gsdpic

Wow, nice find. Looks like it will be another beauty for your collection. I'll follow along as well.

Again, thanks for all the likes and for following along. Sorry for spamming with three posts in 24 hours. I swear it will be a few days, at least, before the next post. I think I will next work on the struts between the wings. Those are a combination of cast metal and photo etch and require some painting to make the metal look like wood, similar to the center section of the wing below. I guess that was a sort of view port so the pilot could see at least a little bit above. The upper wing is done! I've attached the ailerons and threaded the control line that links the two ailerons. It is interesting that the upper wing ailerons are linked to each other, and then later linked to the lower wing ailerons and only the lower wing ailerons are linked to the flight controls. Below are several pictures of the completed wing. Apologies for leaving the edge of my "photo booth" in the first picture. It is not quite large enough for this wing.

Thanks everyone for the likes. The left side of the wing looks much better, so I guess I'll be redoing some of the lines on the right side, plus I have 2 more to do on the left side.

Just another quick update. I had hoped to get the upper wing finished before doing an update but I am not quite there. I have 4 of the 16 tension wires rigged. Once I complete the other 12, I can put on the ailerons and then rig the control wire for them. I am not entirely happy with which hole in the ribs I threaded the tension lines through, causing them to deflect. I think they would have deflected some no matter which hole I chose, but I don't think I made optimal choices here. I'll watch that more closely on the other side of the wing and if it looks a lot better, I'll redo this side. Here's a picture: I've also been working on the engine in parallel. It is done except for the spark plug wires. I found it interesting...for the copper exhaust pipes (not sure if that is accurate but it is the color the instructions recommended) I used some floquil paint that I have that must be 20 or 25 years old. It is still good and I thought it looked great once applied. I don't think modern alclad would look any better. For most of the engine, I used some alclad aluminum and then black panel line accent. The only remaining step on the engine is the somewhat ridiculous attachment of the spark plug wires. They provide some shiny silver wire and say to attach it from the little pointy bits on the back of the engine to the tiny nubs on the cylinders that represent the spark plugs and to paint it black as well. That seems unrealistic to me. In the photos in the instructions, it appears that they soldered the wires. I might try that or maybe I will leave them off as they will be virtually invisible once the engine and cowl are installed. After that, there are only three more subassemblies to build, the struts that go between the wings, the landing gear, and carving the propeller. Once I do those I'll have to take the more drastic step of starting to assemble the bigger pieces, eg. wings to fuselage.

Looks good to me. As said before, a hull like this is typically filled, sanded, and painted so the exact plank lay out may not matter as much. But you are correct that a hull shape like that does not lend itself to some of the normal planking techniques.

Thanks all for the likes and for looking in. I've made a bit more progress. The upper wing is now complete except for the rigging of the tension wires. There are about 20 of them in X patterns along with wing, similar to but more extensive than the lower wing. And I still need to do the upper wing ailerons. In parallel, I've also started assembling the engine. I need to add the 18 valve lifter shafts and then I'll spray the whole thing with some sort of aluminum paint followed by some black wash to accent details. Then I'll add the exhaust and spark plug wires and it'll be done as well. With this model, due to the cowling, not much of the engine detail is visible. Below are a few pictures. Whole wing: Pulley for the line that moves the ailerons, with the small view port to allow checking on the pulley: Nine cylinder rotary engine:

Looks great! You're a master with that alclad chrome paint.

Frankly, that planking looks excellent for a first effort. At some point soon you might want to start going keel down, though figuring out where the first plank by the keel should go might be difficult. There is another build log for this kit that shows the planking in progress. That person chose to plank over the keel but also chose to go keel down at about the point you are at. Here is that log: If the keel is not planked, it might be difficult to bevel the edge of the planks on the bulkheads next to the keel to have a smooth transition between the keel and the planking. Two other thoughts.... - assuming you are planning to fully paint the hull, the main goal of the planking is to get a smooth and fair surface. In other words, there is far more than one "right" way to lay out the planks and get a smooth surface. - the other build log indicated that he just did one layer of planking before painting. Given how smooth your first layer is looking, that might be an option for you as well, unless you just want more planking experience. I guess that the second layer of planking is likely some very thin strips of wood, so either way you will want to make that first layer as smooth as possible.

