Newbie question on parts assembly

[smp]

Thanks for the kind words Mike
This is my second card model and 1/72 is really too small for my skill and experience, not to mention eyes, but I really wanted the Short. I have built a lot of 1/72 plastic WWI models and so rigging is something I know well. I have met my limit here with the struts however. 1/72 paper struts are not going to work for me here. I will have to resort to carving my own wooden ones, out of bamboo most likely. Perhaps with more experience I will master small struts and tiny tubes.
sp

[Burning Beard]

Try painting the struts with super glue, it more or less turns the paper to dern near plastic.
The only down side to it is it will make the paper rough and shiny, however since you only have to paint one side, do it on the inside and glue the halves together.

Mike

[smp]

I hadn't thought of that. I will play around and see what happens. I can always make my own if I can't get this to work. Thanks for the tip Mike.
sp

[Lex]

Do not be afraid to use non-paper parts. Small parts can also be painted over entirely even if you can't get an exact colour match. Superglue mess up the printed colour on the print side too, so you can't avoid painting over whatever part that is being treated with it.

[smp]

I found I needed to add the tail float in order to fully rig the tail. That has some very tiny paper struts which I coated with CA. I will give them a try in a little bit as soon as I make up the float itself which is a pretty complex fold for my newbie fingers.
sp

[Gene K]

Error - deleted.

[smp]

Mike and Lex


I tried the superglue on paper struts trick and it worked quite well on the tiny struts supporting the tail float.






Thanks so much for the tips and encouragement. I'll be trying the CA on paper struts technique on the cabanes next. Cool feeling when you get paper to do something most folks think it can't.

[Lex]

Nice going. Superglue makes the paper more brittle so handle those with a little care from now on, they snap instead of bend. Also on the struts, they don't appear 'clean' enough, painting over all of them would be better.

I would also replace the rigging cables with metal wires the next time round. Much easier to paint (and one should paint them) and never loses tension. A slack rigging is worse than no rigging.

[smp]

They are painted on the non printed side and edges. I need to scrape them a bit. The CA seems to have plasticized the paper fuzz from the original cut. I have never been able to work with any form of metal wire for rigging. It always kinks which is even worse to me than slack.
sp

[dhanners]

Very nice job so far! Great-looking work for a modeler of any skill level.