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#1
02-23-2009, 12:56 PM
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Westland Lysander Mk II (Mały Modelarz 12/97)
First of all, just a short hello to all those who missed my post at the welcome desk. I'm 37, Polish, living in Poland (living in Warsaw). I've introduced myself shortly at the welcome desk, but here's some more, as this is required to bring you into the context of why THIS model is so important to me. See, this is my first model after at least 15 years of a break... And also a beginning of a new model collection after destruction of the old one (due to my own stupidity).
My model-making began when I was around 10 (the beginning of eighties, communist Poland), when my dad bought me a plastic model of Ilyushin IL-2M3 I believe. It was really hard to get then, as was everything "luxurious" in a communist country. I discovered paper models soonafter: Mały Modelarz. They were much easier to buy and much cheaper, which was important as well. When me and my folks left for Canada in 1986 (where we've stayed for 4 years), I "imported" my collection of Mały Modelarz with me, and spent many long evenings after high school and college classes making both paper and plastic models. I liked paper models much more, though. They were much more of a challenge, they took much longer to build, they required more imagination and... they did not have to be painted (which was always stressful for me, due to the fact that I'm partially colorblind, the typical problems with red spectrum hehe). When I came back to Poland in 1990, I went to the uni and continued making models, focusing fully on paper ones. Fly Model was one of the first private companies on the market then, and I remember making Pfeil, and then spending about 2 months on the DO-217. I've had around 20-30 models ready, when I moved into my own apartment. And this is when my model-making stopped. I got married, started working, and simply had no time. All I did was admire the models that were hanged under the ceiling. And so my life went by, I got divorced a couple of years later, but still didn't feel like coming back to the hobby. The worst thing happened around 2004. My new girlfriend moved in then (a young lass, 12 years younger than me, a big mistake hehe), and she "ordered" a renovation of the room the models were in. I tried to be nice (I've "imported" the girl from another town, so I felt I needed to do everything possible to make her feel good in Warsaw), so... I threw away ALL my models! Duh... Can't believe I was that stupid... Last year I finally decided to make time for the old hobby, and started on the Lysander. Why Lysander? Well, I always had a warm feeling for that plane, actually I don't know why. I just really really like the way it looks. I wanted the model to be perfect, but I had no preparation for model-making. All my old resources were long-time-gone, and so were most of my skills. So, here goes the report. This is not a step-by-step report, unfortunately. I have not been keeping up with imaging every step of the way. So most of the photos show the complete model. First of all, this is how it all began:  As you can see my workplace is not as tidy as I wish it would be. This will change with time I hope, when I get all my resources together. Well, the first element I decided to make different than in the original model, was the engine. I didn't want it to be a "black hole engine", as there are no engine details whatsoever in this model. So I got some black screws and short nails, and made a very simple imitation of an engine. Next time I'll go for a more detailed representation, but this was all I could get myself to do after 15 years of stiff fingers hehehehe.   I'll continue this in my next post, as I don't know the size limits on this forum... 
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#2
02-23-2009, 01:14 PM
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The only other thing that was made not out of paper in the engine section was the exhaust pipe. It was simply cut from a piece of elastic pipe for aerating the aquarium (I'm a fishkeeper as well...), painted black using acrylic paint, and glued on using crazy glue.