Looking good. That does appear to be a fairly intricate chassis. You are getting a lot of mileage out of the sawhorses. Hope you are not having to pay royalties to @yvesvidal for that idea

Another possibly helpful tip is to read ahead in the instructions to see what is coming after the planking. Where it says "leave enough space for cutwater positioning", I'd look ahead in the instructions for anything else about the cutwater. The cutwater is the leading edge of the hull, usually a sort of wedge shape, that slices into the water rather than having a blunt area hit the water first. From the instructions, I guess that the kit may provide another piece of wood specifically for this purpose, so the planking instructions are just telling you to take that piece into account when planking. With luck, locating the instructions for that piece will make it more clear how the planking at the very front of the hull should be completed. As for the keel, it is not clear if they expect to plank over the keel or just down to that keel since it appears to be a different type of wood, perhaps the same type as the second layer of planking. If you plank over it, the keel may appear too thick. Also, if the kit supplied any sort of mounting pedestals for the finished boat, it could be that you need to be careful about the width of the keel so that the pedestals still fit. I've done that before....had some brass pedestals that had a slot in the top to fit the keel in but ended up with a keel that was too thick to fit in the pedestals. And welcome to MSW.

That last set of pictures is even better. Thanks for going to the extra effort so that we can all better enjoy your beautiful work.

Much better! Definitely a sweet looking model of a sweet looking car.

Thanks. Fortunately it is not quite as delicate as it looks. And, I think I have said this before, I am very grateful for and happy with the laser cut ribs. They fit fairly snug over the spars so that helps make the whole wing more robust.

Wow, looks great to me! Very nicely done. It seems like there are a lot of Cobra kits out there, but I suspect that they have a lot in common with each other, and lot of the same problems. They were probably mostly created back in the 1970s too. Not sure which one would provide the best starting point for a model. The one I built....I am mostly happy with the result but there are just enough flaws that I'd like to try again, so maybe some day I'll pick up another Cobra and give it a go. Quick note on the photography...it seems like the blue base messes with the automatic color balance of your photos. The first picture that has a bit of the black background looks good to me. But many of the other pictures where there is no black background, just the blue base, the gray car has a greenish tint to me. Maybe if you have some sort of gray base, instead of the bright blue, that you could put the model on when taking pictures, you'd have truer color representation.

Well, so much for being able to fit the completed subassemblies in a shoe box. I've been working on the upper wing and it has a span of about 21 or 22 inches. I've got about another 50 pieces of photo etch to add to the wing, plus the top and bottom of every rib will be covered with a strip of thin wood, as seen in the pictures of the lower wings. Then on to the upper wing ailerons which are pretty much identical to the lower wing ailerons. The upper wing also has some rigging to do, similar to the lower wing. Oh, I think I'll need to get more CA as well, as my bottle is just about empty. I use wood glue when gluing two wood pieces but CA to attach the photo etch to the wood.

That's unfortunate. This was a weak area of the revell kit as well. In that case, the problem was that the end of the headers did not come close to meeting up with the beginning of the side pipes. It's visible but not too noticeable looking in the open hood but very noticeable if you pick up the car and look at the underside. With your skills, I am sure you'll figure something out.

I presume that was in "Shore Leave". See the thread below. I am not an admin, just trying to help out.

By popular demand, I have resumed a bit of work on the Sopwith Camel. No guarantees on how long that will last. I've also remembered a few of my frustrations with this kit. Ironically, I opted for this kit in part because of the additional photo etch details when compared to the Model Airways kit. But when it comes down to it, I don't particularly like working with photo etch parts. And, I've had a few fit issues with the photo etch parts as well, and they are much less forgiving than wood. Nothing major...just things like photo etch parts with a gap of 1/8th of an inch that are supposed to fit around pieces of wood that are closer to 3/16ths of an inch wide. Oh well. I've also deviated a bit from the order of the instructions. Had I been following precisely, I would have attached the lower wings to the fuselage by now. But once I do that, the half built model is both larger and more fragile. So, I am postponing that type of work...if the kit ends up back on the shelf of doom I can safely store it all in a shoe box. I've now completed the lower wings and the ailerons for those wings, as shown below. Next up I will do the upper wing, then work on the engine. Once all those bits are done, I will double back to assemble things. And in fact I also need to double back to address the rigging on the horizontal tail stabilizer that caused me issues before going on hiatus. Regardless, I believe I am about half done or maybe slightly more with this model.

