OTDAEABT Contest - Maly Modelarz Ki-61

[shrike]

Oooooh gotta get me one of those then!


Ron, I hope you're keeping track of all the acronyms here. I can see adding them as awards over there on the left between the nick and the avatar.

"member, OAF, CRAP, ODD ETC" very Jack Chalker

[Darwin]

Now for the dreaded spinner....an acorn shaped piece formed from a conic section topped by a petal-formed saxon helmet. (Or is it Norman? An expert on 1066 I'm not.) Since Idaho is not particularly famed for its stands of oak trees, even during the fourth season (road repair), I have to cave and make it from paper. I start with fabricating the conic section and cutting out the petal-formed cap. I use the burnishing tool to work the cap into close to its final shape, then with a small strip of scrap as a joiner, glue together the base, as shown in the first photo below. I then wad up a piece of tissue paper into roughly the shape and size of the cap (second photo). I then liberally smear the tissue with white glue, and tamp the tissue down into the cap. I then massage down the petals onto the tissue paper core, working the cap until the glue has fairly well set and the petal pieces all meet together at a single point.

[Darwin]

When the cap is dry, I then dig out as much as the tissue as I think I can get away with without disturbing the glued-together petals (first photo below). I work the shape of the cap base until it is close to being round, then coat the inside of the cap with thin CA. The completed cap is shown in the second photo. When dry, I then glue the cap onto the conic section (third photo). When completely dry (and not tonight, thank you), I will lightly sand down the spinner and paint with acrylic paint, then put on the prop blades and attach to the nose section of the fuselage.

[Darwin]

I probably should heed the advice that, when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging. My attempts to match the fuselage color seem to be in that category. I still have hopes that maybe the hobby shop might have some colors with a better match. Anyway, I intend taking a swing into town today to find out. The spinner got finished, and the fuselage assembly is in one piece. There are still some fiddly bits left, but those will be left to the end. Wings next, second tail feathers, third undercarriage, and at the end all the little fiddly stuff that gets knocked off at least a half dozen times due to handling incidents.

[Golden Bear]

An unrequested "how I do it" for these petal things... I thought that I did a tutorial on this once. I'm certain that I posted pictures somewhere once.

Take the cut out flat part, and use a dowel to roll the petals to the correct shape/curve, all as identical as possible. then take a dowel and roll the unpetaled strip at the end to the correct diameter. If done correctly, the petals all meet perfectly at this juncture. Glue the unpetaled strip part and let it dry, then put a single drop in from inside to join all the tips together. You might have to tweak one of the petals into line from inside with a slender poker, but it really is about that easy, I find.

The torpedo on the Seiran (build thread is shown at this site) was done in this manner.

I'm not saying this because there is anything wrong about your construction... it is quite nice. This just might help some folks out someday.

Keep going with the good work!


Carl

[Darwin]

Carl, about the only difference between our approaches is use of the tissue stuffing. As I get more fumble-fingered with the passing years, the tissue wad has the added advantage that it acts as a handle for the part, plus I have a proclivity for gluing myself to the workpiece when I use a totally freeform approach to the building of small stuff. One other advantage I see is the tissue acts as a joining strip for the petals, and I've found the part stands up better to handling, sanding, etc. without having the glue joints separate on you. Soaking down the final product in thin superglue makes it dang nigh bullet proof, and helps the spinner hold it's shape after collision with immovable objects for actual gliding models like Trotskiy's. Many ways to skin a cat (however, they all seem to work better when the cat is deceased prior to the process).

[CMDRTED]

A mere technicallity my friend!

[Darwin]

Well, living out here in the boonies, shooting the neighbor's cat is not considered being in particularly poor taste....however, pegging it's skin to dry on the outside of your garage door is.

[dansls1]

"Well, he should have armed himself if he's gonna decorate his saloon with my friend". - Clint Eastwood's character in Unforgiven

[Darwin]

It growed wings!!!! I wasn't sure which would be better, build the wing separately from the body, or glue in the center spar and build the wing essentially free-form. There are advantages and pitfalls associated with either method. My stick and tissue background took over and I decided to go with the latter. What I didn't count on was the frame assembly is all interlocking, as opposed to stick and tissue technique where the wing halves are designed to be built as separate assemblys and then slide onto the center section spars. My approach was to assemble the framework on one half the wing. The styrofoam filling one of the leading edge bays is intended to support the landing gear legs. While the framing was drying, I shaped the wing skins (the edge of the card table works great for curling the wing top skin into airfoil shape). I then glued down the wing root area of the wing bottom skin onto the bottom of the fuselage...the white region of the fuselage turned out to be a perfect fit for the wing, something that had been worrying me given the other fit problems encountered. When dry, I glued the wing bottom skin to the framework. While dryfitting, I noted a tendency for the aft section of the wing skin to "suck down" onto the bottom skin at the fuselage join. To prevent that, I added a scrap of cardboard to the fuselage to form a shelf for the wing skin to rest on....it worked quite well. When dry, I folded the top skin over the framework and glued it to framework. I was able to place the wing bottom flat onto the cutting board, and clamp the trailing edges together using a straight edge to clamp the edges together while the glue set (unfortunately, the picture of that step got deleted by mistake). Final steps were to glue the wing tip together and add the wing fillet. Repeat on the other wing half, and now I'm ready to take a 7th inning stretch to clean up the work table (it's getting to the point I risk losing the model, much less the fiddly parts).

Unlike the fuselage segments, the wing joint fit couldn't have been better. There was no noticible gap between wing skin and fuselage, anywhere.