Hawker Hurricane Mk. I by ccoyle - FINISHED - Halinski - 1/33 - CARD

[ccoyle]

Hello and welcome!

 

I have decided that I will occasionally break up the slog of building a wooden ship by taking a break here and there to do a side project. So, having finished the basic hull structure of Phoenix, I will now take a few weeks to knock out a card model. This time around it will be kit #1/2002 from Halinski -- a Hawker Hurricane Mk. I wearing the colors of Witold Urbanowicz's mount during his stint in the RAF's 303 Squadron, circa September of 1940 (click here for more about Urbanowicz). Urbanowicz shot down nine enemy aircraft while flying this particular Hurricane. I chose this kit for several reasons:

• I haven't built a Hurricane yet.
• I have built a Bf-109E-4 that fought in the Battle of Britain, but not one of the British fighters it would have faced off with. The Spitfire Mk. Vb I built earlier began entering service in 1941. I wanted to have one of Walter Oesau's potential adversaries sharing a shelf with his Emil.
• I now have more Halinski kits in my stash than from any other publisher, so it seems appropriate to thin out the Halinski herd a bit. This will be my fifth crack at a Halinski build.
• This kit comes from Halinski's "transitional" period -- a time when the company's kits didn't quite come up to the standards of kits produced even just a few months later in terms of complexity, artwork, and quality of diagrams. It's still a great kit, only it's just a half-step down maybe from the usual Halinski standard of excellence. This is not necessarily a bad thing, cuz it means the kit should be slightly easier to build than some of the massively detailed kits the company has published more recently.

In addition to the basic kit, I have the laser-cut frames, molded canopy, and a set of resin wheels from GPM. First task, as usual, will be to match some colors for edge coloring. Look for first cuts soon!

 

 

 

 

Witold Urbanowicz (image courtesy of Wikimedia)

 

 

[Dave_E]

Ha-ha, I was looking at your last ship post a couple days ago and thought “how long is he going to go on this ship thing, before he needs an airplane fix”? And here you are. 😆

 

I’m definitely in! 👍😀🥤🍿

[ccoyle]

51 minutes ago, Dave_E said:

Ha-ha, I was looking at your last ship post a couple days ago and thought “how long is he going to go on this ship thing, before he needs an airplane fix”? And here you are. 😆

 

Cladding the hull with its laser-cut veneer is the next step in Phoenix's build sequence, so it seemed like a natural point to take a short break. Better to take a break now, I figure, than to wait until modeling malaise has set in. Thanks for tagging along!

[Danstream]

Nice choice with the Hurricane.

Dan

[yvesvidal]

On 2/18/2024 at 5:55 PM, ccoyle said:

Hello and welcome!

 

I have decided that I will occasionally break up the slog of building a wooden ship by taking a break here and there to do a side project.

We knew it would not take long....

 

Yves

[ccoyle]

Well, somewhat surprisingly for a Halinski kit, I ran into an issue with the diagrams. What's shown in them does not seem to match up well with the parts that are provided. The discrepancy was so jarring that I thought perhaps I had been sent the wrong laser-cut frame set, but I checked them against the printed structural parts, and they match, so that's not the problem. I have seen finished examples of this kit, so I know it can be built -- I'm just going to have to stare and ponder at the diagrams to figure out how everything goes together. Stay tuned!

[Javlin]

One day Chris a Nice panoramic view of the built on the shelf/cases would be entertaining.

[ccoyle]

16 minutes ago, Javlin said:

One day Chris a Nice panoramic view of the built on the shelf/cases would be entertaining.

 

Here's the new shelves that mysteriously appeared while my wife was away in California.

 

[yvesvidal]

What a gorgeous collection !!! The keyword here is: "wife was away...."

I see there is plenty or room for additional ships.....

 

Yves

[ccoyle]

4 hours ago, yvesvidal said:

The keyword here is: "wife was away...."

 

If you know your Old Testament, it's kinda one of those "Aaron and the golden calf" things -- I threw in some wood and metal and out came those shelves. 🫢

[GrandpaPhil]

Looking forward to this build!

[Ab Hoving]

This was the first Halinski kit I ever made, years ago. I was deeply impressed by the detailing and the way everything fitted together like a glove. Especially the outer skin, covering the cockpit made me aware that every mistake made on the inside had disastrous results for the outside. I learned sanding a model here. (I never use laser cut frames) Many, many Halinski models followed. By now the model is still on the shelf, but it has been heavily attacked by paper fishes, which seem to especially like the printing ink. And though much of the color has faded nowadays I still cannot get myself so far as to throw the model into the dustbin. It was a wonderful experience building a top-kit like this one and I am looking forward for your report.

Edited February 22 by Ab Hoving

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, Ab Hoving said:

Especially the outer skin, covering the cockpit made me aware that every mistake made on the inside had disastrous results for the outside.

 

That lesson was painfully seared into my memory by my second Halinski build, the Brewster B-239, which now sits on the Shelf of Shame.

[Landlubber Mike]

Looking forward to seeing this one come along Chris.  I finally managed to track down a catapult set for the Airfix 1/48 Sea Hurricane and have been doing some background research on these planes.  Very cool subject!

[ccoyle]

A few small steps forward . . .

