lancfans' SARO SRA-1 *** DNF ***

[JohnRatzenberger]

It might be instructive to show your carving knives, explain which are best for what, that sort of thing.

[lancfan]

I did earlier promise to run a demo build of this but have too many builds on the go at the moment, when these clear up I will do so properly explaining how I do this, in the meantime here are the tools I use- nothing fancy, just two modelling knives for carving- one heavy blade and one light one, a sanding block, micro saw and an assortment of rolled sanding pads, these are particularly useful when shaping balsa, miliput or filler, when rolled tight they allow a round shape to sanded and when rolled loosely they can be controlled by the fingers to form progressive curved shapes.


Here is the fuselage as it is now, basically complete and ready to be split apart to allow the shaping of the air intake and installation of the cockpit before final reassembly. those who know this aircraft may notice that the jet pipes are too short, this is because the ends will be made from miliput to ensure that the finished jet pipes are correctly sharp and clean. Below the model is the template showing how it has been separated into different sections to mark the various levels of this quite complex fuselage.


David.

[lancfan]

The halves have now been split and the air intake has been roughly milled out with the hobby drill and cleaned up with a rolled sanding pad. The next stage will be to scratch build the cockpit following pictures of the full size and seal and paint the inside of the intake tunnel prior to finally joining the fuselage halves together.


David.

[JohnRatzenberger]

Very interesting and quite well done. You must have a very good eyeball to get the cross-section so well - I always used templates to help me shape, not always successfully. Of course, I guess getting sectional drawings is not as easy as it was decades ago when this was the norm ....

[lancfan]

I don't think they are John, there certainly aren't any of this aircraft, all I had were two three- view drawings, one found online (seawings) and a drawing from an Aeroplane monthly article, surprisingly the online drawing seemed to be the most accurate when compared to factory photographs. This lack of sections has not always been the case and I do remember the drawings of this very machine published in Aeromodeller many years ago did have cross sections.

David.

[JohnRatzenberger]

...... I do remember the drawings of this very machine published in Aeromodeller many years ago did have cross sections.
David.

I wish you had said something early on, I have a complete, albeit not extensively indexed, collection of Aeromodeller from 1943 through 1969 and probably could have dug it up for you. I grew up with that magazine, or maybe never grew up is a better statement.

[lancfan]

You and me both, John. You have mentioned your collection of Aeromodellers previously but I did not think to ask if you had these early drawings, never mind.

David.

[lancfan]

I have decided to build the cockpit as a card tub and have milled away more of the fuselage to make room for this, in doing so the windscreen coaming was damaged and so a shaped block was fitted to each side in replacement for the original wood. The important thing to remember when carving is that if you cut or sand too far all is not lost and you can simply cut back the effected area, square it off and glue in a new piece of wood to effect the repair.


The basic cockpit has here been made up and is ready to be painted and detailed prior to being fitted and then permanently joining the fuselage halves together.


David.

[splash]

Hi David

Have you seen this video of the SRA1?

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=IXuZzyzy ... XuZzyzyIco

Regards Splash

[lancfan]

I have now Splash, thanks for the link it was an enjoyable piece of film.

David.

[lancfan]

Here is the finished cockpit pictured just before finally joining up the Fuselage halves, I was fortunate that between google and the seawings website I was able to find a wide selection of interior images including period and modern pictures of the SRA.1 cockpit.


The fuselage permanently joined up.


David.

[JamesPerrin]

Lovely work so far.

[VickersVandal]

You make it look so easy!

Very impressive.

[lancfan]

Have been otherwise engaged building other things but this is how the SARO squirt now looks, the parts fro the main wing panels have been cut out and one wing has been assembled, sanded to section and pinned in place to check it for fit. This picture shows the assembled wing pinned to the fuselage with the parts of the other wing laid next to the model. Also the extreme nose air intake had been cut away and replaced with a more durable Miliput nose ring.


David.

[JohnRatzenberger]

That carving of the hull underside looks quite nice -- well shaped and even.

For the wing, it appears you have a "square" core sandwiched between an upper & lower "skin"? And the upper "skin" appears to have a formed leading & trailing edge ? And the lower "skin" has a cutout to guide your hallowing out the "core" for the gear well ? What are the advantages over simply carvine down a single solid block ?