Something Completely Different: 1/72 Oertz W6 Flying Schooner

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Evening All,

Britmodeller have been running an "Anything But Injection" GB recently and one of the scratch builds was of the Oertz W6 Flugschoner (Flying Schooner) by @marklo. Many of you will know that I have a penchant for the obscure or unknown steampunkt subject: this is a twin biplane, twin-engined pusher so it ticks all of the boxes! Mark is making an excellent job of his model, but there is just one problem - it is in the wrong scale! So I will have to rectify that problem by building one in the True Scale.

For those who have never heard of this type before, here is a link to photos and information:

translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=...&prev=search&pto=aue

I am making this as part of a GB on another forum (not Britmodeller), and as usual I am employing materials found in any scratch builders kit box, ie wood, plastic sheet, strip, and rod, brass rod, wire and anything that is lying around and looks vaguely useful. Here are the instructions as supplied in my kit:

Hopefully I will be able to produce something resembling the original machine, (there was only one built), in the next few weeks. I have made a small start by laminating some plastic for engine blocks and wing floats, and wood for the hull. The hull shape has been marked out but one of the problems of modern limited run kits is the amount of flash in them: I can see much filing and shaping of wood and plastic in my immediate future as I try to extract a hull from this:

Thanks for looking.

Stevef.

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Evening All,

I forgot to mention above that the hull is laminated basswood which is easy to shape and scrape and sands down to a very smooth finish. I have removed the flash from the hull - it has taken several hours with a file and glass paper but I am happy with the result so far. I started by removing large pieces from the front on one side and then shaped the remainder of that side as this made it easier for me to hold the piece in a wood vice:

Having achieved the above I shaped and scraped the other side to match:

Lines were drawn across the piece to enable me to draw reasonably accurately the shape of the hull on the side of the block, including the step at the rear:

The bow and rear of the hull upper surfaces could now be filed to shape:

Followed by the removal of the lower rear with a saw to create the step:

The last stage of the shaping was to slope the sides inwards towards the top of the hull:

And round the bow and underside surfaces and and smooth with medium and fine grade glass paper:

To try to ensure that the cross section of the hull was constant I used some paper templates which I had traced and drawn from plans in the German Seaplanes of WW1 volume:

The next stage will be to cut holes in the upper surfaces of the hull to represent the front cockpit and rear cockpit/engine bay. That will have to be done using a milling bit on a drill which I hope to show in the next update when it is all done.

Thanks for looking.

Stevef.

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Evening All,

I have been away for the past week or more visiting my family for the first time since the end of October last year, but before I left I had done some work which I did not report because I did not have the time, so here is a catch up to take us to where the model is approximately at the moment.

I mentioned in the last post that I wanted to use a milling bit to open up the engine and gunner's cockpits in the top of the hull. I do not normally like using power tools but for this operation I had to do so. For those who do not know what a milling bit is, it is simply a drill head with two sideways cutting teeth instead of a spiral cutter that is found on a drill bit. The milling bit is fitted to the chuck piece on a drill in the same way as a conventional bit. With a conventional bit a hole is drilled in a single vertical movement. A milling bit allows the person to cut a hole using a sideways motion. I hope that the following illustrations will show what I mean:

I started by putting a conventional 1/4 inch drill bit into my (old) power drill which had been mounted on a pillar stand to hold it vertical and rigid. A pilot hole was drilled in the centre of what was to become the larger upper hull opening:

The hole was a slightly larger diameter than the milling bit. The milling bit was put into the drill and the drill lowered and set so that the bit would cut approximately 1mm depth into the wood. The drill was switched on and the milling bit lowered into the pilot hole: now the wood piece was firmly but slowly moved from side to side to cut a shallow indentation in the top of the hull:

The above process was repeated many times until the desired depth of hole was achieved:

The small damaged areas on the top of the hull were caused by the piece jumping as I was attempting to cut to the edges of the hole while it was still shallow. It required quite a lot of firm handling to stop that from happening, and as can be seen I was not wholly successful! Those areas will fortunately be concealed beneath the wings on the completed model, but I will still fill them later before the wings go on. Once the hole was more than 2-3 mm deep the problem was much easier to control. The sides of the hole are not completely square when they are milled so they had to be cleaned up carefully with a new scalpel blade.

Similarly the bottom of the holes are not as flat as I would have liked them to be, but as both the sides and bottom have to be sealed in some way I will solve the unevenness and seal in one go by lining the sides and bottom with thin plastic card!