 

In this first image, you can see what I meant earlier about the confusing diagrams. Compare the actual fuselage assembly with what is depicted in the diagram. That second-from-left-bulkhead is much closer to the aft-most bulkhead in real life than it is in the drawing. And you can also see a pair of locator slots on the finished structure that are not shown in the diagram -- those slots turned out to be necessary for the part that glues in from the other side. These two discrepancies were very confusing for awhile.

 

And next up we have something I have never seen in a kit before, not even a Halisnski kit. The part marked A8 (a deck behind the pilot's seat) has a section, marked with an X in the image, that is supposed to be cut out and then temporarily reattached before gluing the deck in. But even before that, the cockpit floor piece is supposed to be glued in first -- except that if one does that, one can't add the A8 part afterwards. 🫤 I'm gonna have to think about this one a bit.

 

Sometimes, assembling a card model is a lot like rigging a wooden ship model -- you have to have an assembly sequence worked out in advance in your mind before you start gluing bits in.

 

Cheers!

[Canute]

Almost looks like an Escher print. I'd cut the opening in A8, glue it in . Add the cockpit floor from the front, between the canopy rails, then glue in A15.

[ccoyle]

1 minute ago, Canute said:

I'd cut the opening in A8, glue it in . Add the cockpit floor from the front, between the canopy rails, then glue in A15.

 

And there, my friend, is where you'd run into all kinds of trouble. Internal cockpit framing invariably needs some sanding to get the skins to fit properly, otherwise one runs into the problems alluded to in Ab's earlier post. The whole reason for leaving the X-marked portion in is to give that part some rigidity for shaping; remove it too early, and you'll have two very weak pieces of cockpit framing essentially dangling helplessly in space, just begging to be damaged. But no worries -- I'll get it all sorted.

[Canute]

Thanks from this card padawan, Master. 😄

[ccoyle]

7 minutes ago, Canute said:

Thanks from this card padawan, Master.

 

No problem! 😉 Just remember that all of the framing in a card kit is essentially made out of beer coasters. The parts are regrettably intolerant of any sort of rough handling.

[GrandpaPhil]

Chris,

They use the pulp board for the laser-cut pieces?  

 

So, I can use that for the thicker pieces, like framing, on my Orel kits (I made a run on their ironclad and pre-dreadnought battleships) that would ordinarily be purchased as aftermarket laser-cut sets?  
 

I ask because I have a large sheet of the pulp board I bought for the inner hull covering on my cat ship that I am done with now and thought would sit around until I built another one from scratch.

Edited February 23 by GrandpaPhil

[Richard44]

7 hours ago, ccoyle said:

Internal cockpit framing invariably needs some sanding

Chris,

 

Do you seal in any way the edges of the frames before sanding? I usually wind up with very fuzzy edges and have been thinking of soaking the edges with dilute PVA beforehand - not CA as I don't think PVA will adhere to the frame later when the skin (or whatever) is attached.

Thanks.

 

Cheers

[ccoyle]

8 minutes ago, Richard44 said:

Do you seal in any way the edges of the frames before sanding?

 

Sometimes. Depends on how much manhandling I think the part might get. I usually wick in some thin CA. Of course, my current bottle of thin CA is now more like thick CA, so if I need any, I'm gonna hafta run to Hobby Lobby.

[ccoyle]

Starboard side of cockpit is done, for the most part.

 

[ccoyle]

Port side of cockpit done.

 

[Richard44]

Kpfw VI Tiger I ?? 🙂🙂

 

Cheers

[ccoyle]

2 hours ago, Richard44 said:

Kpfw VI Tiger I ?? 🙂🙂

 

Cheers

 

It's one of the kits that has parts printed on the inside back cover.

 

P.S. I don't build card armor kits. Never have, never will. One word: tracks. 😑

 

 

[ccoyle]

Seat is done.

 

[ccoyle]

I couldn't resist attempting to add some extra detail to the control column, though there is much more that could have been added.

 

 

 

There's actually a nightmarish web of tubing, rods, and wiring in the floor of a real Hurricane, but I have my limits.

[Landlubber Mike]

Looking great Chris!  Love the shelf too!

 

Just out of curiosity, are these kits usually built OOB (out of envelope)?  Seems like things like the pre-cut frames would almost be a necessity.  I'm sure the pre-made resin wheels are also a much welcome piece of aftermarket.

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Just out of curiosity, are these kits usually built OOB (out of envelope)?  Seems like things like the pre-cut frames would almost be a necessity.  I'm sure the pre-made resin wheels are also a much welcome piece of aftermarket.

 

Just like a plastic or wood kit, a card kit can be modified and/or detailed to the modeler's content. Some highly skilled card modelers will even cut out exterior panels on planes and add internal details like engines and gun bays that were not included in the original kit. It's also possible to use 1/32nd scale after-market parts for 1/33rd scale card kits, but the cost of those details usually defeats the most significant advantage of card models, namely their affordability compared to other media. Same goes for using 3D-printed resin parts for ship models; in the case of my USS England build, I deemed the extra cost of those parts (and they weren't cheap) to be justifiable in light of the results they produced.

 

The pre-cut frames are just a convenience -- saves a lot of time spent cutting out thicker parts, which is hard on craft knife blades. The cost of laser-cut frames is well worth the marginal extra cost, IMO. Same goes for wheels -- I have made many sets of wheels from laminated disks sanded down to the proper shape, but the resin wheels save a lot of work and look much better.

 

Cheers!