1/250 airship DELAG Sachsen...

[Kugelfang]

The final phase of my zeppelin project is building the little beasty. I'm not an experienced card modeler and this is my first design so there are bound to be some bumps in the road. I read Thorsten's very impressive L-45 build log last night and almost decided not to do a build log! But all journeys start with single steps.

Nevertheless, here we go. Hopefully having a build log will keep me motivated to continue with the project. I love figuring out HOW to do something. But once I figure it out, actually DOING it is a whole different story! So I'm approaching the build as a learning process, not necessarily aimed at having a great model at the end.

After printing out my prototype, the first thing I noticed is that the printed version is much less rich in color than the design when viewed on screen. Noted for future reference.

Following the instructions I started with the forward section. My initial design did not include tabs on the envelope sections but after a suggestion in the beta builder thread I added them. The first step was to close all the sections by gluing the tabs to the corresponding opposite edge. I'm not fond of the look of overlapped tabs (reinforced butt joints would look better) but since the joints will be mostly hidden by another part later in the build they may turn out to be OK. Then I added the connecting rings to the forward edge of each section. I was then able to connect e.04 to e.03 to e.02 and finally e.01 in descending order—from back to front. That allowed access to the attachment areas from both front and back for all but the last, most forward part.

The only thing I would have done differently at this point is to NOT glue e.01 (the very front of the nose) together to form a cone before attaching it to the other parts. Since the fit was off a bit (mostly due to my sloppy cutting work I suspect) I had to split the glued seam and trim a little bit to reduce the diameter of the nose cone to get a better match with part e.02. Though the alignment is now off a bit.

The pictures show how things stand right now.


--jeff

[Kugelfang]

Had a bit of a SNAFU when I found that the internal formers were too large. But, I've made a revision, reprinted and am back on track. Not that there's much to see at this point. Ya gotta love card modeling in allowing you to try and try again until you get it right!

--jeff

[whulsey]

You got that reprint part right, not like breaking, or losing a part, in the middle of the night on a 80 dollar Tamiya kit.

[bgt01]

Great start, Jeff. Just keep going. You'll get a real feel for it.

[Don Boose]

All the work so far looks good, and I appreciate the detailed narrative of the construction and the overcoming of obstacles.

Don

[Kugelfang]

Thanks for the encouragement. It really does help motivate. I finished the cylinders over the weekend. Not much different from the one pictured in the previous post so I didn't take any pictures.

Since these are mostly closed structures with only a small opening providing internal access, I found it a bit difficult gluing the second former. The process that worked best for me was to form the cylinder (I cut off the tabs and went back to using reinforced butt joints). Then I glued the bottom tab of the first former to the inside bottom surface of the cylinder (the tab is marked 'b'). After letting that dry securely (a good 15-20 minutes) I worked my way from the bottom, alternating left, right, left, right and glued the tabs until the bottom half of the former was attached to the cylinder. I then gently pressed the top half of the former into the cylinder ensuring that the tabs were pointed into it. I pushed it further into the cylinder than it needed to be so I had access to the inside surfaces of the cyliner. Next, I spread glue on the inside surface of the cylinder where the upper tabs would be in their final position. Then, placing the cylinder former side down on the table I used a bamboo skewer to push the top half of the former back into place and gently pushed the tabs against the inside glued surface of the cylinder. I then repeated the process for the second former. Once I got the process down it went quite quickly.

My plan is to construct the rear portions of the envelope today.

--jeff

[elliott]

Great description of your cnstruction method Jeff. I can only suggest that a few annotated pictures to accompany the narrative would have reduced the mental gymnastics on my part to follow along. I forgot to *ow* stretch before exercising my *ow* brain.

[Kugelfang]

I had a couple of hours to work on the zep over the weekend. I assembled the rear portions of the envelope and learned an important design lesson. I'm using 65# card stock for the construction. While this weight of paper worked fine for the circular formers, it doesn't seem to be strong enough to prevent bowing when under stress. I suspect they should be thicker or laminated. While I don't think this will be a huge problem on this model I'll keep it in mind for future designs. You can see the bowing in the attached pictures.

I'm now to the step where I need to start attaching these rear sections to the central triangular keel so I can install the horizontal stabilizers. And... I discovered the keel is too wide to fit the cutouts. I think the best solution here is to reprint a reduced keel to fit the openings rather than try to enlarge the opening in the various assembled parts. Three steps forwards, two steps back. But progress nevertheless.

I have to wonder, though, if this assembly is more complicated than it needs to be. Is it really necessary to have the rear conical sections of the envelope split in half and have the stabilizers sandwiched between them? Or would single conical pieces have provided enough strength that the stabilizers could have simply been attached to the outside surfaces? Hmmm....

--jeff

[Kugelfang]

More progress on the Sachsen. Shrank the keel so that it fits through the openings in the formers. It's snug, but it fits. Missileer, who is working on a beta build suggested using donuts to strengthen the formers which I think is an excellent idea. If I build another of these I'll certainly go that route.

I think it's beginning to look more interesting now that the parts are coming together as a whole.

My daily surprise awaited me when I took the horizontal stabilizers out from under the book I was using to press them flat while gluing. They're printed out on 65# card, folded in half and laminated. These pieces have been under a HEAVY book for two days. When I first uncovered them they were perfectly flat. Within two minutes they had warped considerably! My inexperience is showing... will they flatten out again? Granted, it's a bit colder in the house today than it has been but the degree of warping really surprised me. I guess I could laminate them to chipboard but I would have thought that doubled 65# would have been sturdy enough to prevent this.

Any tips for successful lamination?

Thanks,

--jeff

[rjm]

Jeff, I printed out the whole thing, almost, page 18 won't print, it shuts down my Adobe Acrobat Reader. Any ideas. Maybe it's just my old system.

Cheers, Bob