SBLim-2A by ccoyle - FINISHED - WAK -1/33 - CARD - Polish license-built MiG-15 variant - a semi-tutorial

[ccoyle]

The framing of the vertical stabilizer is not difficult. It consists of a number of laser-cut elements and a length of 2mm styrene rod, which fits down into a hole in one of the fuselage bulkheads.

 

This is just a dry fit for now.

[ccoyle]

Continuing on with the vertical stabilizer.

 

After prepping the skin and folding it (don't make a hard crease -- it should be slightly rounded at the leading edge), one side of the frame was glued in, then the remaining side was glued down separately, making sure to align the slots for the horizontal stabilizers.

 

There's a couple of things to look out for. First, for whatever reason, the lowermost frame is supposed to be 0.2 - 0.5mm shy of the edge of the skin. In fact, none of the framing is flush with any edge, which makes positioning the frame a judgment call.

 

Second, there is a dart to cut out near the top of the stabilizer. Frankly, I'm not 100% convinced the dart was necessary for the design, but it's there, so it needed to be removed. The resulting seam is supposed to lie along the uppermost framing piece, but for the life of me I couldn't get the framing and skin aligned in that fashion. This negatively impacted shaping the skin somewhat, and coupled with the fact that I didn't bevel the upper frame enough (it needs beveling, which isn't mentioned in the instructions), the resulting seam is not the best work I have ever done.

 

That's it for now!

[ccoyle]

A Tale of Woe . . .

 

Before adding the vertical stabilizer to the fuselage, I first added a strip of scrap card to fit inside the stabilizer -- recall that the stabilizer's framing doesn't sit on the fuselage. This gives some more gluing area.

After this, the stabilizer was added.

 

And here's where I ran into some problems. Sometimes the little parts of a model can cause the most trouble. On the MiG-15 and its derivatives, there is a small projection of the fuselage that juts out past the exhaust outlet and forms the base of the vertical stabilizer. Here's the parts for that bit:

 

At first I thought the little joiner strips were supposed to go from this structure to the insides of the stabilizer. I also thought it was weird, if that was the case, to not glue the joiners to the stabilizer first. So I went ahead and did that.

 

Whoops!!

 

I later determined that the joiners were supposed to mate the aft structure to the stabilizer fillets, i.e., they go on the outside of the stabilizer! Since I had already glued the kit parts to the wrong area, I had to make new joiners from scratch. I also needed to trim the cone-like tail structure to get it to fit in the gap between the exhaust outlet and stabilizer.

 

Then I added the fillets -- or rather fillet, singular, since the two sides are all of one piece.

The finished assembly is not particularly tidy.

 

And here's where we are now.

 

Until next time!

[Landlubber Mike]

Very cool colors on this one Chris.  You're doing a fantastic job as per usual!

[Danstream]

On 4/16/2025 at 2:02 PM, ccoyle said:

The finished assembly is not particularly tidy.

... From here it looks very good, though.

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, Danstream said:

From here it looks very good, though.

 

The key words there are "from here"! 😅

[ccoyle]

BTW, I just received an order from Widget Supply. The owner is retiring and selling off his inventory at deep discounts, limited to stock on hand. I was able to snag a whole bunch of goodies: knife blades, sanding disks & drums, drill bits, Dremel bits, mandrels, needle files -- even zip ties. You should check them out!

 

[ccoyle]

Armament installed, plus shell case ejector ports. Nothing special to watch out for here -- just fiddly parts. Use something like styrene rod to help roll the gun shrouds. The kit includes paper barrels, but it's wise to substitute styrene rod for these, too. Also, pay attention to the orientation of the ejector ports. I glued one on backwards and didn't notice it until the following day. 😑

 

 

Moving to prepping parts for the canopy. If you chose not to add the cockpit interior, then you'd use the opaque windscreen parts provided in the kit. I'm using a molded canopy, so the framing parts will need to be cut out and edge colored.

 

 

Start by cutting out the interior portions of these parts. Don't cut the parts all the way out just yet. Leaving them like this makes coloring the interior edges easier.

 

 

The backsides of the frames will be visible, so they need to be painted. I made no effort to match the cockpit interior gray -- I just used the closest AK color in my set. The main thing is that the backs are not white.

 

 

Now we can cut the parts all the way out and color the exterior edges.

