James' Argosy Odyssey

[JamesPerrin]

Wing to fuselage joint sanded down and checked with Aluminium (or any other metallic) paint. This is far better at showing blemishes than the traditional grey. Blatantly obvious since a metallic finish show every blemish you missed, but I've only just started using it after seeing someone else do it!

The booms were stuck on with tube cement after careful alignment, a thin shim of card was needed between the wing and the rear of the starboard boom to drop the tail down a little so the tailplane was straight. The tailplane was initially unglued until the booms were correct and then liquid cement run round the joints to lock it in place. I've added the first application of milliput here, the underside is pretty good and the putty is mainly need to fair the upper surfaces into the wings. The outer engines though require plenty to form the nacelles fairing.

The thimble nose needed some care in positioning as I hadn't made a great job as sanding the base square.

[Martin R]

Looking good, James!

I can also recommend Wilko's satin black to show every blemish. Ask me how I know . . .

regards,

Martin

[did_nev]

Very nice work James. I always love to see a vacform getting build. But it's such a hassle to get all the needed parts from the sparesbox and scratchbuild the not availabler stuff. Nonetheless, I like it. Must pull something out of the stash in the near future.

[JamesPerrin]

Apart from bulkheads most of the scratching on this will be aerials which I do a lot for IP kits too.

[ShaunW]

Really great work, you're making this vacform look easy and might inspire me to dig out my Welsh's 757 at this rate, though I haven't got much of a clue as to how to properly deal with vacform components, should be a laugh then

[JamesPerrin]

Time to start focusing on the other bits of the aeroplane. The square tipped props supplied have short conical spinners that are more suited to a Britannia as the Argosy has long bullet shaped spinners. I decided to master the correct shape and then duplicate it. A piece of sprue with the right diameter was sanded to shape and then plunged into a piece of milliput to form a female mould. Once this was set more milliput was mixed and worked till it has started to firm up and become less sticky. I formed this roughly to shape, lightly dusted in some talcum powder and then pushed into the mould. Once dry I used a handy engraving/cutting tool thingy (from WAVE) that allows you to score around an object at various set heights to trim them all the same length.



Finally the conical spinner was snipped of and sanded level and the new spinner superglued in place.

[jssel]

Nice tip, James. You are progressing nicely.

[JamesPerrin]

Tonight's work has all been at itsy bitsy scale.

First I added prop shafts to all the engines from sprue and drill out the tiny auxiliary inlet above the main intake.



Next job was too add the characteristic vortex generators around the top of the fuselage. I cut 16 tiny pieces of card from Slaters strip. Then set these all on their edge on a piece of upturned masking tape. This meant I could pick them up with one hand/tweezer while hold the glue with the other. Another piece of tape with pencil marks formed a guide. It was just a then a matter of patience. Note as they go down the side the rotate to follow the airflow

The vacform did have some little nubs to represent the vanes. Mine are actually a little too tall an may need a very gentle sanding once hardened. Finally job was to add the window frames to the flight deck. More tedious than the vanes as each bit needed cutting to size.



It may look like a lot of bother but honestly I'm having great fun and have been purely concentrating on this one build. I hope though the weather picks up soon as I don't fancy spraying in sub-zero temperatures.

[Jagewa]

Nice detailing James and neat milliput trick.

Cheers
Jim

[PaulBradley]

Fiddly!

[JohnRatzenberger]

On trimming the vortex generators, this is a task that might go smoothly with a sprue (side-)cutter rather than sanding ... A good pair won't put much stress on the vanes ...

[JamesPerrin]

On trimming the vortex generators, this is a task that might go smoothly with a sprue (side-)cutter rather than sanding ... A good pair won't put much stress on the vanes ...

I considered that but they are too close together. In the end a sanding stick was just fine, working along the direction of the fuselage to minimise stress. A medium coarse stick rather than fine is best as it does the job without needing to apply pressure.

[Stamford]

Some real modelling going on here. Never seen a miliput mould before - cracking idea.

[shangos70]

Fantastic work James , some top problem solving going on . I will stick to assembling kits .

[JamesPerrin]

Cheers guys, here a thrilling picture of it partially covered in grey primer. The cold snap has broken right on time for me to get my rattlecan out.