1/48 Blue Max Sopwith 7.F-1 "Snipe"

[StephenLawson]

Here in the USA resin pour starter kits go for about $30.00.

[bobs_buckles]

Brad,
If you ever get a spare 5 minutes would you do a little tutorial on making replica castings? I for one would be most happy to see it and learn from it.

Great work as usual.
Cheers,
Bob

[trackpad]

Brad,

Very nice work! Along with the casting informaiton, perhaps you can market a few boxes of talent: seems as if you've got plenty to spare!

[Brad Cancian]

Hi guys - the casting kit I used was produced by Pinkysil - I picked it up at my local model club meeting although if you do a search online you will find it (admittedly the first spot I found it was on an Australian website). The kit came with a full tutorial... as each method may be different for each starter kit I won't go into details on how I did this (plenty available on the web for each product out there) but basically it involved making a two piece silicon mould in a makeshift mould box (first side made by pressing the items in clay, putting the mould box around the clay, pouring the first lot of silicon, letting it dry, flipping it all over and removing the clay, second silicon pour, then drying), clamping the moulds together and pouring in the resin - et voila.

I also decided to do some more on some of the other areas of the kit whilst I wait for the cockpit oil paints to dry... here is the kit's Bentley BR.II engine all assembled and wired up - no paint on as yet. The kit engine is in white metal and all 9 cylinders need to be assembled onto the crankcase - fun (especially when you drop the engine mid assembly and pieces go everywhere... ). That said the kit engine is quite nice - given that alot of it will be hidden under the cowl, all I needed to add were spark plugs, ignition wires, pushrods and the pushrod sleeves on the casing.



I think I will give the engine some paint tomorrow night. I think the engine will come up nicely after an oil wash.

BC

[trackpad]

Originally Posted by Brad Cancian

... given that alot of it will be hidden under the cowl, all I needed to add were spark plugs, ignition wires, pushrods and the pushrod sleeves on the casing.
BC

"...all [you] needed to add...??" Ye Gods, Brad, will you stop! You're giving me terminal inferiority complex!!

Excellent work so far. Good luck with the rest of your build!

[davecww1]

So the Blue Max Snipe has a nice Bentley? That may be a good one to make resin copies of to put in a Bentley powered Camel, which is not available anywhere as far as I can tell.
Dave

[Iwik]

Hi Brad!
Excellent work (as usual....)
Just a little question about resin casting. I'm doing some myself and the details are really crisps. However, although I'm using a small vacuum pump, I still have holes forming on my casts. How do you pour yours and not have holes in your parts???
Keep it up.
Ciao
Iwik

[Brad Cancian]

G'day Iwik - I made sure I gave the mould a good couple of taps on the side and some tilting to get all of the air bubbles out. Pre-coating the inside of the moulds with a little wet resin also helps to avoid those pesky bubbles.

On a minor progress note, I'm still waiting for some areas of the oil paints in the cockpit to dry (been nearly two weeks and STILL tacky - I love oils but I HATE their drying time)... that said, I have progressed, and have been working on the instrument panel. The kit's panel is too short and a little mis-shapen. As such, I scratchbuilt the whole panel using various reference sources. I started building the instruments from scrap plastic, wire and the odd bit of etch from the spares box. The only non-scratch bilt item was the compass, which I stole from the spares box (I think it came from the Roden Se5a - that said I did add some extra details to it)



I then added some paint and some decals for instruments:



And added the instruments onto the panel. After another couple of decals and a quick wash, she was done:




Hopefully the rest of these darned oils will dry in the next couple of days so I can begin adding the rest of the details to the cockpit frame. Might get onto painting that engine in the mean time...

BC

[Doug Baumann]

GOOD WORK Brad i see you have the oil pulsator i cant Waite to see more Doug

[FOKKERJ]

Hi Brad,

I like the way that you use oil paints and their long drying time, it gives you time to learn how to cast your own resin parts and refine other details.
It's all inspiring for the rest of us.

This might be the inspiration I need to work on my PEGASUS Sopwith 7.F-1 Snipe.

I usually get bogged down for lack of proper references, a nice DATAFILE sure comes in handy on most projects, especially all of the scratching and modifications that usually happen with "Short Runs" and others.

Thanks for sharing, Jay Schwartz aka FOKKERJ