I have also worked on two small but important parts. The first was the streamlined gear housings for the propellor mounts - these were shaped from some sprue which had been given to me by a friend and which just happened to be perfectly round and of the correct diameter:

I have also carved the propellors from hardwood strip - one is shown here with the marked blank for the second:

I will make the small spinners later from the same piece of sprue. I will also try to crack on a bit and catch up with making and finishing more parts.

Thanks for looking.

Stevef.

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Evening All,

This week I have been indulging in some more non-injection modelling - ie I have been soldering and making some other parts from bits and pieces, including plastic card of course. First though I wanted to try to finish the hull as much as possible, so I CA'd some 10 thou card to the sides and bottom of the engine/crew compartment which I milled out as described in the last post. I also added the coaming around the two cockpits from 20 x 30 strip - also CA'd into place. Two coats of talcum powder and dope filler followed and a coat of clear dope to give the final mirror finish when sanded with worn fine glass paper. I filled in the damaged parts of the upper hull with filler but as suggested before, these will not be visible when the wings are in place. Finally I added the strips to the lower front of the hull. (I do not know what the correct name of those strips is: if anyone can tell me I would be very pleased).

Now for the brasswork. The boom at the rear which supports the rear biplane wings and tail unit will need to be strong - plastic rod simply will not take the strain and be to the correct scale, so brass rod has to be used instead. I used 1mm (3/64) rod: the lengths were measured from the plans and two sets of pieces cut from rod. The pieces were laid on a block of balsa and pinned so that they could not move, after the ends had been rubbed severely with glass paper and dipped into flux. The soldering iron was set to hot and also dipped into flux prior to putting solder on to the end. After the parts had been joined the whole was washed to remove the flux and the joints cleaned with a file:

The fins and rudders were cut and shaped from 30 thou card as shown in the image above.

To make up the rear frame the side pieces had to be joined with horizontal bars which meant that the side pieces had to be held in a vertical position so that I could solder the cross pieces. I pinned the side pieces and inserted the cross pieces and soldered them while they lay on the balsa block. Getting everything square was vital and required some careful juggling of pins and side frames, but eventually I managed it. Please note that in the first two images the cross piece is only held in place by friction - it had not been soldered:

Again the piece was washed to remove any remaining flux and the joints cleaned with a file. The brass pieces are now ready for priming. Next will be the engines and flying surfaces.

Thanks for looking.

Stevef.

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Evening All,

I have done some more soldering. The propellors were supported on two booms and were connected to the engines by drive shafts. The booms were braced by a rather elaborate construction which was placed over the engines: the whole is a rather intricate structure with lots of small pieces. I thought that I might try to make the whole assembly from brass rod until I looked carefully at some of the joints - and then changed my mind. I will make the propellor supports and the rear of the cage from brass rod to give the structure strength, but much of the bracing over the engines I will fill in with plastic rod as I will have to assemble it in situ and soldering that would be impractical. If you are a bit bemused, all will become clear at a later stage of construction. So for now I have made the propellor supports from brass rod as per the tail boom:

These have since been primed with the tail unit parts shown in the last post.

The wings caused me some problems. There are 4 of them and I originally cut them form 30 thou card which had been bent in boiling water in a piece of drain pipe. The lower rear wing is in 3 sections as the outer panels are very slightly swept back. Similarly the upper wings are in two parts because the leading edge is not straight. The lower front wings were simply cut from card. All sections were sanded to give a slight aerofoil shape and ribs glued in place: these were 10 x 20 thou Evergreen strip applied with liquid cement. The strips were sanded and then 500 grade Mr Surfacer filler was applied to the edges and the whole sanded again. The rear wings were fine, but when tested the front lower pair had too much curve and would not sit firmly on the top of the hull and give sufficient contact to ensure that when glued in place they would stay there. I also looked at the photos of the aircraft and saw that the aerofoil on the front pair of wings, especially the upper one, was almost nil. So I cut a second set of front wings from 30 thou card, applied the ribs and filler, sanded them twice and tried again. This time I found that the lower wings just did not have enough strength to be sure that they would not sag at the tips when the upper wing and struts were placed on them. So I made a third pair..... from laminated 20 thou card which had not been bent in hot water. This time I managed to get wings which may not be 100% accurate in terms of aerofiol section, but they will have the strength and surface area to stay in place and not bend (I hope!)

The upper pair are the front wings and the lower pair are the rear wings.

