Early in this build, a friend of mine, Greg Gee, 3D printed a Continental engine kit for this project. At 1/5.5 scale, it would fit the Flitfire perfectly. Unfortunately, the full-scale carried a Franklin. Fortunately, it's finished in flat black and looks enough like a Continental that I don't think anyone will notice.


Here's the kit.


Here's the same kit, organized. Greg printed the pieces in black PLA from a scalable public domain design.



I started with the cylinders, sanding the flat areas to improve adhesion.


I used medium CA here, as well as between all the flat surfaces.



The number of parts shrunk as the glue flowed.


Before completing the assemblies, I prepped them for painting in different black finishes. Here, the intake and exhaust pipes are ready for flat black.


I decided to leave the cylinders in their unpainted printed finish, a semi-gloss black and paint the valve covers flat. I hoped that having contrasting finishes might help the engine's appearance.



Painted and fully assembled, here are two banks of dummy cylinders. I glued the intake and exhaust pipes to the cylinders with CA gel.

Four days to go.

Now, to fasten the cylinders to the cowl.