 

 

In the next installment: Framing the canopy! 😬

[ccoyle]

Time to frame the canopy. A couple of tips may be helpful. First of all, I usually do not attempt to glue an entire frame piece in one shot -- it's messy, and the glue I use (Evergreen canopy glue) doesn't give a lot of working time. Normally I tack one part of the piece in place and then do the remainder as several small sub-steps. Second, do everything you can to make sure the first piece is aligned on the canopy correctly -- it acts as a kind of keystone for the remaining bits, and if it is off-kilter, then what follows will be off as well

 

I opted to start with the front panel, because its location on the molded canopy is fairly obvious.

 

For the next piece, you can see how I tacked the top section, making sure to align the tic marks on both pieces. BTW, on the aft portion of this piece there are two stub pieces of framing. The closed canopy should fit inside these pieces, but I didn't discover that fact until after I had already glued them down. That made it necessary to trim the next piece slightly to accommodate the stubs.

 

Make sure you allow plenty of time for the glue to set. If the glue is still white instead of clear, as seen here, you're not ready to move forward.

 

And here's all the framing attached. Let the glue cure well -- some flexing will occur when the canopy is freed from its sheet, and improperly cured bonds may pop loose as a result.

 

That's it for now!

[ccoyle]

Time to install the canopy! But wait -- don't forget to add the gun sight first!

 

Then you can install the canopy!

[ccoyle]

On to the wings. The kit provides two sets of spars, one for the complete wheel wells option and the other for w/o wheel wells.

 

For parts that will only be partially visible on the finished model, like #108, I use only the visible portion of the printed part.

 

The English directions are a bit cryptic. The upper part of the wheel well doesn't fit the interior framing exactly, so I tinted the surrounding areas of the wing skin that might show around the edges of the well. Note that I have added joiner strips to the trailing edge -- these aren't included in the kit.

 

The interior framing is a little wobbly. I suggest putting as much of it together as you can before gluing. (EDIT: There's actually a rod, part #59, that fits inside the framing and will help align things as well.) The leading edge piece is the key to getting everything aligned properly. Notice that no spacers are provided around the wheel well.

 

Test fit the framing inside the folded wing until you get the wheel well positioned properly, then mark the inboard edge of the framing -- it doesn't sit flush with the wing sheathing.

 

Once you're satisfied with the location of the interior framing, you can tack it to the topside skin. Once the glue has set, you can glue down the bottom skin, but don't try to do it all at once. Do the inboard stringer and wheel well surround in one go, then zip up the trailing edge separately. After that you can add the wingtip piece and close up the wingtip.

 

That's one wing down and one to go!

[amateur]

Airplane tutorials differ widely fromship-tutorials in many aspects.  Both very informative though.

 

Perhaps I read past the info: what do you use to glue those styrene rods to the model? Is that also the canopy-glue, or is that just plain white glue?

(assuming you use plain white glue….)

 

Second question: what do you use for the matte finish of your kit. I guess something from a spraycan, but which variety do you use/advise?

 

Jan

 

[ccoyle]

57 minutes ago, amateur said:

Perhaps I read past the info: what do you use to glue those styrene rods to the model? Is that also the canopy-glue, or is that just plain white glue?

(assuming you use plain white glue….)

Either canopy glue or medium CA, depending on how much stress will be applied to the finished part.

 

57 minutes ago, amateur said:

Second question: what do you use for the matte finish of your kit. I guess something from a spraycan, but which variety do you use/advise?

I haven't been picky about the brand, as long as it's matte clear acrylic.

 

Cheers!

[Richard44]

Chris, to go back a few steps. Just how did you do the rudder bar? I've had one go with a poor result, and will try again tomorrow,  but any hints would be appreciated. The wire is no problem but I have no idea how you managed to get the foot loops so even and glued to the wire. Thanks.

 

Cheers

Edited April 24 by Richard44
Edit. Yes I know I can omit the rudder bar but I'd like to do it.

[ccoyle]

3 hours ago, Richard44 said:

any hints would be appreciated

 

There's no real trick to this. The key is to get the straps curled to exactly the diameter they should be on the bar. Once you get that, stiffening them with CA might help -- don't worry about the slight color change, as no one is likely to notice. I apply a tiny dot of glue to each end of a strap and then set it on the bar. There is very little time to reposition it once that is done. With the canopy glue, if a re-do is needed, the semi-cured glue can be removed from the part.