I have lined the interior of the engine compartment and front cockpit with 10 thou card but as I have no idea about what the interior was like I am using modellers license and following Marklo's suggestion that there was a floor made of wood to help support the engines at the correct level. I made up a floor from pieces of stripwood laminate. I also made up the platform for the trailer which the aircraft was carried on at the same time. This was also stripwood and the beams obechi. Both the floor and platform were stained with a wash of Revell brown 381 acrylic:

I checked that the tail boom will fit properly into the rear of the hull. This was useful as I was able to use the structure to make sure that when I cut the horizontal tail surface it will exactly fit:

I have started to make the engines but have only laminated plastic for the blocks and cut rod for the cylinders - construction, detailing and painting will be shown next time.

Thanks for looking.

Stevef.

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Evening All,

Thanks to all of you who have dropped by - your comments are always most welcome.

I promised that I would reveal all about the engines in this post. As usual they were made from laminated card for the sumps, rod for the cylinders and thin rod and wire for the pipes, conduits and exhausts which make these engines. I started by laminating some plastic card and cutting lengths of 80 thou rod for the cylinders:

File the laminated card to shape and glue the rod on one edge to make up the basic engine form:

I used photographs of the real engines to add the various pipes and pieces to the sides and tops of the cylinders, and some breather units to the side of the sump. The sumps were painted in aluminium and the cylinders black. Other parts were largely aluminium:

This machine started life without wing tip floats, but I want to represent it later in its career when floats were fitted, so I laminated some more card and when that was dry, filed a pair of floats to shape:

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I wanted to fix the rear lower wing to the boom structure and realised that I had made a mistake: I had not drilled holes in the wing and passed the brass rod upright through the wing before I completed the soldering. Grrrr. The solution was simple enough but required some time and fiddly work. I decided to cut the leading upright off completely and make a new one after I had drilled the necessary holes in the wing. However brass rod conducts heat readily and there is not very much length between the joints which are to be soldered and the plastic of the wing. Without protection for the plastic damage could result, but at the same time the ends of the new upright have to be held against the ends of the existing frame. The solution was to pin the frame to the balsa block and solder the lower joints without the wing: this meant that I could heat the brass and not have to worry about melting plastic. Now I could gently ease the upper ends of the boom upright through the holes in the wing and slide the wing to the base of the boom structure, leaving the upper joint free. Once again all was secured to the wood base with pins and the wing insulated with wet tissue paper. The upper two joints were soldered and the plastic of the wing was undamaged:

Now the wing could be slid into place against the top of the boom and secured with CA:

This shows the old, removed leading upright pieces in front of the new parts which have been secured to the wing:

The horizontal tail surfaces were cut from 30 thou card and the edges filed and sanded to give an aerofoil appearance:

I will now try to secure the lower front wings to the hull so that I can start painting and decorating.

Thanks for looking.

Stevef.

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Evening All,

I used epoxy resin to fix the lower front wings to the hull because I find it gives a more robust joint than CA in such locations. I had to fix one wing at a time, which meant two evenings. Then to strengthen the joint I drilled holes in the wing and hull and inserted small brass pins and filled the holes with filler:

Prior to fixing the wings to the hull I had glued the wing tip floats to the undersides:

Painting and decorating followed. The colour scheme is not known for certain but B & W photographs suggest that it was a variation on two-tone grey with a black stripe along the top sides of the hull. I used Revell acrylic Hellgrau (light grey 76), for the upper surfaces of the wings, tail unit, fins and rudders and hull, and the same mixed with approximately the same amount of white for the remainder. I mix the colours with water so that the paint is very thin: it then gives a very even coat which is as good as using a spray gun IMO. The one problem with this method is that it takes lots of coats to get a smooth and even finish - up to 15 in this case. The initial coat also looks positively awful and the modeller has to continue despite the very strong desire to give up and try another method! The black stripe was hand painted using black acrylic but not watered down in this case. Transfers might have given a cleaner edge but would have been a nightmare to cut and apply, and as I do not have any black block I did not have the option.

The markings were simple - Iron Crosses above and below the upper and lower wings respectively, and on both sides of the rudders, all on white squares. There was a pennant number on the hull in black: all of the markings were printed by Arctic Decals for me.

The next step will be to put the engines and propellor mountings into the hull and then the most difficult part - fitting the two upper wings. The struts on the wings sloped inwards and forwards at the same time: I am not looking forward to that stage and am thinking through different options as to how I might go about it. The rigging by contrast will I think be straightforward!

Thanks for looking.

Stevef.

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Evening All,

The engines and propellor support frame have been installed. I started by putting the propellor supports into pre-drilled holes in the cockpit floor held with CA.

