project, I decided to make one more plastic kit.  I settled on the Tamiya Calsonic Impul GT-R kit that I bought a while back, thinking it would be fairly quick and easy, since it doesn't have an engine and only a rudimentary interior.  I had intended to build it straight from the box, but I couldn't resist adding an third party racing harness kit.  Here you can see the completed interior, as well as the mostly-built exterior shell:

I should wrap this project up in the next few weeks, and then I'll get some proper photographs of both this completed model and the motorcycle model that I finished before this one.  Stay tuned!

Desk Cam!

Just a quick update to mention that I've started working on a new model, and that I've gotten a bit of a webcam working.

The new model is a Tamiya Calsonic Impul GT-R.  I figured this would be a fairly quick and easy one, that would let me make something shiny and work out all the kinks in my new camera/computer setup before I jump into a long-term project.

Speaking of camera/computer setup, I've gotten a webcam/time-lapse thing working.  I pulled an old computer out of the closet, got a cheap half-broken LCD monitor from a local used gear shop, and bought a decent webcam at Best Buy.  I got the computer setup with winXP and a little free program called Dorgem that will drive the camera and allows me to both shoot an image every 30 seconds and save that to a file as well as shoot an image every two minutes and upload that to my website.  Both of these are dependent on movement being detected in the frame, so it should avoid long, boring periods of my desk at night.  The camera is pointing straight down at the center area of my desk, so you should be able to see what I'm working on, but can't really see if I'm present in the area. 

So, yeah, if you want to see what I'm up to, model wise, have a peak at the new camera page here:

New DeskCam Fanciness!!

Note that while a new image is uploaded to the server every two minutes while the camera is running, the page itself does not manually refresh.  If you want to get the latest and greatest image, you'll need to reload the page.

Also, the image has a date and time in the upper left corner.  If that isn't a current (US Pacific time zone) time, then I've either got the camera turned off, or nothing is happening, so the camera has stopped uploading images.

Party on.