gjdale

Now that is some beautiful work Ben - congratulations!

Closing in on the finish line Kevin! Great work so far.

Thanks Carl - and Happy New Year to you and yours too. Thanks Mark for helping with the edit - though I seem to have lost an earlier picture now. I’ll try to reinstate that tomorrow. Thanks Mark (Ponitachedmark) for the kind comment.

Thanks Carl, and to all of the "likes". Construction of the wings begins by placing the shaped ribs individually over the wing plan and cutting a variety of lengths and shapes. The photo below shows some of these ready for use: Once all ribs are cut to size/shape, the wings are built up over the wing plan, in alphabetical order. Here is what this phase looks like: Here is a photo of the wings at this stage, removed from the wing plan: Two wing struts were then made, fitted with hardware and seized with thread – the plans call for them to be slightly different lengths: Construction of the tail section begins with creating a curved “shaper” made up by laminating three pieces of 1/8” x 1/32” Cherry around a plywood former created from the supplied template. The “shaper” is then placed over the wing plan and trimmed to final size/shape: Two of the remaining wing ribs are then glued and seized together such that they curve in three dimensions. Here are all of the tail pieces prior to final assembly: Tail construction then proceeds with the shaper and two outer ribs glued together over the wing plan: The two inner ribs are then notched on the underside and placed over the shaper. The blob of “yellow tack” is to provide some weight/balance so that the inner ribs set in the correct position: The Tail Mounting Bracket is then made by first bending a piece of (very) stiff wire to shape and then adding a leather strap, which was first cut to shape and fitted with a “buckle” as well as two slits for the wire: The Tail Mounting Bracket is then attached to the Tail Assembly: Finally, some cable (thick thread) was added in accordance with the Wing Plan. Here is the final Tail Assembly: The next step will be to cover both wings and tail assembly with mesh, followed by final assembly of all parts to the fuselage. The finish line approaches…

Hey Slog, Nice to see an update on your lovely model. I understand fully the inconvenience of work getting in the way of the important stuff! Let’s face it, modelling isn’t a matter of life and death - it’s far more important than that!!!

Count me in too Sjors! I do think you should make it RC though - just so that you have another way of losing this one.... there you are sailing your newly completed model, when someone hijacks your RC frequency and sails your model off into the sunset.... 😀😀😀

For blackening copper, you need to use Liver of Sulfur. Readily available online. I use the gel form. A little goes a long way. The best thing about it is that you can use it ‘in situ’ and just rinse off the surrounding wood with water if there is any overspill. Much easier to use than brass blackening solutions too! Ed Tosti uses it extensively on his builds (Naiad, and Young America) - he actually uses copper where he can instead of brass.

Glad to hear the good news John, and looking forward to further resumption of play.

It's been a long time between drinks for this log! The usual "life got in the way" excuse applies - mainly work-related - but I have managed to re-commence work on this project in the last couple of weeks - spurred on by receipt of my Medway Longboat kit from Chuck!😉 The somewhat tedious process of shaping all of the spars was the next step. The two spars of shape ‘B’ were sanded square and set aside. Of the 30 spars of shape ‘A’, eight were sanded square and set aside. The remaining 22 were tapered square from two thirds of the way back to the end of each rib. After tapering square, these 22 along with two that were not tapered, were all shaped octagonal. I found the easiest way to do this was using a very small hand plane. All the spars were then given a finish coating of Shellac followed by furniture wax. Here are the resulting spars, although the photo does not really show the shaping terribly well. It was then on to the main wing spar shafts. Although the kit provided some 3/16” dowel for these, I used some 1/4" square boxwood stock to make these. After cutting to length, I started by drilling the holes as indicated in the plans while the stock was still square. I then used an approximation of the 7/10/7 rule to draw some layout lines for shaping to octagonal, for which I again used a small hand plane. The spars were then chucked in a hand drill and sanded round to the final thickness of 3/16”. It sounds like a lot of work, but this progressed quite quickly in the end. One end of each main spar was then shaped with a ‘step’ to receive two parts similar to a gaff neck (the part is unnamed in the instructions). These parts, together with the shaped end of the spar shaft, form a housing for the next part called a ‘spring clamp’, into which a wing-tip spar (cut from the spar shape 'B') was inserted. Once all the shaping was complete, the spar shafts received the usual treatment of shellac/furniture wax. I forgot to take any progress photos of this stage. The spring clamps were shaped from 1/4” x 3/32” Cherry stock and fitted to the spar shaft housings using a dab of glue and three ‘seizings’. Here is a photo of the completed main spar shafts, with wing-tip spars inserted. and a close-up of the spring-clamp arrangement... All of the shaped spars, together with the main spar shafts, will now be used to construct the wings.

Very nicely done Ryland - great idea with the jig!

Outstanding Michael - I can’t think of anything further to say - simply, outstanding!

Nice work, as always, Rusty. Your build log will certainly be a key reference for me in due course.

Received my kit on Friday - just two days after my Birthday, so my wife was happy that I’d been away from home with work during the week and she could present it to me when I got home! I still have a couple more weeks travelling to do before having a few weeks off over Christmas, so will delay starting until then. In the meantime, it has given me some impetus to get back to the modelling table and get cracking again with the current project, which has been in limbo for the past several months.

Now we can begin to understand better the origins of your superb metalwork Michael!!!

Nice to see you back again Daniel

Well Chuck, they do say that self employment is a good recipe for slavery! Now stop whining and get back to work! 😉😄😄😄

Woohoo! I lucked in and managed to snaffle one of this batch - just in time for my Birthday too! My wife thanks you Chuck. 😊😊😊

Looks like another interesting build to follow Danny.😊

Great work Danny - another fine model build from a master modeller. It looks like you're really enjoying your sojourn into the world of card modelling.

Congratulations on finishing a fine build J - you can be justifiably proud of your results.

Nice to see you back Mark, and some very clever clamping there!

Looking forward to starting this group project as soon as Chuck is able to supply the kits.

Looking forward to resumption of play Ben!

Great work Ben - you should be pleased!

And you might also try this link Michael: https://jimorrisco.com/