Hello and welcome back
to Scale Me Down, and to another episode
of our two-seat scratch built radio
controlled Spitfire build.
This is the final episode where we'll do
the final assembly,
paint job and markings before it's ready
for a maiden flight.
Off camera since last time, I've
masked up the fuselage and wings
ready to spray the top surface colours
- so let's get started !
I applied two thin coats using this
HVLP spray gun.
That is the dark sea grey done, and now
just the dark green to go.
It looks like camouflage patterns such
as this are random,
but in actual fact not as the chap on
the shop floor
in charge with painting the grey and green
on the full-sized Spitfires was given a
chart like this
and so they always follow a similar
pattern.
We will do the same of course. I'm also
going to knock back some of this
super high gloss shine using some matte
lacquer once we've done that
but before we start, so that the
elevators and tailplane
green patterns match, up we're going to
fit the elevator
hinges now permanently with glue.
Once again, we'll pack the hinges with
vaseline
to prevent the 24-hour epoxy from
seizing them solid.
I've roughened this area of the elevator
joiner
with a dremel fitted with a sanding drum.
A cloth soaked in isopropyl alcohol gets
rid of any
fingerprints off the finish.
These syringes from your local pharmacy
are really handy
for mixing small amounts of paint and
hardener.
We're going to use this single-action
airbrush to apply the green camouflage
as it's much easier to clean up
afterwards.
Even a cheap, simple, single-action
airbrush such as this
is more than adequate for doing the soft
fade edges on the camouflage pattern.
They're not very good however for large
blocks of solid colour.
Despite the airbrush being so small we
require the big compressor to supply air
for this job -
and that's the loud periodic noise you
can hear.
With the green done, now comes the fun
part -
pulling off the masking tape which will
reveal our hard work.
For anybody that's done any spray
painting before, they'll know that it can
be quite stressful doing this
in case any paint has been blown
underneath the masking tape.
However, if it has, let's not worry about
it - we'll just fix it.
All the masking is now removed and there
were one or two issues
as we predicted just in some places
the paint had blown underneath the masking
tape.
And so how I've fixed that, I got a
piece of paper,
cut with a nice straight sharp edge and
held it against where the sharp
change in colour should have been, and
then just blew gently
with the appropriate colour from the
single action airbrush and that fixed it.
Then before I removed the remaining
masking off the glazed
clear areas, I applied some of this
matte lacquer - just because it was far
too glossy.
You'll notice now, that the sheen has
settled down to a lovely
satin silky sheen all over - very
realistic when compared
to the full size. I also had to take the
scalpel blade and just really gently
just run along the edges of the masking
tape
before I peeled the bulk of the tape off
so it didn't peel the paint off the
canopy bars.
And we're now ready for the final
assembly stage where we can bolt in the
motor, ESC,
aileron servos, receiver and all that kind
of thing.
The motor mounting bolts are secured with
thread lock,
and I fit them first finger tight before
tightening them nice and snug with an
allen key.
It's now time to apply all the markings
to the aircraft,
and here are two secret weapons that I
use to do just that.
First I have this vinyl cutting plotter
that I bought second hand many years ago
and we can use it to cut vinyl stickers
directly - or in this case
we can cut vinyl stencil masks
that we can blow paint through using the
double-action airbrush.
We use this machine rather than the
laser as
lasering vinyl releases poisonous
chlorine gas.
Second, is this old-school overhead
projector
and we can use it to directly project on
the aircraft the position of the
markings.
By producing an acetate such as this one
with all the markings on it as a line
drawing
this will allow us to accurately align
the stencils.
The vinyl cutting plotter can be
controlled from any vector drawing
software.
We stick a piece of clear self-adhesive
film
with its backing down to this gummed
carrier sheet.
The print head is fitted with a tiny
knife blade, and
by a combination of moving the knife
blade side to side,
up or down, or by drawing the material in
or out of the machine,
any shape can be cut.
Here I'm aligning the peeled stencil
with the overhead projector
before painting the marking using the
double-action airbrush.
This allows us fine control of both the
air
and the paint.
With this technique, we can do markings
of any color.
I've just finished airbrush spraying all
of the markings onto the plane
using the vinyl cut stencils we've just
shown you
and we're nearly ready for the big
reveal. However, just before we do that
we have a few scale details to add
such as the tail wheel and the scale
exhausts.
We've printed these on the smaller of
our FDM 3D printers,
the CR10s. We print on a raft
like this this flat plate so we don't
lose any of the small details so it
stays stuck down properly
and we split the parts like this into
two halves
so they sit down flat.
We'll glue all these together, fill, sand
them
and spray them up add them to the plane
and we can have a look at her all
finished !
Now it's time for the final reveal !
Here she is all finished with all her
markings and scale details
on, all the radio gear fitted, ready for a
maiden flight.
Join us next time when we conduct the
maiden flight
and see how she flies ! Until then don't
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you next time