Revell 1/72 Sopwith Camel

Revell guys put these tiny thingies for attaching the landing gear struts to the fuselage, but  guess they thought the modeler should cut open the counter hole himself. So that was written, so that was done.

Cowling doesn't fit to fuselage, that was one thing I already knew, so I didn't weep about that and grabbed a few sanding sticks.

These tiny parts to attach rigging face difficulties in finding  an attachment point themselves. Instead of trying to open a small hole in the decal, I took the difficult path and decided to paint these sun rays. That's quite a task for an inexperienced guy like myself.

I masked and sprayed tamiya red to the cowling and noticed a few imperfections.

I peeled the paint off, filled the tiny gaps with CA and re-sanded, then repainted. Above is the photo before correction. No new photo yet.

These are the two sides of rudder, masked and painted. Seems OK to the naked eye, but a close-up photo says otherwise. I used pre-used tamiya tape while masking, what a fool I've been! Brake liquid peels it off, and repaint comes in a few days. By the way, a very tiny "V" shaped acetate piece has been fitted into that hole below and it is filled with CA. Rigging attachment thingy, that's what it is. 

Sunray mask, take 1. Tamiya tape. No Good.

Sunray mask, take 2. Tracing tape. This is the one.

Then I gave it some red, but paint consistency wasn't right. So I called the brake liquid. Needs a few more tries, but it seems I'm on the right path.

Wood grain take 1. Model Master Sandgelb, protected by a layer of acrylic gloss clear. Oil color is, well, burnt umber, maybe, not sure.

Wood grain take 2. Gunze 313 yellow, not necessary, but protected by a layer of acrylic gloss clear.

First one looks better. By the way, I'm aware that 72nd scale does not require wood grain activity, this kind of work will most probably be out of scale. But 'paint it brown and move on', well, that doesn't give a feeling of wood. I had to screw one of them, and I chose to screw the scale. I've done this before, using this very same method I learnt at Swanny's website. I just wanted to try other colors. There's still a chance of spraying a layer of tamiya clear yellow or clear orange on top of everything to get a different look.

Your creativity and perseverence are admirable.  Looking forward to watching your progress with this.

Off to a fine start there.  Will look forward to seeing how this comes out.

Nice work.  Looking forward to seeing more.

Mark

The decision was to mask using tracing tape, but that turned out to be so fragile that it tore off at thin points while trying to lift away. So back to good old tamiya tape. A fresh blade solved everything. Well, many things, at least.

A sharper colored rudder:

But that thing in front of rudder, whatever it is called, was not possible to mask in one piece. I gave it 3-4 tries, but either the mask tore off or it was uneven. So the sun rays had to be done one by one. Don't try this at home.

These small things that do not even cover a tamiya bottle cap took all saturday. Did someone say perseverance?

At the risk of sounding bombastic, I would point out that, like probably 99.9% of the aircraft operated during WW I, the Camel did not have flaps.  They were light enough and slow enough the flaps were not required.  What you removed from the wings were the ailerons.

Nice touch on the sunbursts!

A whole month has passed, but sadly brought me just a little progress. Spent some of my efforts to a traditonal new year's eve märklin train setup.

The flat surfaces on the back of the camel, which is a characteristic of this aircraft, has been lost  due to heavy sanding.



I tried to remake them, scraping by holding a blade perpendicular to the back of the aircraft, bot then I scraped it so much that the back got lower than rear of the cockpit. So I switched to the academy camel (to the right above), which progressed along with this revell, just like a shadow project. The rear elements of this academy (i.e. rudder, elevator and so forth) are a bit thick, say 1.5-2 mm, so I will use those from revell's kit. I'll try to build it mixing them up.



The wicker seat on the left is done by a talented guy, that's an RC he was building. It must be 1/16 or something, I can't remember. That poor *** on the right is my wicker seat, cut and bent into shape from acetate and seat belts made of tamiya tape and thin copper wire. Seat belts on baby carts are more complicated these days, well, those were the days.



That's the lever made of stretched sprue, and right side is, well, whatever. Hey, lookie, is that a cushion on the seat? Goodness, that made my day brighter.

After spraying tamiya x22 to the cowling and wood grain, both of these were masked to paint what's in between to silver. One day has passed, I thought that would be enough, apparently it wasn't. After spraying silver, I removed the masking tape and oh, what's that? Tamiya tape doesn't leave residue, so early masking must have prevented curing of X22. Sister google told me that tape residue can be removed by the miraculous spray WD-40, so I tried that, even thought that wasn't residue. I guess WD 40 has filled the gaps among the irregularity, and now it looks OK. Another coat of X22 would have accomplished the same, I guess.

Starboard side:

Air intakes are made of brass pipe, don't remember the size. That 'cartridge ejection chute' thingy (close to down right corner) is made of evergreen rod of rectangular section. Must have cut a good 8-10 of them until I could manage to glue it to place without losing.

