Simon's St Chamond in 1/72 and in paper

[malepo]

uuuuh I would end up having paper glued everywhere

[SJPONeill]

The carpet monster stalks paper modellers too, it seems...assembled the right side running gear tonight only to find one set of bogies missing...spent the better part of an hour searching for it in all the usual places...I can proceed without it for now and will print out another one tomorrow...

The rest of the modelling evening was consumed by cutting put all the parts for the left side running gear...

Camera battery is almost dead so will be a bit frugal with pics til I get a new one...

[Dirkpitt289]

I think it was you (Pretty sure it was you) that had sent me the Buck Rogers Starfighter not that long ago but I seem to have loos it. That seemed like it could be rather easy. Mostly flat surfaces.... Mostly....

[SJPONeill]

Not I re the Starfighter but there are a number of variants here http://www.paperaviation.de/Science-Fic ... ction.html; plus some other interesting models...I think I did send you the SPI BV P.170 though and that is a fairly easy build - although I really struggled with the curved lips around the three cowling openings and in the end will cover these with tarps to stop the snow getting in...

[Dirkpitt289]

I remember now, Can you send me that again?

[SJPONeill]

Inbound...my build as far as I got is here: http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/avia ... omber.html;

Simon

[SJPONeill]

Now that the rain has (finally) passed on, the nights here are pretty cold (I know that sounds a bit counter-intuitive: the clear skies of a sunny day don't trap heat in the same way that a cloudy sky does) and tonight I was too lazy to put on the fire or go upstairs for some more clothes - I figured that a nice hot cuppa would warm me up and it did...but...as I was putting the full cup down on the work table, I just clipped the corner of my cutting board and managed to slurp some coffee over the side of the cup...right onto the carefully arrayed running gear parts I cut out last night.

I think that they will be OK once they dry out - lucky, I guess that they were laser- and not inkjet-printed - and will only look slightly 'pre-weathered'...instead of assembling the left side running gear tonight, I switched my attention to the next page of the instructions and started work on the lower hull parts...cutting them out and scoring the fold lines..that's about as far as I got because a. the movie I was watching while I worked ended and b. the temperature had continued to drop and the lounge was now damn cold...I could hear my electric blanket and winter duvet calling to me...

[SJPONeill]

A bit of a fubarski last night...To reinforce the interior of the lower hull, I added a piece of foam board to fill the gap...as I held it in place while the glue dried, I glanced at the instruction sheet and, just like after staring for hours at one of those 3D puzzle pictures, the actual relationship of the lower hull sections became crystal clear and I realised with some concern that my foam board insert was fixing itself nicely in the exact place where the inner piece (top in the pic)was meant to go...uh-oh...



I've sanded the foam to conform to the interior piece and think that I can get away with adding the fore and aft parts of the now homeless part to the lower hull and no one will be the wiser (less those reading this thread)...

[SJPONeill]

Assembling the running gear - I must say that these look quite good and very 3D considering their origins - the tracks are in two parts an inner and an outer layer which has to be glued in sections as the paper tracks are quite inflexible and have a tendency to ping free if the glue isn't fully cured for each section...

You can see though, the missing running gear that I have yet to replace...working on it...

[Ian]

With my Warhammer ones, I added the 'raised' parts of the tracks once I'd glued the inner part to the rest of the model after I suffered the same ping effect.

[ShaunW]

These paper models are certainly very different Simon and, to me at any rate, seem to be quite a challenge.

[SJPONeill]

The main challenge that I find, Shaun, is the need for greater precision in getting the fit right fist time around as your opportunities for fixing a whoopsy with a dash of paint and/or filler (possibly not in that order) later are more limited than with a plastic/resin model...this means much more care interpreting the instructions, cutting parts, etc...the upside is that you can always print more parts if you have to go back a couple of stages...

In the case of the St Chamond, whereas page 1 of the instructions, covering the making of the running gear, had amplifying text, Page 2 covering construction of the lower hull didn't and it took my a long time to figure out how the parts were actually meant to go; the more you test fit the parts, the more you are likely to 'weary' them and weaken the paper so that it becomes flimsy...

[JohnRatzenberger]

I wish my kit tracks had litle notes and arrows underneath ... last time I did the AVRE I got them backwards ...

[SJPONeill]

Tracks and lower hull...overhandling has rubbed off some of the ink on the running gear and the lower hull looks a bit flimsy but will hopefully straighten up when the next bits go on...



A night of fiddly cutting tonight working my way around the single-piece upper hull...



From the reverse side, you can see where recessed gun ports have been added, after colouring the edges with close-enough coloured pencils...

[lancfan]

This is all looking very good, perhaps later this year there should be a card models GB?

David.