abufletcher

The (very) early CI aircraft were unpainted until the idea of "sky camouflage" was adopted and so many of the later CI and CIII aircraft were sky blue or grey. I'm modeling one of the early unpainted aircraft so the wing is only doped. No color dope was used. Many of "clear doped linen" replica aircraft have a yellowish look to the fabric.

So, for example, the Fokker EIII was (I've always assumed) NOT painted, but rather only clear doped. But it is always shown as having a yellowish color...even in WWI era art.

http://modelskills.co.uk/german/87-g...ped-linen.html

abufletcher

By the way, here's me with my very first RC scale model in fact, my very first RC model ever. Way back in 2004. So what do you think of the color of my EIII?

gabriel voisin

Yes Don, that's right. The tissue has a "cream" color.
The dope with the tissue made this "coloring".
But before the ww1, some aircrafts was coated with red cellon emaillite and also with aluminum pouder.
The dark cream color was also so because the sunlight bleached it.
Before the cellon emaillite, the most airplanes was covered with "rubberized fabric this material was yellow-creme.

I will search in my workshop after the tissue, I have some originale pieces.

gabriel voisin

PM with the picture for you.

By the way, nice model.

Joe Pierson

My Feedback: (12)

Fantastic Kit, do you have the web site so I can see the other kits he makes?
Thank you,
Joe

abufletcher

Joe, sadly, the designer is no longer producing kits.

MerlinV

Just had a look at the Vintage Aviator link.

Stitches every 30mm??? That means you'll be doing stitches every 5 Don!

Patience of a saint!

Oh, I'd go with single thread stitching too...

Cheers,

Hugh

abufletcher

There's a secondary scale problem in that the rib caps on my model are not a scale width relative to the length. So if I did stitches every 5mm the stitches would look sort of squished. So maybe I could get away with doing the every 10cm.

Here's the way I look at it. I could order stick-on rib tapes and wait 3-4 weeks for them to arrive in Japan. Or I could spend a couple of evenings stitching (while watching a movie) and be done with it! I've already done much more tedious tasks on this model.

Yeah, I agree. It's sort of like the problem with GINORMOUS rivets and cavernous panel lines that you seen on some WWII models. I haven't seen a single photo of an Albatros CI where the stitching is noticeable (whereas it was actually quite noticeable on the SE5a). So aesthetically it might be better just to create the "impression" of them. But my main reason for doing it is to learn something about how these old planes were made. I feel I've accomplished something by learning how to do the zig-zag stitch.

abufletcher

The next issue is how to get a suitable fabric color. The two commonly used Solartex choices are Linen and Antique. Both seem too yellow, though the Linen might look OK after it's dirtied up with a brownish wash. But the Linen also seem a bit too opaque to me. The Antique has a nice degree of translucence but is, for my tastes, too (lemony-yellow). My intended solution was to use uncolored Solartex Natural (a translucent white) and then "stain" it by adding coffee to Nelson's Flat Clear. This creates a nice effect, but I'm not sure it's really very authentic.

The first photo shows the Linen is on the left, the coffee-stained Natural in the middle and Antique on the right. The second photo shows what I think the original color was probably like. I notice that the impression of fabric colors changes dramatically from one lighting situation to another and even from one angle to another (and obviously, from one monitor to another).

I might try mixing a little Tamiya "Desert Yellow" into the flat clear. <- NOPE.

abufletcher

Here are two references to the translucency of the Albatros C wings from the Cross and Cockade special.

abufletcher

German aircraft used unbleached linen. But the more examples of linen (bleached and unbleached) I see, the harder it is to imagine this stuff being "translucent." [] Which in the case of these druids is probably a good thing!

http://www.druidmedb.com/druidic-apparel.html

abufletcher

Here's a good discussion of the topic:

http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/ai...rib-tapes.html

gabriel voisin

Don, always unbleached.
The tissue was therefore not bleached, because it destroys its structure and the fabric would tear faster and is not stable.
That's the reason and not the color, it doesn't matter.

greetings Matz

abufletcher

The color is now clear in my mind. The challenge now is how to replicate this color on the model. Unfortunately, there is no available model covering that has this color, so the choices seem to be either to paint it or somehow "dye" it. The problem with paint is that paint looks like paint. And the very point of Clear Doped Linen is that it wasn't painted.

That leaves dying. Solartex, with it's somewhat plastic surface, won't accept stains or dyes. The only possibility would be to add coloring to a clear coat. From a purely aesthetic (rather than historical) perspective, I liked my coffee-laced solution. Alternatively, I could consider doing a silk-over-tissue doped finish and pre-dye the silk (and tissue?) to get the color right.

abufletcher

I must admit that despite the very considerable hassles, doing a silk+tissue+dope finish appeals to me. I'll do some tests with dying the silk. And I'd have to rethink the rib stitching.

