SPA Modeler

Here's the beginning of my Camel. Academy did a pretty decent job overall, but the few issues it has are pretty annoying. Two major ones are the excessive flash or misalignment during molding, which makes for fun trying to straighten. Then there's ejector pin marks in pretty visible places, such as the upper side of the lower wing, right in the center of a raised spar. Or the ones on the sides of the headrest bulkhead.

Putty has been my friend.....

I have been making a few modifications, nothing too much, but I had some wood grain decals I wanted to try, and really didn't like the instrument panel. Here's the result.



Original kit IP




Start of my modifications. Drilled out new dial holes and built a back.




Painted the IP Humbrol Radome Tan, then applied an HGW wood decal.




Finished result. The white liquid is the "dial glass" not quite cured yet. It dried clear.


Next up, the new prop I carved to replace the kit part.



As always. thanks for looking

You carved your own prop? Nice.
I take it you just copied the kit IP? The real aircraft's IP looks significantly different to that. But you have done a fantastic job on it.

Looking good so far

Nice work on that IP - I like the idea of those woodgrain decals.

scorpiomikey wrote:You carved your own prop? Nice.
I take it you just copied the kit IP? The real aircraft's IP looks significantly different to that. But you have done a fantastic job on it.

You're very right about the real IP. I had to choose, either scratch an entire new one, or do what I can with the kit one. Considering the amount of work I already need to do just to line up the halves decently, I opted to play with the kit IP.

As for carving my own prop, it was something I've wanted to try for awhile. Not 100% accurate, but not bad for a day and a half worth of work. I'll post pics in a little bit.

Once upon a time, I had attempted to carve a few wooden props. After much trial and a whole bunch of error, I found the best results, (for me anyway), were achieved by gluing thin pre-stained laminates together to the desired thickness, penciling in a rough outline based on either blueprints or the kit prop, and going at it with Xacto, Dremel, sanding sticks, and eventually sanding/polishing cloths. After that, I use MinWax stain pens and darken the laminate stains. Coat with a gloss laquer, and you're set.

Here's the prop I carved for my Sopwith. The kit prop had too much of a pitch in it, and mine has too little, but I'm still learning. Sorry I didn't think to take pics from start to finish. It didn't occur to me until after I was getting ready to scratchbuild the prop mounting plates.




Kit prop and mine. I decided instead of attempting to thinly shave the kit plate off, I'd just build my own out of styrene sheet, brass nuts and resin bolts.




The brass nuts I used. Can't remember who makes them.




Front mounting plate after attaching the nuts. Right about here is where my eyeballs tried to cross. Lol




Finished prop, minus the weathering and decals. Notice the odd place for ejector pin marks on the kit prop. The whole thing is like that.


So it may not be precise, but I'm more skilled with paint and plastic than I am wood.

Thanks for looking

Wow, that looks good! Great work and very realistic.

Oh now thats pretty.
I like that.