spikkkkkk

i was going to go with an aluminum cowl but couldn't find one that was 7" so i decided to go half plastic and half alum. ( front face) and rear rivet strip when all is said and done you wont even be able to tell the difference. as for the wing and fuse covering i will use the plastic but i'm gong to cut apart and rivet back to gether in a more realistic way and this will not look like plastic either.

spikkkkkk

thanks mike, i'll be looking foward to that n-28 build thread, thanks.

spikkkkkk

i agree les, the more tools in our arsenals the better. knowledge is a good thing even knowing how to do somthing that doesn't apply to your life right now because you never know, you could be marooned on that island tommorow and wits and know-how is the only thing thats going to save your life.

spikkkkkk

here go's, the etching seminar and i'll the best i can so bare with me. the first pics you'll see are the art work being created on my computer screen. after you finish the art work you have to copy and flip you have to have 2 pieces of art one for the back and one front. next i print the 2 pieces out on clear acetate mad especially for inkjet printers and also you have to set your printer to best and choose premium photo paper and the highest DPI possible i go 1200x2400, it's slow but very crisp,dense and opaque. when the printing is done you have to register the 2 acetates perfectly. i do this by tapping one down with a piece of tape half way on the back facing up. carfully flip the othe piece of film and register to the piece you have taped down, when your happy just rub the 2 pieces of tape together you have on each piece film. now it can be slipped over your plate and will register just fine. the next thing you do is prepare a bras or stainless steel plate. first you clean and polish both sides of the metal with a 3200 pad and when water doesn't bead up but sheets, clean well. now your ready for the photo resist. it's a film emulsion thats photo sensitive. i use yellow out door bug lights for safe lights.place the down on the photo resist and cut 2 pieces the same size as the metal plate. after thats done get your plate good and wet then peel the protectant off the side that curls in. place a piece of your precut photoresist on the plate and work out the water and bubbles underneath then do the oppisite side the same way then with paper towel. make sure there are no voids or bubbles. this takes a bit of practice to produce nice clean plates less bubbles, wrinkles etc.. i have a leg up i use to be a printer offset and screen so i was use to working with emulsions and sreens, u.v. light, registration and exsposure.here are some pics of the process so far. BTW this is a small system i purchase from micro-mark in jersy i get all my chemicals, photoresist and film from them, i'm in the process of having a friend build a larger tank for me out of 1/4" plexi i dont have any thing that would cut that. i'm also adding 2 airiators and bigger one top and one bottom this will enable me to cut bigger stock and the time will be much faster. as soon as the plate with photo resist is ready you put it between to carriers( waxy no stick card stock) then you put it through your pre heated laminator. once it goes through flip 180 degrees and pass it through again, now your ready to expose your plate to the artwork.

spikkkkkk

now that your plate is ready grab your artwork you set-up earlier and slide the plate between the films center and clamp between two 1/4" pieces of plexi making sure your glass is clean. in industry you would just drop the plate and artwork onto a u.v. vacume table, but this method seems to work just fine. you can expose with a 100 w light bulb, u.v. lamp if you got it or like me flourescent lamps. i stacked some boxes on my work table you want to be no more than 2 inches from light. your plate will look green before exposure if it's exposed enough it should be purple-blue . i give mine 10 min. per side. after exposure it's time to remove the unexposed emulsion. i mix 20% sodium hydroxide with 80% water in a little dish just enough to cover the 3x3" plate. i give it 30 seconds per side then rubbing gently with a small soft brush under cold water. wear gloves these are caustic chemicals. you should see the empression of the art work get shiny as the brass is exposed. pat dry and your ready to etch.

spikkkkkk

next grab a bottle of ferric chloride and microwave it till it's hot, not boiling. if it exploded in your microwave it would disolve it so be careful on times. next crimping off your hose to the airiator fill the tank with one bottle of hot ferric chloride, plug in air and uncrimp you hose. remove protectant from exposed plate and slide into your drop tube then place in tank and cover. after 10 min take out and set bowl of cold water and brush the image areas to release any small particals ,flip 180 and put back in tank 10 min for othe side.i'm useing 10 mil brass heavier stuff takes longer to etch. after 10 min pull out and if every thing looks etched put into bowl of cold water.shut down tank. 5 mil will give you 10 etches per bottle of ferric chloride, 10 mil is 5 etches and so on. to remove emulsion (i ran out of camera space so i didn't show this) soak plate in 100% sodium hydroxide, emulsion will come off in 3 or 4 min. your parts will look discolered just snip them out of the frame and polish with fine steel wool. well that's basically it one more tool in my arsenal. these parts are compass, fuel gage and instrument faces.

spikkkkkk

here are the last few pics of the etched plate stripped of the emulsion.

jtisch

Truly a work of art!! The only thing nit-picky I could find is the shape of the ammo feed chutes. On the DrI they were more angular. GTMs ammo case kit is really for the DVIII ( and it works well for the DVII, which is what I ended up putting it in ). I made up a new one for the DRI. Definitely small nits and I must say again what a work of art!!

