Simon's BV P.210

[SJPONeill]

I'm in with this Modelik 1/33 Blohm & Voss P.210 concept jet fighter...I've had it for a while but only recently purchased the lasercut formers to go with it...these should make the build easier and possibly quicker but do mean that I am stuck with the 1/33 scale and cannot resize it to something a little more compatible with other aircraft models - still the different between 1/33 and 1/32 shouldn't be that noticeable if I decide the raid the spares box for anything

I suspect that this is a design 'with issues' as there is no central wing spar and the instructions for installing the cannon bays are non-existent...there is a full build thread on Paper Modelers and I will be using this as a guide http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/avia ... scale.html;

[JohnRatzenberger]

So, the lasercut - is that a wood or thick paper/card ? I've not fiddled with one like that and will be interested in your build.

[SJPONeill]

I'm not sure, John, the site I purchased it from [http://www.kartonmodellshop.de/shop/nur ... 0-133.html] says wood but it looks and feels more like a compressed card and I think I may seal the edge with CA to prevent any delamination...

[SJPONeill]

Poring over the instructions diagrams, I think one of the challenges will be rounding the very tip of the nose cone. As designed two flattish surfaces meet and have to shaped into a curved surface. I may try to shape this using foam and paint over it as Isaac did in his build. Other than that, it seems to be coming together conceptually in my head quite well...

[SJPONeill]

The lasercut parts are definitely some sort of compressed card and are quite brittle if one is not careful (don't ask how I found that out)...unlike the GPM cruiser turret I got just before Christmas, the cuts around each part in this set are not continuous and there is a little solid bit, no more than about half a mm, every so often that holds the part in the frame - quite securely as I found when trying to point the larger wing part out...you need ye olde sharp knife to just knick each of these points so that the part will pop out...

[carlos]

Wow that's pretty cool - aftermarket lasercut formers!
I've made a quite few papermodels, but never realised you could get aftermarket bits. I've always glued the 'former' pieces onto card to make them thicker and more robust.

8 Euros is what? About £6-ish.... That's not too bad I s'pose, when you consider what aftermarket decals/etch/masks/etc cost.

Can you get vacformed canopies too?

[SJPONeill]

Can you get vacformed canopies too?

Yes but - without having bought any myself - I understand that the quality shapewise leaves a bit to be desired compared with the vast range available for plastic kits. That being said, it is usually easy enough to tweak the scale of a paper model to make it compatible with plastic aftermarket although that, of course, renders the lasercut formers useless. Some paper models come with instructions to build a template over which to vacform a canopy but generally canopies for paper models are a bit problematic, especially where compound curves are involved.

[TobyC]

That's a very interesting kit. Makes a change to the normal plastic ones we see all the time.

[SJPONeill]

Got caught up in real life for the last couple of weeks...finally got a chance to start working on this tonight...

The laser-cut parts are 'interesting'...they are not, as advertised, wood but a heavy card. Separating them from the frames is easy enough but once the wing formers were loose, it was imemdiately apparent that it was impossible to join the spar to the chordwise former as there was no way to fit the joining notches together. I had to slice away one side of the notches on the spar - so that they were open along one edge - to get them to work...

The forward vertical chordwise formers in place. The two innermost ones are separate pieces but the outermost one was a single piece that I had to slice up as, as designed, it simply could not fit into the slots cut for it...

This is as far as I got tonight...the spar is glued in place and I am letting it all cure overnight for strength. The section that runs to the rear of the gear bay - the reptangular cutout at one end of the wing - only has a most tenuous attachment to the rest of the piece and it is very easy to bend it and I suspect, break it off...

The lasercut parts do speed up the process by eliminating a lot of cutting but there would speed it up even more if they were better designed...or, more accurately, if the original; kit parts were better designed...Much more so than plastic models, many paper models suffer from a clear air gap between the design and its buildability and this is already starting to look like a star in that area...

[iggie]

Rather you than me I have to say Simon!

It looks interesting from afar (NZ to UK is close enough ) but that's close enough for me

[SJPONeill]

Ok...I have to take back my previous comment that the laser cut parts speed up the build process...

This fuzzy-az image is the wing formers in the original model...you can see that they are designed to fit together quite simply...

The laser cut parts have, for reasons known only to some major deity, been redesigned so that they absolutely can not fit together...The centre section is actually too high to fit into the wing and I have dropped the part back into the carrying frame so that I can use the protruding notch from the forward section as a guide to trim the errant part to size...

This is where it needs to fit but OOB it was 2.3mm too high...

A clumsy shot of the formers in place post-trimming...the rearmost section actually breaks away and does little to support the rearmost part of the wing root where it is the thinnest around the gap for the gear bay...

[TobyC]

This is very much a labour of love. Not sure I'd have your patience. Well done so far.

[Old_Tonto]

That looks like it will make excellent kindling mate. Get a fire started and move on.