After completing the engine section, I went on to make the wheels and wheel nacelles. The wheels were made in a traditional fashion. Cardboard layers glued together and worked over using sandpaper. I'm getting ready-made wheels for my next models though, this is too much work and the result is never satisfactory! The nacelles in this model are terrible in my humble opinion. Original nacelles are much shorter in the front, from what I've seen in the photos. Shaping them is also lots of hard work, and involved lots of bookbinder's glue (this is what I'm using, it's excellent, in Polish called: Klej Introligatorski, it's like your typical wood glue, white in color, elastic after binding, but this one binds very quickly and very well). I was also ambitious here and decided to stick in some... LED lamps, which were to be wired to a small battery in the fuselage. But I gave up on the idea later on, since I hate soldering!  After the wheel nacelles, I worked on the wings. No challenges here, everything fit fine.  After completing the wings, I've started on the fuselage: the cockpit first. Nothing fancy here, except for the fact I've started using grey acrylic paint extensively (for the pilot's seat for example).  This part was not too challenging, either. Then I connected the wheel nacelles to the cockpit.  I made the front section of the canopy then, and decided to cut the right section to make it removable. Then came the second part of the cockpit: the gunner's seat.  Nothing fancy here, except for the gun. Instead of wire, I used a Q-tip as the barrel, which made the gun a bit "fat", but so what... The remaining part of the gun was made of a thin iron sheat. And the cartridge clips were made using paper punch on thin cardboard to make them perfectly round. They were then painted silver (acrylic paint again). Also somewhere around this time I've decided to repaint the whole model. I just didn't like the original colors. So I used a sharp knife to cut along all the lines, and then painted the paper using acrylic paint. Came out quite nice, especially the wings (shown later on) and the fabric-covered part of the fuselage. Well, then came the end-part of the fuselage, the tail fins, and the back wheel:  The only fancy thing here is the back wheel. I got a chest out of my wardrobe containing some old LEGO sets. And found a perfect tire. It was just a bit too large, so I stuck it onto my milling machine (don't know if the term is correct: it's like a small, high-speed drill, ladies sometimes use these for their nails), and used sandpaper to make the tire a bit smaller. Then I cut a part of a regular pencil, stuck the tire onto the pencil, glued painted pieces of paper on both sides and had a nice wheel (rotating, too). The end-part of the report in my third post (again, don't know about size limits here).
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#3
02-23-2009, 01:25 PM
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Nice build - I like your use of other materials.
Did you have any problems with painting the card; warping or sagging. As I am thinking of trying it out on one of my paper models? Keep up the good work Tim
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#4
02-23-2009, 01:26 PM
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OK, here's the final part.
The most difficult thing was, as noted in other cases with this model, connecting the wings and the fuselage. I decided to do the same thing Chris did (in this thread): split the middle section of the canopy into three pieces. I used both super-glue (crazy-glue), and a two-ingredient resin glue for this purpose and finally made it. Here you can see the final result:  The final elements were wing supports (a bit short and very hard to shape correctly), the antenna, the back canopy and final painting touches. The back canopy, however, was another ambitious project of mine. I've decided to make it movable:   This made it very difficult to assemble. First of all, I've shaped the canopy using two wires on each end (so that it stays in the right shape). I also used a Q-tip for the two guidages/rails. Unfortunately, this caused some crazy glue to get onto the transparent parts... Well, nobody's perfect... Finally, I used two pieces of wire as guides on both sides of the fuselage, and painted them as well (since the Q-tip internal diameter is a bit larger than the wire diameter, the paint is not removed when moving the canopy). The canopy doesn't fit as well as it would, if it was glued on, but I'm still proud of that concept! Also, concerning final touches, I've decided to re-make all the RAF markings myself. I drew them using Inkscape open source software, then exported to PDF, and printed using a color ink printer. Et voila! They look great, really! Well, last but not least, a series of photos of the complete model. The only thing left to do is spray the whole thing using spray-varnish (the one used to protect photos), but that's when the varnish reaches me (ordered it yesterday).        And also had some fun with lighting (used my HTC Universal as a moving light source):   Hope you like it! Comments are very welcome!
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#5
02-23-2009, 01:31 PM
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#6
02-23-2009, 01:41 PM
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I know some guys get great wheels using cardboard, but they mount it on a rotary tool for sanding.
Glen just made some [at least think that's what he did]: http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/o...hellcat-7.html Normally I stay away from painting, I'm terrible at it and could never bring back any detail. Nice job though! I'm originally from Kielce by the way, though we swapped some dates. I was born when you went to Canada and I went to Canada when you went back to Poland :D Roughly speaking anyway.
__________________
- Kuba
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#7
02-23-2009, 01:45 PM
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tonid,
Nice work on that - even more so after such a long break from modeling. Welcome back to the modeling world!
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#8
02-23-2009, 01:48 PM
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#9
02-23-2009, 01:57 PM
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Congratulations on this model! I like your sliding back canopy, it really adds a nice touch to the model. The printing on my Lysander was off a bit and I had toyed with the idea of painting the model. Glad to see it can be done.
Your redone RAF marking look fantastic! Are they decals or printed on thin paper? Chris
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#10
02-23-2009, 02:05 PM
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