Rob's Meteor salvage *Finished*

[rob_van_riel]

Sometime you just get lucky..
The paint on the instrument panels (rattlecan over bare metal) didn't exactly do a sterling job covering the metal, but it saves me from drybrushing to pick out the details



"We don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents"...

[DavidWomby]

Sometime you just get lucky..
The paint on the instrument panels (rattlecan over bare metal) didn't exactly do a sterling job covering the metal, but it saves me from drybrushing to pick out the details

That couldn't look better. Happy accident indeed.

David

[rob_van_riel]

The cockpit module for the Mk4 is complete. I had to mutilate the poor pilot to fit beneath the IP, but sadly, that's normal in this line of work.



I'll leave this to cure properly, and get the fuselage halves joined tomorrow.

[rob_van_riel]

These kits come with gun ports moulded into the fuselage sides, but for the more ambitious builder, there are also metal replacements. These are quite a bit sharper defined that the plasitc ones, so I tried to install a set on the Mk4. If anyone here is considering the same, DON'T. Filing off the bulges in the fuselage sides leaves an almost-hole in their place, and the metal parts look totally wrong when in place. To really make them work, you'd have to embed them into the plastic sides, so that the front of the port lines up with the indent directly in front of the bulge (the fronts of the metal parts are full circles. The parts appear to be intended to be glued onto the sides, but that would have required semi circles).

This just won't work. I'll be giving August's trick with plasticine moulds for resin a shot, and try to copy the plastic bulges from the F8. I just hope my clay is up to the task.

[rob_van_riel]

The newly cast gunports seem to be OK, thanks for that tip August. They're on the fuselage, and should blend right in with a bit of sanding later on.

I've completed the cockpit module for the F8.


At that point, things suddenly sped up. With the cockpits complete, I could close the fuselages around them, and the wings are all but ready for joining as well.

The wings, clearly, are not yet attached in the picture, and won't be until sometime tomorrow. I expect this will take some doing, so I'm postponing that until I've smoothed out the joins of the fuselages (blobbed over with green filler here), and the tailplane joints. Things should start to look like Meteors by the end of tomorrow.

I'm beginning to hope I may actually have a shot at completing these within the available time

I hope to make a start on the last mould needed for this project later today: the rocket armament for the F8. No reconstruction, in this case, merely multiplication of the 8 rockets in four pairs Fredk generously provided (leftover from a Seafire?)

[splash]

Great work Rob.

[rob_van_riel]

I just took a first peek at fitting the wings to the fuselages, and I'm afraid this is going to involve serious violence. The cockpit modules are too long, and extend into the space where the wing is supposed to go.



The picture is of the Mk4 fuselage, the worst of the two. I'm not even sure the module was intended for a Mk4; I've had my suspicions that at some time there was a third meteor in this batch which I never saw (extra or unidentifiable parts), and it may well be that the cockpit module I put into the Mk4 was intended for an F8 or a twoseater. In any case, all that plastic visible inside the wing cavity will have to go. Buckets of dust expected for tomorrow

[rob_van_riel]

I just took a first peek at fitting the wings to the fuselages, and I'm afraid this is going to involve serious violence... Buckets of dust expected for tomorrow

A dremel with a grinding disc supplied the violence predicted. Since powertools are powerful, and plastic wimpy, the amount of (visible) dust was very limited, as opposed to the number of half molten blobs of plastic peeling off the cockpit modules The vibrations from the grinding knocked the front wheel loose from it's actuator rod on the Mk4, but that can be fixed.

The excess plastic now out of the way, is was fairly simple work to get the fuselages and wings to line up. That is, line up to the extent that this is possible, because the wing parts (both of them, this is not a result of the restauration work) are too wide on the port side, and stick out more than the thickness of the plastic.





As can be seen in the second picture, the fuselage bottom that is part of the wing is asymmetrical, and the more slender right (left in the picture) side is correct.

I'll have to put something inside the wings before mounting and grinding into shape with tons of elbow grease and sandpaper, to prevent creating a gaping big hole where I've gone completely through the plastic. Since I can't wait for several hours for milliput to cure, I'll go out to get some 5 minute epoxy putty. Nasty stuff, but fast, and even stickier than milliput, so precisely what's called for at this time.

[rob_van_riel]

The first cast of the rockets is curing. It's reached the point where I could open the mould, but picking everything out of the mould is not possible yet; although the resin is no longer runny, it is still too flexible, and I prefer to let it completely cure rather than risk bent rockets (although the resin has some degree of 'memory' and will largely creep back into it's original shape if bent at this stage).



Not bad, given that this is an inherently difficult shape to cast; lots of thin, long connections and small protrusions. A few more vents and feed channels, and I should have a nice little arsenal from the subsequent casts.

The tail fins are cast separately, as on the originals, and are technically uninteresting.

[rob_van_riel]

Time for my first encounters with vacform canopies. 'Scary' isn't even close...