TFF

Stain the wing and silk and dope

abufletcher

I wonder if the dope would have the power to shrink to the wire. I think I may have the materials for a silk finish: Stix-it, enough silk, enough (I think) silkspan, and (I think) the right kind of dope. But the prospect of affixing the silk (and the silkspan) to the wire gives me nightmares.

First, though, I'll test ways to color the silk. Any suggestions, advice?

abufletcher

http://www.reddawn.net/quilt/teadye.htm

John Cole

My Feedback: (4)

Don, you are exactly right about the difficulty in getting our fabric to look like authentic CDL. Not only is the color an issue, but the translucency as well. I feel that just bare iron-on fabric is too transparent, keeping in mind it is synthetic material, and not natural material. Dope or varnish makes it even more transparent.

Paint, as you pointed out, looks like paint. If applied to heavily, it looks less than ideal. My solution to provide a reasonable color, and to help cut down on the inherent transparency, is to dust on a mixture of paint, cut with an equal amount of clear varnish, using an airbrush. The varnish gives the paint some depth, which helps the illusion.

Getting this effect on my models is an ongoing experiment, and I must admit I'm still searching for a better result.

Keep up the good work on an excellent subject.

John

abufletcher

I tried mixing a small amount of Tamiya acrylic with Nelson's clear (brushed on) and that was wasn't too appealing. I'll keep testing. Last night I tried dyeing silk in coffee.

abufletcher

Can anyone "remind" me how to do a classic silk over tissue doped finish? When I did a test of this (long ago) I doped the edges of the frame and then applied the moistened silkspan. I didn't doped the silkspan. Then I applied the (also moistened) silk around the edges. Then that was dry I brushed the dope over all parts of the silk bonding it to the silkspan.

I have a quart of each of the following: Randolph's non-tautening nitrate, non-tautening butyrate, and tautening butyrate (and the appropriate thinners).

*****

Just a note that on my "puncture" test of the silk and tissue finish vs. solartex, solartex was definitely more puncture resistant. I'm not sure that really matters on a scale model.

TFF

Tissue works better than silkspan. Mostly weight, but tissue shrinks more and in a different way. What you want to do is make the most perfect covering job with the under cover. Dope it to stabilize. Then you attach the silk with wheat wallpaper paste. It is hard to attach the silk with dope as it sags the under cover dope so it might not attach or shrink straight. It would look better to put the silk on without the under covering and easier, in my opinion.

abufletcher

TFF, thanks for the description. I was surprised about the wallpaper paste, but then I did ask about a traditional method. I've heard that this is what Pete McDermott does on his scale masterpieces.

I love the look of the silk drapped over the wings. But it just seems too delicate and transparent. I was thinking that the silkspan would give it some substance. Also the tissue/silkspan undercover is suppose to prevent dope from building up in droplet on the inside of the silk. Dyeing the silk with coffee produces a sort of golden gossamer and gluing the edges to the wire would be a quite a challenge...to say the least.

Staining the wings before covering though, sounds like a good idea.

John, I'm continuing to experiment with paint, but so far I'm not getting anything that I like. The solartex antique has a nice transparency but the color is just all wrong.

abufletcher

The problem with my original idea of using the Natural solartex and coffee-laced Nelson's clear is that this assumed that the original fabric was mostly white and that the color came from the dope varnish. The coffee-clear simulated this nicely as it built up a bit unevenly, for example, along seams. But if the color was due primarily to the natural look of unbleached linen, then the color should be uniform.

So what I need is a brownish-cream base color with the sheen of a dope finish.

abufletcher

Here's where I am so far. In the first photo you can see a piece of coffee-stain silk draped over the elevator. The second photos shows a comparison between the colors of Solartex Linen (too opaque), Solartex Antique (too yellow), the coffee-stain silk (too thin), and a custom paint mix on the bottom of the practice wing. I started with a 50/50 mix of coffee and Nelson's clear but that was still far too thin to give any really color to the Solartex Natural. Previously, I had mixed up some clear+Tamiya acrylic (Desert Yellow) but that was too opaque/paint-like (and streaky when applied with a foam brush). So just for the heck of it I dumped the two together coffee-clear-acrylic and brushed that on.

Seems like a pretty good color (maybe still a bit too strong) and goes on without brush marks. It's also thin enough to still be translucent. So maybe I'm getting there. Honestly, the coffee doesn't really add much color to the total combination. It was mostly the effect of "watering down" the acrylic.