Looks great. That gloss finish is very nice. I've never used 2k clear....the extra cautions/extra recommended PPE for it scares me away so I just stick with the Tamiya X-22 for now. I also recently got some of the Tamiya polishing compound. For some reason, I found that hard to acquire in the US. I added it to my Spot Model order when I ordered the MFH seatbelts to use on my Lotus 72D. Looks like the wheels fit into the wheel wells nicely now with your suspension modification. On the Revell kit I did, I had to pull the front wheels in a bit as they seemed to stick out too far. And I also trimmed down the center wheel spinners/knock offs as they were almost comically large in that kit.

Just a quick note to say that this Sopwith Camel still resides, in the same state, on the "shelf of doom". Some day I will get back to it, as they always say..... Edit: Wow I am surprised by the number of likes this post received, thanks for the encouragement. I just finished a project (the Lotus 49) and have not decided on or started the next project. Perhaps I should drag this back out and give it a go. Though that Porsche 917K is also calling my name.

Hi All. After building the Lotus 72D, I proceeded to build the Lotus 49 from 1967, another in Tamiya's series of 1/12th scale race cars. I did not bother doing a build log, though there were times during the build I sort of regretted that choice. But I've now completed the model and done a photoshoot of it. Based on the interest in the prior build, I thought some of you might like to see it. This kit was a bit newer than the other one, though still not a recent re-issue. But it went together fairly well and I am quite pleased with the results. I mostly built it out of the box, just replacing some of the rubber/vinyl hose with braided metal lines. It was interesting that even in the model kit, you could sense how the cars were much simpler in 1967 than in 1972. And I have an unbuilt kit of the Lotus from 1978 (or maybe 1979, I forget) and just looking at the instructions and parts, it seems to be more complex still. I'll probably take a break from the old F1 cars now, though not sure what is next. Maybe even something wooden and nautical.

I agree that the color of the wood in the case is too similar to the color of the ship. It looks like a beautiful model but the hull gets lost a bit. Do either of these very, very quick and dirty (and sloppy) photoshop edits help? The first two I just changed the color/lightness of the base and the third I attempted to use the new "generative fill" tools to put gravel on the base, but I had trouble getting it to generate gravel as small as I wanted.

I am both a little disappointed but also excited to see what alternative you have in mind. I did the traditional blue with white stripes on mine though when done I decided my stripes were a little too wide. I defined them with 10mm wide Tamiya tape but they should have been more like 8 or 9 mm. Looking good so far; interesting treatment on the engine block.

It is still a bit difficult to understand what the problem is. If you are referring to gluing the frames to the base piece, there are various ways to get them square and vertical. Some people have metal blocks or metal squares that are perfectly rectangular that they clamp the frames too, others use lego blocks as their reference for 90 degrees. I built this kit many years ago before I discovered MSW. I do recall that the laser cut plank fit was not exact. In my case, the ends extended past the stem or stern a bit, at least in some cases, and they were trimmed and sanded after the hull was built. Also, I recall it being easy to get confused about which end of the plank was the bow end and which was the stern end, which also affected the fit. There are a few other build logs for this kit that you might want to search for and take a look at to see if any of them provide clarity for you. You'll see that some others struggled a bit with the planking as well.

I am certainly no expert, but this hull shape appears to be a bit similar to the hull shape of the coast guard cutter that I was just looking at the build log for, by @drobinson02199. You might be able to "plank" at least parts of the hull with large flat sheets of either plywood or styrene instead of individual small planks. I think John/Jim Lad was suggesting a similar approach when he mentioned using ply. The build log, linked below, might give you some ideas for how to construct your hull. Note that kit was designed to allow RC operation and that probably dictated the open frames to allow room for the RC equipment but it may be easier to use solid bulkheads and the large false keel/backbone as you did with your prototype. This looks like an interesting project of an attractive boat, and it has a bit of extra personal meaning for you. Good luck!