How to build a paper airplane model - tips based on a 1/33 Il-2 Stormovik - FINISHED AT LAST!!

Well Now;

       That Proves my point! I haven't done but one airplane in paper. It still flys proudly I believe in the Rec center of the Martinex,Ca. V.A. Facility! I did a complete cockpit and the clear glass in the pit windows.

     It was a larger airliner kit put out by Schreiber in Metal toned paper! I think It was a K.L.M.Airliner. I know I bought it because I liked the Livery! But as you have done, I like the offices even in paper. Vac-Formed canopies can be used on Paper fighters that have " Bubble" canopies too!

Hello TB!

When you are done with the Rio, you should try a nice and easy aircraft, then... It can be done a lot faster than a ship, too! It has a few more railings, for example :-)

For the last 20 years Mały Modelarz is reissuing a very nice Messerschmitt 109 in various paint schemes, you should try it, once I have built the first one of these while on a business trip in Germany :-)

As for the bubble - I got the whole process figured out, from carving to vac-forming, some time I'll show you a photo of my Maly Modelarz Typhoon with a canopy made this way.

And now, my dear friends - I'm done with the Stormovik!!!

Here are the pictures:

The antenna is made out of stretched sprue (heated lightly to be tightened), the insulators are white glue (painted).

Thanks a lot for staying with me to the end - and traditionally, have a nice day!

Paweł

Pawel;

       I may just do that .The Rio is a complicated son of a gun. But also part is my fault because I saw ways to " Improve" an already complicated kit. The Andrea Doria and Stockholm Boats are done now so I can put finished on that project! That Sturm is beautiful . Great Job!! 

TB - Thanks a lot for your kind words!

And if you need help with selecting or buying that aircraft model, you know I'll help you, right?

Thanks again and have a nice day

Paweł

Well,Yeah!

 I will be asking soon,Maybe in the next month or so. Need a reasonable sized model or the C-46 or D.C.6 in civilian livery. Yes, Pawel it can be a Polish carrier! Also Can you put me on to a close to 1/160 scale, small! Cruise ship for the Museum layout?

Hello TB!

You know that the favourite scale for paper planes is 1/33 right? I'm not sure if in this scale C-46 or DC-6 would be reasonable sized - anyhow I didn't find any paper models of them availalble. C-46 was too exotic in Europe and DC-6 was a capitalist machine - polish airlines used Il-18 instead. But if you wanted a C-47, there's a paper model of it in 1:33:

As this googled photo shows, it's a nice big machine - not a weekend build, neither.

As for that cruise ship - here you could find something but closer to 1:400:

OK, you can rescale this to 1:160 - then it will be 2,1 m long - you don't have this much space on your layout, right?

How about this baby - it's in 1:100 and it would be closer to 300mm long if you rescale it to 1:160:

I have also found this thing in 1:200:

It's been build by the East Germans - I'm not sure if you can convert it to something American? But it starts getting big, anyhow.

Thanks for lookin' and have a nice day

Paweł

Pawel,

Sorry I missed this and thanks for taking the time to share this build log. Truly amazing work and I appreciate you showing us just how great a paper model can look. Also your creative solutions and techniques for the details can be aplied to just about any kind of model one would choose to build.

It occurs to me that in the paper modeling world one could have an impressive "stash" of unbuilt kits in a very small space Not that any of us would ever have stashes

I am curious do you have any idea how 1/33 became the popular scale?

Again thanks for sharing this interesting and informative build!

Hello Gil!

Thanks a lot for your comment and for your kind words. If you find something you like or can be useful to you, then writing this up made sense!

They say that the paper modelling is a perfect primer for scratchbuilding - I think so, too!

And yes, the stash fits quite nice on the book shelf, like they say, ask me how I know :-)

As for the scale I can only speculate, but I believe the answer lies somewhere in the fifties of XX century when Maly Modelarz started to appear in Poland. They used something comparable to "box scale" like the early plastic models did and I imagine they had 1:100 plans of diverse things, so for tanks they took 1:25 (magnify the plans four times), for small aircraft 1:33 (magnify three times), big planes 1:50, small ships also 1:50 or 1:100, and big ships 1:300. And once you have a few models built, you want to have a collection - prefrably in similar scale to do size comparisons (boys like to do that) - and the scale stuck at first for small aircraft and when the socialism crumbled and there was no more problems of getting enough of the right paper to print on, you started seeing monsters like the 1:33 B-52 (check it out on the net!).

Thanks for reading and have a nice day

Paweł

Pawel; 

    Heey ! The Lilla Is my personal Yacht. We ain't going to the museum with that Beauty! What fun Model to build! That one is now underway in plastic as well. I just loved the design so much!

     Now I will let you know I think we Capitolists "Missed the Boat" After I saw the High Speed ferries from the old " Motherland" Those waterborne Rockets were gorgeous! I guess I will have to find a Complete "Alte Liebe" ! She seems like she will fit okay and look good doing it!

    "Stash" ? Oh those four filing Cabinets full of Card Models. Yeah! Like plastic , kind got away from me. half were given. I will not stand by and let folks throw them away. A hobby shop in Austin,Tx. Closed some years back. The person doing the selloff was putting Card models in the trash. I asked him "Why"? He replied" No one that I know here in the States builds these silly things,and I mean, C'Mon Paper?" Well, I cleaned them out.He was trying to " Give Away " the bigger ones.

      I went to the Model Show with 5 Cases of Plastic Models and left with four Bankers Boxes full of paper. Models that is!

That Il-2 looks amazing!!

Pawel

I almost missed this. Super job.

That's an absolutely awesome project!

Chad, DM - thanks a lot for your kind words, they mean a lot to me!