These were followed by the engines which were also CA'd to the wood floor and the rear uprights of the frame which sat over the engine:

The three horizontal braces were added from plastic rod to make the frame rigid:

The structure above the engines looks complicated in photos but is actually fairly simple and consists of mirror halves. I will not try to describe it as it is clear in the photos: basically it was constructed from 30 thou rod held with liquid cement:

Once the basic frame was complete and dry I could add the rear bracing arms and drive shafts to the gear pods:

I have placed the horizontal tail surface on to the rear of the boom to get an idea of what the aircraft will look like when it is finished:

The plastic frame has been painted black and I have made the jigs which I will use to mount the upper wings. I will describe how I mount the wings in the next post - if I am successful of course!

Thanks for looking.

Stevef.

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Evening All,
I have mounted the rear wing and rigged it.

Before proceeding with the wings I had to put in the radiator pipes between the engine bay and the lower rear wing - the radiators were mounted on the lower wing. I used 30 thou Evergreen rod for the pipes and put them into holes which I had drilled in the wing:

The white marks on the wing are where the radiators were to be fixed. These were glued in place with supports from stretched sprue behind them. I forgot to photograph them before I mounted the upper wing but they can be seen in photos below.

I have made some simple jigs to support the wings while I put the struts in. The problem with the strut arrangement on this aircraft is that they are angled sideways and forwards, so simple vertical jigs of the type I have used before will not work. However Marklo used a clever jig in his build which was a simple pyramid with the angle of the sides the same as the angle of the struts where they lean towards the hull. The forward angle was marked with a pencil on the side of the jig, and a tab was left on the front or rear edge of the jig to hold the jig on the wing. By placing 2 jigs on each pair of wings and then placing the upper wings on the jigs I could see how the overall structure would look:

Note that the jigs in the images above were part of a trial so the radiators were not fixed at the time. The lines on the side of the front jig which show where the struts will be can be seen in the third photo.

After I had fixed the radiators I put the jigs in place on the rear wing only. To stop the jigs from sliding around I put small pieces of masking tape on the sides and across the top: this prevented sideways and front to rear movement and held the top wing steady. The centre section struts which form a V were put in first and allowed to harden for an hour. Then I could take out a jig on one side, invert the model and put in the outer pair of struts:

Note the centre V struts, the wing jig at the front of the image and the sophisticated supports to hold everything up and square while I was putting struts in place and allowing them to harden. The remaining struts on the port side could then be inserted relatively easily:

Repeat the above process for the other side and all the struts were mounted:

As usual I rig the fore-aft wires between the struts first:

The main wires in the bays between the struts followed:

Now that one wing is in place I can get on with the other and then start on the tail unit and control wires.

Thanks for looking.

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Evening All,

I had to correct an error before proceeding with the front upper wing. I had mis-interpreted the drawings when I put in the radiator pipes: what I had thought were the pipes were in fact control wires to the tail surfaces - the radiator pipes were not on the drawing at all! A quick change in position of the pipes was carried out and they now look much better and plausible. The front upper wing was mounted in the same way as the rear upper wing - by using custom made jigs which were secured with masking tape:

I had learned from experience when mounting the rear upper wing that I would have to invert the model to fix the struts - the masking tape ensured that I could do this while keeping the jigs and wing in place. The centre section struts were fitted first - that meant that the wing was held in part by the struts while the jigs supported the outer parts of the wing when I handled the model. I had to invert the model to be able to fix the struts to the underside of the top wing:

The remaining struts were inserted as per the rear wing and the jigs removed as soon as one pair of struts had been inserted on each side of the centre section. Rigging followed with some difficulty because the fore-aft wires were not easy to get at and access to the bay wires at the rear was restricted by the rear wings. Two separate sessions were required to get this far:

The tail surfaces were assembled before I fixed them to the booms. This allowed me to rig some of the control wires and bracing and made life easier getting everything square and true. The booms were also rigged before the tail surfaces were attached. The horizontal tail plane was CA'd to the upper surface of the boom and the control wires rigged:

Finally I added the ailerons to the rear wings, the windscreen, propellors and the last of the control wires from the tail unit, and the anti-drag wires for the wings and the model is complete:

I am in the process of finishing the trolley on which the machine was carried to the launch ramp and a simple base on which to mount the model as it is a bit fragile and awkward to handle. I hope to be able to post pictures of the model on the base in the next few days and give more views of this rather different aeroplane.

Thanks for looking.

Stevef.