Ki-44 Shoki in 1/33rd by GPM

[birder]

Wow you did great again on that, there’s a GPM on my list, their Corsair….will I ever get to it? Who knows ha

[T haf]

Thank you for posting some of the process with the canopy. Of all of my skills, canopies and mold forming needs the most work. Can you tell me a bit more in detail what you were doing with the wood? how did you get the shaping right for some of those wooden pieces that are no on an edge. how did you clean up and smooth out the mold so that the imperfections didn't show up on the acetate? When ever I've done a canopy its ended up too big, or just plain wrong. Granted, all of my builds are scratch, so, If you have any advice for getting an accurate canopy without the paper template I would be grateful for the advice!

-Tyler

[Don Boose]

It certainly turned out beautifully, Dan!

I enjoyed the entire build thread and look forward to your next project.

Don

[Erik Zwaan]

Well done Dan! Congratulations on this very fine result. And like Don says, looking forward to your next project .

Erik

[rmks2000]

Beautiful! Well done.

[smithdr]

Thanks ever so much Ray, Greg, Isaac, Glen, Tyler, Don (it's your fault), Erik and Bob! Means a lot.


Tyler: I just used super glue to tack the paper parts to some thin plywood to make things easier to handle. The little balsa triangles are just made by eye and are there to help maintain the general shape of the paper so it won't sag too much. I find that the mold doesn't need to fit perfectly as the thin plastic has some "give" when you smoosh it down onto the fuselage (especially the rear sliding section). The larger wooden sheets on the ends are just there to hold the plaster. I make the plaster about the thickness of thick molasses and it dries pretty fast. If there are imperfections on the bottom side (like I had big globs) that doesn't bother me since if the mold is a little longer on the sides than it needs to be, that will all get sorted when you add the paper frames for the "final" dimension. Lastly...I just sand the plaster plug very gently with fine sand paper. You can see that I had some gauges that needed to be filled with putty and re-sanded too. My canopy did NOT come out completely smooth. I dipped it into the floor wax to help hide some of that. I bet if you put a thin layer of putty over the whole mold and sanded that smooth, you'd get even better results. I know Glen uses a type of sculpting clay for his plugs and I bet they could be made much smoother and nicer than my plaster. I hope this helps a bit. We are all still learning and my next one should be better still!


Thanks again, folks...Dan

[MacSongLi]

She looks fantastic with the open canopy. Very well done, Dan.

Congratulations!

Gary