Metalmorphous

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Its been a long time since I have had a Lightning in our shop and a few weeks ago a good friend of mine that bought our Morphed Yellow P-38 told me that he has sold it and it will be flown out west He had it in his office but due to lack of space in his new one he asked if he could keep it at my shop until its time to crate it up and ship it out. Before it even left his office I had its old spot in our show room all set up for it. Boy she looks as good as it did when it was here, Rich is as meticulous as I am when it comes to our planes. Last time I was at the WRAM show in New York I had the opportunity to meet and talk to Nick Ziroli and his son. Both are a credit to the RC world and when I had the Yellow P-38 on display Nick came over and complemented me on the plane, he also said that his P-38 sure would look good in with our aluminum skin and said that building his Lightning was not difficult. I did some research and have found that the Ziroli lightning best suited for what I plan on doing. Some of you might remember a few of the planes I have plated in our aluminum, unfortunately I will not have any for our display room soon, both Rich's lightning and my P-47 are sold so this leave an empty space at Metal-Morphous. So I pick up Nick's Kit with the fiberglass boom and will be building and aluminum plating it. Now this ones for me, after talking to Nick and getting lots of stick time I think its time for me to finial build and fly my favor plane with a little help of course But first I have to get it built light but scale and as we all know that’s the real trick. So right off the bat I plan of keeping track of the grams gain and lost. This is going to take sometime to do so if your in for some good reading and picture, pop in once and a while and see what I have been up to.

The First thing I want to work on is the turbos, the kit come with plastic vacuformed sheets, even though they look good I did notice that the inside of the formed pieces had more detail so I used it as mold and made my own fiberglass turbos. once I got them looking like the full-scale pictured I plated it with our process in a metal that is know for rusting, we don’t use it much because of this but it was perfect for look I wanted to achieve. I just glad that I don’t have to use much of it because it 4 times heavier then aluminum

Hope you enjoy this build
Ron Randall

Metalmorphous

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Heres a few pictures of the Yellow Lightning , I plan on keeping the same color scheme

skull1971

GO, RON GO!! This should be a great show.

zorby

Yup.....I too will be watching this with very great interest! Once i have my 1/5 mustang finished and maidened the P38 is definitely on my list of 'Things I have to do'.
cheers Pat

TomCrump

Hi Ron.

I see that you are doing high quality work, as usual.

In reference to a past online conversation, I found this for you. Maybe you could build one some day. http://hsfeatures.com/features04/bf109g632ir_2.htm

Metalmorphous

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Thanks Guys I think this is going to be fun project.
Tom I will check that out, just what I need,,, another project

I forgot to explane the pictures

1. This is a picture of the fullscale turbo
2. This is the vacuforum that comes with the Z kit
3. There is a little more detail inside the form
4. After waxing, I applied a thin layer of fiberglass and cloth
5. After curing, I removed the new turbo from the mold and it can be reused
6. I bonded the two parts together and made the recess for the turbo, the original location was too high
7. A little primmer and a rough fit, I will go over the vent and installation
8. A little more detail added
9. The turbo is metal plated --- I did have some some warpage bue to a high temp setting on the plating equipment, but a heat gun was a quick fix
The part is brushed with water and a low temp on the heat gun make good rust
10. I let the part air dry, and now the turbos look like they have been out side for years,
11. Another fit with the turbo recessed plated in a metal that looks like stainless steel and the rusted turbo has been airbrushed along with the area behind the exhuast port, this is just a test, I will remove the paint before the part gets plated in aluminum.
11. A close up of the details added

Metalmorphous

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Before I worked on the turbos I fabricated one vent that is located in front of the turbos, I then made a silicone mold of the vent so I can make the 4 vents exactly the same.

Picture 1. Once the plug was made, it was set in 2 part silicon
2. These are the 4 poly vents that will be bonded to the boom cover supplied by Ziroli
3. The fabricated vents are installed with some of the detail vacuformed parts supplied by Ziroli
4. Once primed the details are easier to see

Hey Tom, that is one nice looking 109!!!! How about you build it and I morph it[8D]

mobyal

good

Metalmorphous

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kWhile I was in the planning stage of this project, weight was one of the main issues. I was originally going to try and find a fiberglass Robart fuselage but was advised not to go that route due to the weight. Joe at Build Right fly Right hobbies talked me into stick building so I ordered the wood portion from a lazar company and it should be here in a few weeks. So this leaves me sometime to get some more details worked out. One being the gear doors. This is one of the areas that most people don’t see but completes a well scaled model. I was looking threw some pictures of full-scale Lightning and came across one that shows the doors with zinc primer that has been applied to the inner portion of the doors. I liked the look and worked out a way to replicate it with our process. I first was just going to try to airbrush the green zinc color into the areas after the two door pieces were together but I didn''t think it would come out very even. Then I thought about how Lockheed did it. It looks like the zinc inner panel which is actual the out skin was painted before it was assembled, this would of help with oxidation between the two panels after they were riveted together. So I desided to do mine the same way. Here are the steps. I know it seems like a lot of work for something only a few will ever notice but since I don’t have any wood to glue

