Friday, November 23, 2012

R-34 scale model project...Minor damage/ persistant buckles/wrinkles in tissue surface!



After I was done applying the tissue paper, I had to water it down. This has the effect of when it dries out, it shrinks the paper, so that the surface of the hull is nice and smooth. Unfortunately this also greatly weakens the paper while it is wet, and in some places on the hull, I blasted holes through the paper with the water spray atomizer, from spraying it too hard. When it dried out, I had to get the dope and the extra paper out to patch the holes. Then I would re wet the patched area down to draw it tight. In some of these areas, this would cause the surrounding tissue to wrinkle. If that would happen, I had to apply more water around the patch on the surrounding tissue only, to try and draw that out. If that did not work, I had to cut the tissue out in that area in that gore, and recover it. That usually worked. If the ajoining paper would buckle, I had to re wet it repeatedly, and force dry it with a hand held hair dryer, to draw it out. I had to use repeated , and varying methods to get all the wrinkles out of the paper, until the whole surface of the hull was nice and smooth to the eye. Once I achieved that, I applied four sealer coats of clear dope to make the surface waterproof. This also has the effect of "plasticising" the surface, to give a nice smooth finish that fills in all the overlap seams in the paper that will take a nice coat of paint when I get to that point.


 These two images show the offending areas patched and drawn out smooth, ready to apply the clear seal coats of dope.

 These last three images show the hull surfaces all drawn out, ready to apply the seal coats of dope.
  Nice and smooth to my satisfaction!
Next step after this: Fin fabrication and installation.
Actual airship in 1919.


Jim.

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