Orlik 1/33 Boulton Paul Defiant Mk.1 cockpit build

[SJPONeill]

The horror, the horror of close-up photography...every smear, ever blemish emphasised tenfold...tip for young players: make sure you leave a 1mm lip along the rear side of the cockpit wall and do not fit the greeble boxes flush with the edge. You wouldn't know it from the instructions but if you do as I have done here there is no mating surface for the rear edge of the cockpit wall with the rear cockpit bulkhead. I managed to used thickened Uhu glue to secure the join but if you do the same make sure that the outer surface of the cockpit wall remains smooth as this is what the fuselage skin will attach to...

How the instrument panel is meant to fit is vague at best in the instructions: I have had to use 4-ply (4 x .5mm layers) spacers to keep it in place...

The joys of hand-drawn paper models...there is a quite a large gap at the top of the cockpit coaming where the two sidewalls should meet...not really a biggie though as the fuselage skin will cover this...Once the cockpit sidewall was firmly in place, I reached down with some glue on a toothpick and glued the edge of the lower side console into place against the cockpit sidewall...

Started to cut out and prepare the turret parts. You will see that I have offset the front and back parts of N1/N2 at the top so that there will be an overlapped joined when the two ended are connected; I forgot to do this with N6/N7 below and may have to do them again with an overlap if my first crack at them doesn't work...

This is the mount and control box for the turret guns...I have added a base and sidewalls from card so that there is a better mating surface for the joins and also to provide a more rigid surface for the folds to bend against...

The folded mount/control box...

[SJPONeill]

To apply the glue to smaller parts, I'm using a bit of scrap card as a palette and a tooth pick as an applicator...

Wrested with the turret ring last night...I suppose that it would be possible to roll the side into a perfect circle and there are those modellers that could do so in their sleep - but I'm not one of them. The trick is to join the narrow mating surface of the edge of the ring side to the ring itself...

With all modesty, I think that this may fall into the realm of what may be referred to as 'real modelling'...certainly I felt quite chuffed as it seemed to work...

The ring on the left is already glued in place and the one on the right has just been started. I used superglue for a stronger and more reliable join that I thought I could get with the water-based Uhu glue...the proof of the pudding will be when I remove the pins tonight...

[Gixergs]

Very interesting thread of a beautiful plane. I don't know if this will be any interest www.mapsl.co.uk the Hendon Defiant was restored just up the road from me at Rochester Airport, unfortunately I couldn't get up to see her.

[SJPONeill]

That is useful, thanks...got some ideas for a display base from the one they have the fuselage on during the rebuild...

[Don Boose]

Still tracking this great build, Simon!

Don

[SJPONeill]

Thanks, Don, I really appreciate the moral support with this one!

Tada!!

The pin and glue experiment seems to have worked, certainly as a proof of concept idea...I thought that I had taken a photograph of both rings after I unpinned them but if I did, it was lost when I cleared the card importing the other photos...
After much trial and error, cussin' and hair-wrenching, I worked out that the lower ring is meant to fit inside the upper ring - the whole assembly will be too tall otherwise...using the edge of a scalpel blade I was able to shoehorn the inner ring into the outer ring...If you look at the outside ring in my post from yesterday you will see that the inner surface only extends halfway down: the inner ring butts up against this small lip (you wouldn't know this from the instruction drawings just much experimentation).

This is the turret inverted with the inner ring sitting in place...if I had preapred the ring more by rolling it prior it would probably be rounder...

This is the gun mount. I printed and laminated another copy of the mount itself (the vertical semi-round plate) to green up the inner surface which otherwise would show a blank white surface inside the turret, It is quite annoying (although not difficult) to have to do this when so much design effort is expended on two sided parts in other areas that are not visible as the build progresses. As designed the parts only allow the guns to be fitted in a horizontal elevation. It would not be too hard to modify these parts to allow some elevation...

This is the turret base - the dark area is the gunners seat...

...with what I think are ammunition containers fitted in place, beside the turret right way up with the gun mount fitted. The apparatus on top of the gun mount is the sight mount.

An idea of how it all starts to come together...much later last night, I decided to cut out the fuselage skin. Once cut, it sat on the table staring at me, until I just had to see how it looked in place. One thing lead to another, and, nek minnit, it was attached above the instrument panel!

From the front

From the rear

[Don Boose]

Good so far. Now, will the fuselage skin come together at the bottom? The tension mounts!

Don

[SJPONeill]

It looks like it will, Don, but as it has the cut outs and blank areas for the wings that I am not building this time around, I may just extend the sides straight down like a skirt and incorporate this into some sort of support frame/base....

[elliott]

I'm liking the way you describe problems you encounter and how you solve them. Your pictures are a great help in understanding what is going on.

[SJPONeill]

I will keep Don in suspense for another night or two and leave any further work on the fuselage sides until I know how the clear parts will go...

A bit of a slow night last night...was after 8-30 by the time I finished watering etc and I was a bit knackered...

I did make the effort though to mount the templates for the clear parts on to one of my sheets of clear plastic so that it would have all night to cure. Thought that gluing would be the best way of attaching the templates so that there would be no movement during the cutting process. I used a bog-standard PVA glue because my plan (yet to be proved cunning or 'totherwise) is to cut out the parts and them soak them in water to remove the paper templates...

I also mounted these templates for the shape of the turret to some card...I may have to make a lot more of these and assemble them into a star or even a solid form over which to shape the clear part...

Also ready to go under the knife are the inner and outer frames for the clear parts. Strangely (or perhaps not considering the erratic design philosophy in some parts of the model), there is no interior green part of the inside of the turret - but there is untold detail for the lower part of the turret that would never be seen!
Cutting will commence during our two hours of Coro tonight...