[ccoyle]

Production has slowed a bit due to some distraction in the form of binge-watching another Apple TV series. But last night I felt motivated to get the right wing framed. At least now we can get a sense of the size of the finished model.

 

I almost, almost made the horrific mistake of assembling the frames as a second left wing instead of a right wing (I have made that mistake before, doh!), but I caught the error in time to fix it without too much difficulty. Part #59, seen here dry-fitted, is a 3.8mm-diameter rod that pins the two wings to the fuselage; you can see part of it in the photo. I presume that most people, like me, don't happen to have any 3.8mm rods or dowels laying around, so mine is made from a bamboo skewer wrapped in card. Whatever works, baby!

 

The wing framing is worth noting in comparison to far more robust designs, such as those seen in my Halinski builds. This kit is intended for intermediate builders, so perhaps the low parts count simplifies the construction in that regard, but I do think that some additional parts would have made this a better structure. In particular, some spacers in between the spars and ribs would have been welcome. Also, if you compare the above picture to the earlier left wing picture:

you can see that the wheel well does not have the same dimensions as the gap it fits into, and some spacers would have been useful there as well.

 

[ccoyle]

After commenting in my previous post about the lack of spacers in the wing frames, I decided to add some on this side, made from scrap pulp board.

 

 

I then skinned the wing -- same process as the other side. Everything was then ready to mate the wings and fuselage.

 

 

The MiG-15 and its derivatives had an anhedral wing mount. I was hoping that this was factored into the design of the wing ribs, i.e., the negative angle is produced by the internal framing structure even though the connecting rod is a straight piece. It looks like the framing was in fact designed that way.

 

 

The wing/fuselage joints produced some significant gaps. Suspecting that the wing fillets would not entirely hide these, I added some coloring to the white spaces before adding the fillets.

 

 

Fillets prepped.

 

 

My suspicions were confirmed. As you can plainly see if you look closely, the fillets do not come close to bridging the earlier white gap. It's a pretty disappointing fit, actually, though from a stand-off distance it doesn't look bad.

 

 

The horizontal stabilizers are next!

[Old Collingwood]

Just Incredible work.

 

OC.

[ccoyle]

Horizontal stabs on. This is the photogenic side. 😑  Hint: Pay attention to not man-handling the vertical stabilizer too much during the earlier stages of construction.

 

 

There is a serious dearth of internal structure inside the stabilizers -- just a single spar. Again, easy to build, but not particularly sturdy.

[ccoyle]

I noticed that there were a lot of doubled parts coming up, so I decided to take care of this task all in one shot. Exciting, right?

 

 

BTW, there are two different schools of thought about how to do doubled parts. This kit includes both the fronts and backs as outlined parts, like so:

The obvious problem with this method is that it is difficult to get the two outlined parts to match up exactly when the piece is folded (though there is a way to partially deal with this).

 

Other designers will do the back side of the part (usually the interior side) as part of a colored field (imagine the gray interior part [above left] printed on a gray field, with no part outline). The benefit of that method is that there are no white areas if the back side of the part isn't perfectly aligned.

 

That's it for now.

[ccoyle]

I decided to add the wing fences next, even though they are not the next item in the instructions. I do think they add to the plane's "cool" factor.

 

Fences (left wing) vs. no fences (right wing).

 

All fences on.

[Canute]

We used the fences as part of the recognition clues for a test. The very similar MiG-17  had 3 fences per wing. Not too useful if you really encountered them in flight. Who had time to count fences?🤔

[ccoyle]

Okay, on to landing gear. These were a bit of a challenge.

 

We start with the stacked wheel disks -- no resin wheels offered for this kit. 🙁 Once they dried, I soaked them in thin CA.

 

After that dried, I prepped the wheels for sanding by first trimming and filing their shoulders, then gouging out a hole for the screw to hold them on a Dremel shank. The screw is not long enough to hold a wheel without the rebate.

 

Using medium grit sandpaper followed by fine grit, sanding the wheels to shape takes very little time. One of the wheels wound up slightly lopsided because its axle hole wasn't drilled dead-center. Next the wheels, or rather the tires, were painted, and the printed hubs were added.

 

Wires for the struts were then formed. Take note that only one template is shown on the parts sheet, but the left and right struts must be formed as mirror images of each other, not identical to each other.