Picture 1. I cut out the vacuform inner doors supplied by Nick
2. I typed in the subsurface makeup into the computor and the flashcool part of the process is now predetermined. The plastic needed very little prep. The dark one is what it looks like right from the plating equipment
3. The dark oxidation is removed with steelwool
4. The steelwool gives the aluminum a brushed look and this method is used to replicate the aluminum grain
5. The door has been polished lightly, it can be aged and weathered later if I like
6. Here are all the inner doors aluminum plated, polished and ready for for detailing
7. I use a paper templete to mark the holes that need to cut out like on the fullscale
8. I machined out the holes, because our Aluminum is permanently bonded to the subsurface we can machine, cut or scribe it like a sheet of aluminum and then polish out the finger prints and scuffs to a nice bright finish.
9. I sprayed the back of the inner liner with the zinc color, it give the edges of the hole a nice sharp finished look
10. I sprayed the back of the outer doors with the zinc color then bonded the two part together, later I will use a thermal masking tape to mask off this work and aluminum plate the outside of the doors with the rest of the aircraft.
11-12- Finished and ready for rivet detailing

Metalmorphous

My Feedback: (2)

Oh one more thing I forgot, my fabricated turbos added a total of 38 gram more than a set of the vacuformed ones that are painted[:@] somewhat more than I hoped for but worth the weight. The mods to the gear door was a loss of weight 12 grams. Now I just have to find someplace to knock off 20 grams

Now it time to do something with this canopy

rich10

So thats what you have been working on[8D] I too will be reading this thread!! I thought you had out done yourself on the Yellow P-38 but this looks like it might have more detail in the long run. Is it the same size as my Yellow and About how long do you think it will take do a complete build.

Rich

mv-warbird

wow, being a p38 fan myself ,just gotta say that your workmanship is top shelf.

simply a beautiful plane, well done.the center gun narcel is perfect.hope u have years of luck with her.

this about as scale as it gets.

Metalmorphous

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MV Warbird- Thank you for the complement. The pictures of the finish P-38 are the Yellow Aircraft I finished a few years ago, it will no longer be in CT so I start working on my new Ziroli P-38. The Z project are all the other pictures.


Rich Sorry I missed you the other day, I told Jose to keep eveyone away from the Ziroli work area, if I knew you were stopping in I would of made an exception Rich the Ziroli is larger than your Yellow P-38, Here is a picture of the two engine cowls next to each other. I extimate that I should have it ready for the Wram show in Feb

Ron

Metalmorphous

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The wood part of the Lightning will not be here for a few more weeks so that left the time to work out how I was going to detail the canopy. At the WRAM show I got a chance to talk to Nick about how there are less and less modelers that build due to lack of time or skill. I personally find building fun and creative and have found that Nick's kit to be perfect for being able to get a creative as I can. The clear plastic canopy that is supplied form Ziroli looks good but lacks detail and a three dimensional appearance, so after some research I was going to just aluminum plate the areas that are raised and then try to detail it but after looking at how some that were done this way I decided to fabricate an outer frame. There are lots of different way to do this and we have used most of the methods. Here is what I can up with and I will post pictures of my progress and methods.

Enjoy
Ron


Picture 1. I masked off the inside of the canopy to prevent any scratches during this process
2. Waxing the top of the canopy, its acts as a good mold release agent

Metalmorphous

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After the wax has dried I turned the canopy right side up and apply a thinned out layer of plaster, as soon as this is finished I mixed up another batch of plaster to the consistence of tooth past. This is applied to a thickness or 3/8 to a half inch. Again I mix up another batch, this one is alittle thinner and I soak paper towels then apply them to form a hard shell.

Metalmorphous

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Pulled the plug (clear canopy) from the plaster mold. It came out perfect and looking close I can see all the detail that was in the canopy but still had to look at the underside of the clear canopy to see the detail that was used in the original plug from ziroli. After marking the areas that will be fiberglassed, I apply the same wax into the mold.

Metalmorphous

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After wax has dried, I cut fiberglass cloth into 1 inch strips. Brushed on a thin coat of tooling resin followed by the fiberglass cloth. Applied another wet on wet coat of resin and rolled out any air bubbles. Tooling resin take 24 hours to cure overnight at 80 degrees.

rich10

Ron does the plaster scratch the clear canopy or is the plaster not abrasive enough to cause a problem.

at-6 texan

hallo!! i am at-6 texan i am new...can you halp me,please!!.. i search the piani (blueprint-scale)p-38 ziroli.. sorry but i nots speak so good english...i speak italian only...sorry!!!.. please can halp me!!!thanks...

Metalmorphous

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Rich the plaster is not abrasive and does not scratch the clear canopy. The wax makes it release very easy so it not necessary to use any tooling to remove it from the hard shell

Texan- My son in law speaks fluent Italian so ask your questions in Italian and he will translate[)]

Metalmorphous

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Fresh from the mold and even though you can see it in the pictures, all the detail came out fantastic. Now it needs to be trimmed very careful once I have clearly marked all the locations that will need to be cut away.

Metalmorphous

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I took the masking tape off the inside of the clear canopy and cleaned off the wax. Spending a little time on the preparation help keep the canopy from being damaged. Here is a picture of all cleaned up.

F86_SABRE

Can I ask you one thing please? What kind of tape covering did you use to cover the canopy bearing in mind that it was a tight fit job?

Thanks

Reuben

F86_SABRE

Ciao Texan,
Se vuole comprare le piante del Ziroli P-38 allora devo rivolgersi ghal sito di Ziroli che e:

www.ziroliplans.com

Se vuole gratis mi pare che e un po piu difficile.

Saluti da Malta.

Reuben

Metalmorphous

My Feedback: (2)

Reuben - I masked off the inside of the canopy with 3-M Automotive 2 inch tape. You can’t mask off the outside because this is where the detail and you have to hade direct contact with the plaster and the new outer frame will not fit correctly. I have attached a picture of the canopy once it was masked off and ready to make the plaster mold. One nice feature of this is if I need to make another fame all I have to do is lay up the fiberglass, this mold is reusable.
I hope the picture makes this easier to understand

Ron