Saro London - 1:72

[Siwi]

There is already a build report started on the 1:100 version of this aircraft with historical background, so I won't reinterate that information here. Suffice to say, that this aircraft is of local interest to me as it was both designed and used in RAF service near where I live.


I requested the 1:72 version, and will be building it with my usual modifications to include an interior and extra details.


The model comes on 9 sheets (including the cover and one page of instructions. It should be reasonably clear to an experienced modeller how everything goes together, and there are not really any very difficult parts in the default kit.


All the outside parts are printed on 120gsm paper, with the pdf set to print at 99% in order to fit on A4 size paper. Formers are printed on standard copy paper and will be glued to layers of thick paper. I start by cutting out all the windows whilst the parts are still on the 'sprues':




Apart from the cockpit canopy, the windows are partly rectangular and some are portholes. These are glazed using double-sided tape and a thin clear plastic film.







Because I need to include interior details, I cut some of the formers with larger internal holes and colour silver with a marker:




Piece by piece the fuselage is built up. There is a former marker 'I' which is the lower wing spar and must be attached before the fuselage sections are closed.





The model parts only include some glue tabs, but I use my own throughout in order to get a clean flush joint.

[gomidefilho]

Nice see another thread but I not see the images, please review you share permissions on google images album.

[Siwi]

Try again with photos. Strange that they don't show, because it's the same album as the MiG and the Hellcat which are still visible in their respective threads...
Also, a slight error above -I actually printed onto thick 160gsm paper.

[Rata]

Good luck Siwi. Clear glazing too: nice!

[Draco]

I'm sharing information with Swi about the inside of the plane and his desire to do it. So far he is leaving me with an open mouth for his attention for the detail.

[Siwi]

I don't have the willpower to link to all the photos right now, but since yesterday I completed the upper fuselage including nose and tail, and glued some of the hull pieces into place - not all, as I need to build an interior first. There was a slight fit issue which caused the stern of the plane to be skewed slightly to starboard, but the designer has made an alteration to the adjacent part to fix this. It isn't too noticible once the formers and the hull plates are attached.


I have to go back to work tomorrow after several days of public holiday to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee, so I won't make quite so fast progress for a few days now.

[Siwi]

Pictures of the build as of yesterday. Cutting the canopy and sticking the glazing with double-sided tape was quite a delicate operation, I think I will need some CA glue to get it to stay 'shut'. The central hull is being built as seperate stages and will be glued last when the interior is done.

[Draco]

Love it!
I'm eager to see the inside!

[Siwi]

In the last two days I made some more progress. My plan for this build is to work from the largest componants to the smallest, and also in order of robustness so that I'm not having to handle the model a lot with tiny, fragile details. I broke off small bits of the MiG-21, sometimes the same parts multiple times, so I hope not to repeat that.


As the upper fuselage was complete where we left off, I decided to add the corrugations that run along the outside of it. This was a construction method that Saro had decided upon on the grounds that it avoided having to machine cutouts in the internal ribs to incorporate these strengthening longerons inside the fuselage. Vaguely similar to the use of corrugated metal by Junkers, except the Saro technique was in order to join thin 'planks' at these points as opposed to having a large sheet of metal that was flat welded or riveted. Needless to say, such protrusions did not do anything for 'aero' in an machine that was not fast to begin with - and it was also neccessary to pay close attention to making them watertight.


I simply ruled and cut off approx 1mm strips from the edges of a parts sheet on 160gsm. These are slightly overscale, but it saved the frustration of having to deal with impossibly thin strips that curled and refused to glue in straight lines. They also help hide the joins between fuselage sections and the thick lines where they have been drawn on the template. As with everything else, they received the aluminium effect from a silver marker. It will be neccesary to retouch the roundals and serial number at a later point...










In the evening light this all looks quite convincing:

[Siwi]

After this I moved on to the top wing. The formers were stuck to 1.5mm mount board, my sturdy-but-still-cut-able material of choice. You get a front and back spar, and five ribs which curiously are positioned in pairs at the ends of this part, rather than distributed equally. I assume this is because these points are where the struts will be positioned when they come to be added. The technique here is cutting slots and inserting the parts in the indicated position, in fact no glue was required on the supplied parts. In order to get nice right angles I added some internal rectangles of mount board to even up the corners.




At this point I made a slightly silly error - after assembling the right (starboard) wing set of parts, I put together the left (port) wing with the printed sides the same way round, carefully matching the part numbers...and ended up with two starboard wings. It was not until I came to part W7 and it was upside-down I realised the mistake and had to do surgery, since I had already glued the extra rectangles. Luckily it was as simple as swapping the ends around. I asked the designer to add a note to check against W7 and perhaps reverse the spars to make it idiot-proof.


In the interests of rivet-counting I made some soft creases in the wing skin to suggest the doped fabric over the internal ribs. It's subtle but I hope will be seen when silver and varnish are applied. I also burnished the top surface to help the joint at the tip.





On the subject of rivet counting the other modification needed at this point was to get out my sewing kit and add the bracing wires so that they could be threaded through before the wing was closed. The London uses a typical arrangement of Xs between the struts so two threads would be needed from four holes next to where the struts would be mounted. The position of two are marked but I did have to guess the others next to the engines. A couple of threads in and I got the hang of making a knot, threading a fine needle and pulling through the holes. When the lower wing is complete I can thread them through there and stiffen the threads with varnish or glue.






After this, and with the ailerons cut out for relief, the wing was assembled. I used double-sided tape to attach the former assembly to avoid making an indentation, and bubble wrap to keep the shape of the skin.