And this is the cockpit:

Sure, this and that, but it doesn't look that bad to the naked eye.

Now moving on to painting the vickers guns and filling the valley that lies between them.

I'm glad that I wasn't the only one who ended up going totally overboard with this lil' guy. But isn't that what it's all about? Yours is looking really, really good!

A couple of things; Don't forget the gas caps behind the cockpit on the decking. Have fun if you try to make the auxiliary fuel pump for the righthand cabane strut (I used a 1/700 aircraft prop for mine!). And what are you using for rigging? I went with stretched sprue. Those doubled-up wires on the front of both wings were not fun.

Saw those gas caps on a couple of camels, I guess one of them was yours. But I can't find a way to do them. I don't have that punching thing, must think of something else. Maybe thin copper wire rolled around something like 0.4 mm drill bit, and glued somehow. But gluing it on the back of the aircraft is very dangerous, might screw up everything.

I have used stretched sprue before, so I'll follow that route again. It might be brittle, but that tightenability(what?!) property takes it on top. There are a few spots, though, that require the use of a more flexible material, something that is thin as well, but can also turn tight corners. And yes, that would be my wife's hair :) 

As for doubled up wires, I did them on revell's tripe, and agree that it was no fun. Sadly, doubled up wires exist on the back of the wings as well. Check this walkaround in Krakow, photo 20/23:

http://www.przemkko.strefa.pl/m_walkaround/camel.html

Knowing just how small these are- you, sir, are doing some great work.

Wow, great work!  This is a classic kit, too, if I'm not mistaken, I think this kit goes back to Revell's catalog in the '60s.  I like how your woodgrain technique is coming out.

I used an MG151 from the stash to make the barrel-tip thingies (what are these called anyway?). I tried to carve the tip just like you do to a pencil. Check the photos, I guess they are oversize and out of shape. I guess trying this conical tonical stuff in 72nd scale wasn't a good idea.

An Aldis gunsight was thrown in to crowd the aircraft. It's made of thick stretched sprue, and the front leg is of thin stretched sprue. This thing, when present, stood closer to the starboard gun, so I tried to do that way.

While writing these lines, I checked the references once again, and I can find no explanation but I must have gone through a nocturnal lapse of reason last night. These barrel tips are really big, but nowhere near conical. Let me go find another MG or something in the stash box.

Thanks for checking out.

Changed the tips and washed the steel parts with water colors I borrowed from my six-year-old son.

Looks a little overdone in close-up photos, but seems ok to the naked eye. I'm using this phrase so much, guess I'm taking a little closer photos than necessary.

Digital photography has become a diagnostic tool for me, Clause!  I always spot things I didn't see, and even though I use an OptiVisor.

I think you're doing a fantastic job.

When you wrote about the blast cones? for the muzzles, I wondered if you might not be able to use a piece of a plastic coffee stirring straw to make new cones.  Or maybe stiff paper, that might be easier.  Use a piece of paper punched from a hole punch, cut it into 2, and then make cones of those.  Fiddly work, in Braille scale, to be sure, but it would probably work.

the Baron, thanks for the nice words. And that's a nice tip, thank you for that, too. But that last reference photo reveals that those muzzles aren't cones. So I took the easier path and simply used a piece of thickly stretched sprue. Though I'm pretty sure I saw them as cones, in some other reference, maybe.

Herr Clausewitz:  like many, I built this kit back in the day; but it never looked remotely like yours!  Exceptional skill and work; it's a pleasure following your progress.

great detail on such a tiny plane. Keep up the good work!

About the gas caps, all I did to simulate them was drill out two different sized holes with my pin vice, back them with strip styrene and paint the inside with Testor's aluminum from the little bottle. It looked fine to me, in that scale:

Thanks a lot for the tip sob. One more question, the ailerons. I've seen many photos of camels on the ground with ailerons in the position as in your model. One side up, the other side down. What's the point of this? Is this a parking standard, or what?

Oh, just noticed another point, the struts. There's a chord, down and bottom of each strut pair. Both academy and revell made it so thick that it comes out of the wing, making the aircraft look unrealistic. I've already cut out the down chord, and thinned down the upper chord. The down chord in yours isn' t visible. Did you follow a similar path?

I saw something similar to this in a build of Doog. I tried to replicate this cowling weathering as a trial in the revell kit-now on the bench, i'm moving on with the academy, you know:

I couldn't find a ref photo about this, so I couldn't decide if to apply this to the real model (academy kit) or not. What do you guys think?

Anyway, I found a little time in the last couple of days and sprayed revell 66 nato olive green as suggested by revell. Then I cut the horizontal thin pieces that connect the struts and glued them in place.

Following are some photos, the upper wing not glued:

That's all for now. Thanks for checking.

Spiffy little Camel.  Nice work.

Nice progress!  Is that a stained plywood effect I see on the panels around the cockpit?  Nice!