The F8 canopy, as near as I can determine, is the original part. If you look closely, you can find the demarkation between frame and canopy, but that's as far as detail goes. Aeroclub thought is was a good idea to include a metal front canopy frame, and an insert for the rear half that is part of the canopy slide opening mechanism. Of course, fit is only so-so. The canopy had been cut out by the previous owner, and I won't even think of trying to improve on that; I'll have enough 'entertainment' joining it to the frames and fuselage.
Clearfix is great stuff, but slow. Holding this miniscule frame in position against wobbly canopy did not seen like a recipe for success, so I taped off the canopy and plunged it into a block of plasticine to hold it in place, squeezed the sides slightly to make the canopy narrower and match the frame (which in turn had been matched to the fuselage sides), and added a few blobs of clay for the frame to rest against. Slopped on some Clearfix, joined things up, and now waiting for the Clearfix to set. I'm not touching this thing before tomorrow. Hopefully, things will come out correctly aligned, but I wish I could be more optimistic about it.



I thought I was goint to get of easy with the Mk4 canpoy, but no such luck.
The Mk1 canopy I was planning to steal from the Tamiya didn't fit the fuselage, and worse, is a completely different shape than the Mk3 Squadron canopy I bought earlier. The Squadron part also seems to match the outlines on the fuselage rather well, so I'm betting this is the correct shape. It's still a vacform canopy though, and since I bought this one new, there was no longer any escape from cutting out one of those.
Let's just say that after the fact, I'm forced to conclude that I'm neither good at nor fond of the process I might be able to fudge the rather clumsy cut between the middle and rear part into somthing acceptable, but for now the brilliance of vacform canopies is beyond me.

[MarkyM607]

Watching this with amazement and stunned admiration. Many of us wouldn't have taken this on let alone kept slogging through the forest of problems you seem to be confronting. Respect!!

[rob_van_riel]

Watching this with amazement and stunned admiration. Many of us wouldn't have taken this on let alone kept slogging through the forest of problems you seem to be confronting. Respect!!

Always happy to provide some entertainment.
Given the perfect price for the kits (zero), I decided I had nothing to lose, and probably a lot to learn. That also explains some of the things I run into; in many cases, this is the first time I run into them, and I'm literally making this up as I go. Makes for an entertaining, if rather wild ride

[lancfan]

I have a few questions Rob, what grade of silicone did you use for the rocket mould, how did you make the halved mould and what type of resin did you use and what was the drying time?

David.

[rob_van_riel]

I have a few questions Rob, what grade of silicone did you use for the rocket mould, how did you make the halved mould and what type of resin did you use and what was the drying time?

Silicone used was this one: http://www.siliconesandmore.nl/nl/produ ... nt-41.html. In Dutch, I'm afraid, but the table with technical specs should be useable even is the language is gobbledegook to you. I added a random dab of pigment to the transparent component, just to see what I was doing, but this has no influence on characteristics. This is the middle of the road rubber from this supplier, and I'm certain any other default rubber would work just as well. Try to stick to addition silicones (typically 1-1 mix) though, condensation silicones (usually 1:50 catalyst:rubber mixtures) can occasionally interact badly with resin.

The mould was made using my default process; press masters halfway into plasticine clay, pour first mould half on top of that, remove clay, pour second half. (more elaborate description in http://uamf.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=11532).

The resin is this one: http://www.siliconesandmore.nl/nl/produ ... d80-1.html (the technical doc might be more useful to you), once more these are in Dutch. Again, this is the default, middle of the road resin, again with a dab of pigment thrown in.

(if you prefer German language, replace both "nl" in the URLs with "de", this is a complete translation.)

Curing time for the resin is difficult, as it can mean several things. Pot life (time during which the material can be used once mixed) is no more than 2 minutes. The resin is solid, but dangerously flexible in about half an hour; at this point more bulky items could be demoulded with some care. "Full" cure takes up to 12 hours, depending on how picky you are about that fullness. Al of these numbers at 20 to 22 Celcius.

[rob_van_riel]

<CENSORED><CENSORED><CENSORED>acrylics

I'd painted up the rear canopy insert for the F8 with Vallejo acrylics yesterday. Just now, I tried to glue it into place with Clearfix. Ugly black smudges all over the transparency, as the Clearfix reactivated the paint. A quick wipe with an alcohol soaked cotton swab got rid of the paint, but was hot enough to reactivate the 'protective' coat of Future (which had already betrayed me earlier on by not drying up completely clear, but with ugly specks in it suggesting bad need of window cleaning) resulting in matted areas. I'd since chucked the problematic bottle of Future as unsuitable for modelling work, so my only chance was Humbrol Clear. The resulting horrid mixture seems to be drying up as a very dirty windscreen. Even if I manage to salvage the canopy, it will set me back days, which I don't have. This may well result in a DNF for the F8.

In any case, I'm through with this ecomaniac junk, and going back to dirty old effective enamels; enough acrylic misery for this year.