 

Then we add the main struts. Note the white portions -- that is the portion of each strut that gets inserted into a wing in the basic version of the model (i.e., no wheel wells). If you're adding wheel wells, those parts will be visible, so they'll need to be painted. BTW, all of the tubular parts of the gear are printed on card stock, not on bond. I find that rolling the card stock makes the diameters of the tubes too large, so I always delaminate the parts by wetting them and peeling off the inner layer of paper, reducing the thickness of the part by about half.

 

I made sockets for the struts by rolling some paper strips, soaking them in CA, painting them, and then gluing them into the wells. This makes a much stronger joint when the struts are added.

 

I skipped photographing a couple of steps, but here are the gear glued into their sockets. The remaining strut pieces and gear doors have been added as well. I don't use a jig for positioning the struts -- I just eyeball them until they "look right."

 

 

The outer gear doors look a little off-kilter, but that is the way they are supposed to look according to images of MiG-15s seen online.

 

Whew! Glad that part is done! Of course, there is still the nose wheel to do, so we're not quite out of the woods yet.

 

TTFN!

[Ab Hoving]

impeccable job!

[ccoyle]

On to the nose wheel. The main thing to be aware of here, as with the main gear, is that there are alternative parts for use with the optional interior wheel well -- just make sure you use the right ones, depending on which version you are building. Here is the nose wheel on its wire strut, along with the various paper parts that go with it. I put part 115 on upside down -- did you notice?

I did not add parts 116 and 117 yet because I had a sneaking suspicion that things were going to get awful tight inside the wheel well, and that suspicion was later proven well-founded.

 

I started by gluing the bracket into the well first, then adding the wheel assembly. As you can see here, there is really no room for part 116 between the main strut and the wheel well wall, so I omitted it. Hey, it's a simplified model, so why make things complicated, right?

I tested the model upright on its gear, and sure enough -- it sat on its hinter parts thanks to forgetting to add weight inside the nose.

 

There's very little left to do at this point. On the underside of the aft fuselage is a small fin. There is a laser-cut piece for this sandwiched between two skins. I opted to bevel the fin, but this is not required.

 

The last thing to do will be to add two aerials. Stay tuned!

 

EDIT: I should add that the aerials will be the last things on my model only because I'm not going to add the drop tanks. I'm not a big fan of displaying drop tanks or ordnance hanging from the wings of my models -- I simply prefer the look of a clean aircraft. Plus, the drop tank noses are petal structures, and I hate doing petals. Not being Polish myself, I apparently lack the gene for doing them neatly.

[ccoyle]

Okay, I have made an executive decision on the wire aerial. The aerial's approximate termination points are shown in a diagram, but they're not marked on the printed skins, so placing the aerial requires some guesswork. That led me to doing some browsing of photos online, whereupon I discovered that most SBLim-2As did not have wire aerials. Instead, most of them have some kind of stub aerial (not included in the kit) just in front of the mast aerial. The stub aerial probably connects to the cockpit interior via the same port originally used by the wire aerial. Granted, the wire aerials may have been removed sometime during an aircraft's service life, but I have no way of knowing that. In any case, the wire used on the real aircraft was very thin and can barely be seen in photographs. These factors taken together have made me decide to not include the wire aerial

 

And that, of course, means that the model is finished! It's late here now, so I don't have time to do the complete 'big reveal' set of photos. I'll try to add those tomorrow, at which point we will be able to mark this build as finished. Until then, here's one teaser photo of the model sitting on my very untidy workbench.

 

 

Until tomorrow!

[Richard44]

Chris,

You've not mentioned doors to the nose wheel well - are there any? One diagram does show a door but I can't find any other reference. 

Cheers, Richard 

[ccoyle]

6 hours ago, Richard44 said:

You've not mentioned doors to the nose wheel well - are there any? One diagram does show a door but I can't find any other reference.

 

Yes, there are doors. I can't remember the part #s off the top of my head, but their shape makes them and their placement pretty obvious.

[ccoyle]

After further deliberation with myself, I changed my mind about the wire aerial and added one. I also added the pitot tube, which I had overlooked. And that means it's now time for the BIG REVEAL! You may recall that I forgot to add weight inside the nose. To fix that I simply glued the model to a display base purchased from Hobby Lobby. While thinking about inexpensive ways to add a name plate, I came across the reduced image of the booklet cover that is printed on the back cover of the kit. I thought that would make a nifty little badge of sorts. Enjoy the photos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ian_Grant]

I'm always amazed at the finished appearance of your card models. I should try one...........🤔