J

TFF

WOW! that is cool. Thanks for showing. I would not have thought to been able to do that at home. Your plane looks great.
What are you covering it with and type of paint?

LesUyeda

Very educational Spikkkk, but a bit more than I would like to try right now. It is very remeniscent of the early days of etching our own printed circuit boards, but our photo resist was spray on.

Les

BobH

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Spike very educational. A question, where do the graphics come from on the finished pieces?

spikkkkkk

i do all my own art work, working with with 3 or 4 different pics of the part i scan if i have to but normaly just draw it with the biezer tool in corel, as far as scaleing the parts i pretty much use a combination of mathmatics and fly buy the seat of my pants method. i then outline the part or whatever else i have to do to prepare the artwork for etching. here are a couple of pics of finished and semi-finished parts from the plate that was shown. a lot of times i'll double the brass parts and bond it together or take 2 of the same part and clad it around 1/32 ply or larger and sand to the brass for strength and demension, somthing to drill through to connect all together. on all my airframes i allways dowel 2 wood joints together if metal and wood i use music wire. just like my small parts, i dont just plop a flat to a flat i always use a stem of music wire.

BobH

My Feedback: (2)

Thanks for the reply. The art work is applied how? Do you make your own decals or had paint the parts?

spikkkkkk

i misunderstood you bob the graphics on the etched parts are a matter of just leaving them off the back piece of film and it only etches half way through. so you can pretty much etch any type of verbage or design right into the part you just omit it when you mirror the back piece of film.

BobH

My Feedback: (2)

Spike, gotcha! Looks just great..

spikkkkkk

nelsons litefab, ive tried everything and this seems to be about the best, as far as paint i use acrylic.

Reg Hinnant

My Feedback: (9)

Hey Spike, thats a really good instruction on the etching.
The train guys have been doing that for years & I jave wondered why no one in scale aircraft have done much in that area.
Here is an article by David Boddington in a 1994 brit mag (thats long gone away) on doing that method for fittings.

spikkkkkk

aside from the guns the cockpit is pretty much finished, here are a few more pics.

spikkkkkk

here are some pics of 1/2 alum. and 1/2 plalstic. on the VK kit they made the cowl a little longer to incorperate the engine of the day so i trimmed 3/8" off of it to make it scale. its just primered know but you cant tell the difference between plastic and aluminum. i braced it up with a inner arch and its more than solid.BTW i have no idea why the pics came out blue,green and yellow. its actually white.

caribefoto

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"pretty much done", what ELSE can you you amaze us with?.............John

spikkkkkk

here are some pics of the wheels. i wanted to go with real fabric covered wheels. i purchashed 4.5 wheel kit from manzno laser and stayed with the fishing line instead of music wire. all the the fishing line is going to do is simulate spokes through the fabric. i laminated 4 pieces of 1/32 ply the same size of the wheel and sandwiched them between the stock pieces of the kit. i then strung each side seperate from each other for obvious reasons. after that was completed i stretched nelson litefab over the wheels. the tire material i ordered was the biggest size they had but it just wasn't beefy enough. i went out and purchased 2 5" diameter rubber o rings and cut them down to size, to bond them together i took the scrape pieces and made a liquid rubber out of them with heat and solvent and i then kinda revulcanized them by applying the liquid rubber and bakeing the tires at 450 degress for 15 -20 min to bond them together and couldn't believe how well the bond was, i couldn't pull them apart. it's amazing the stuff you come up with playing frankenstein that works so well and then theres the suff that doesn't work so well. you can see the difference between the first tires and these, i'll post them side by side. all include some pics of the plane and where i'm at in the build. happy new year to everyone.

spikkkkkk

here are a couple of pics of the lerhone. i didn't do anything fancy no brass rods just a stock WB lerhone with some airbrushing and metal buff paint. i'm almost through with the plane and next is the the pilot. i ordered a bayonets and barbed wire red baron to make robotic. it's actually a very nice 1/6 figure. happy new year to all.

abufletcher

Nice work on the LeRhone kit. I just picked one up for my DrI project and will definitely be looking back at yours for painting ideas.

Kmot

My Feedback: (24)

Well done spikkkkkkkkkkkkk, it looks fantastic. [sm=biggrin.gif][sm=thumbup.gif]

sugarfox

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Gentlemen, I am just amazed at the quality and detail of your work. I'm nowhere near in this game. If this isn't museam quality stuff then I don't know what is................you have my respect. Sugarfox