i'm starting a new thread on my next build. it will be a proctor eindecker reduced to 1/6 scale (66" wingspan). every thing will be scratchbuilt including guns and motor. this will be an electric plane with a full working cockpit. i'll take you through step by step with pics and explanations on how i did things, start to finish. looking forward to getting started. i should have the plans next week sometime, joe sent them out this week. i'm also looking foward to the wealth of knowledge this site offers. see you soon.</p>

Very cool! I'm looking forward to it!

Me too!

I am starting soon a 1/4 scale build from the John Lockwood design fitted with a laser 200v twin.

I'm not familiar with that design but a 200v seems like a LOT of engine for an eindecker!

The John Lockwood design is the same size as the Proctor and won a bunch of Precision Scale contests here in the US. I think he powered his with an OS .90. When I was a kid it was in all the magazine articles.

i didn,t quite know where i should start on this project, wings fuse or tail feathers so i chose the fuselage. i found a product that actually welds aluminum together with no flux and a butane torch called dura-fix and thought about doing an alum. frame but have not mastered it yet to get a nice clean weld plus the rods are standard size.if i could have the rods turned down to a smaller size about 1/3 third the radius it would work like a charm so maybe in the future plus the fact you have to build and intire welding jig, well it's pretty involved. i decided to go with proctor wooden dowel frame. being able to get nothing in between i chose 1/4 inch hard maple dowel. the radius is slightly bigger(1/32") for the reduced scale but don't think it will matter. first things first i needed 40 scaled down brass anchor fittings and being able to do my own etching that's where i started, they have to be incoperated between the longerons and verticals while your building the frame. here are some pics of the etching process of those anchor fittings from design in corel draw to making a two sided film on a inkjet printer and then registering the film on both sides of a 31/2"x4" piece of 0.15 brass plate treated with photo resist already, exposing the plate to U.V. light and then rinsing the image area. at this point it's ready to go into the tank of hot ferric clhoride and citric acid mixture, i use aprox. 32 oz. of etching solution to get my tank to the level it needs to be to submerse the plate 1/2" to 1" in the solution. you also need a good aireator. i power mine with a small airbrush compresser and made the aireator from 0.60 styrene plastic with about 200 1/64" inch holes drilled through the top. ive used all sorts of tanks from molded plastic fish tanks to glass tanks. first of all the glass tanks because of the glue they use dont hold up well, the high heat effects joints and the slate bottom erodes from the ferric cloride after time. what i use know is superb. it nothing but a normal every day crockpot that is modified. no. 1 the ceramic pot is heated with an element that is on the underside and never touches the chemical, 2 is the fact that in a small home system you start out with plenty of hot solution but cools during the etching process but with my new system it stays at a constant temp which cuts down on etching time and gives you a cleaner more even cut. my results are as good as any large or small company out there that does this for a nominal fee. anyway here are some pics and the next posting will be the cutting and assembly of the fuselage.

That is so very, very cool! But I know that it would be completely impossible for me to set up something like that here in Japan. So does anyone know companies who will do photo-etching? I can imagine needing lots and lots of these sorts of brackets for an upcoming project and it would take my an eternity to do them by hand.

here are some pics of the fuselage sides. this is short becase i wrote someting very extensive and my session timed out and i don't even know if i could write all that over again. abufletcher i'm very glad you think the home etching is very cool , i do too. as far as i know there are a couple of larger company's out there that do etching but from my research it's incredibly pricey and to my knowledge there is no company that can produce small brass, stainless steel or copper parts at an affordable price for us scale modelers so maybe there is a market for etching, i mean there is a ton of laser cutters that work plastic or wood but no etchers. maybe i can help you with your etched parts, will talk more about this in the future. when both fuse sides are done i'll post some close-ups off the anchor fittings and how they sit between the longerons and verticals and also the bends in the 1/4" dowel were very difficult. i went through 11 sticks before i found something that worked and that was boiling for an hour and working it slowly around the curve with a heat gun.

What is the purpose of the fixture in the first three photos in post 7? Is that to drill a radius in the dowel end? Neat idea.

that is a jig for drilling the ends of your verticals. it provides a semi half circle to butt rightup against the longerons so when its painted there are no gaps and looks like a welded steel frame. thats a proctor device that's on the plans. the only change i made was to to add an upright of brass antenna to keep the hand drill on target and straight. i dont have a full size drill press just a dremel drill press and it wont take a 1/4" bit.here are a couple proctor pics of the device.

here are some more build pics. one problem i'm having is when you scale something down you have to bring the weight down one third and also finding those in between wood sizes to fit the scale. i remedied this by useing laminations, for instance 1/4" ply lamed with 1/32 ply giving you 9/32". the shock arms were made with 3 lamina and each side backed with a etched brass part. proctor plans are great and goes without saying but don't like alot of plans show every single part in detail, for instance a half of a part which i had to redraw on the puter and join the 2 halves or a exploded view. you have to do a lot of studying until you fully comprehend what the part is and how it was built or how you plan to build it. the frameing is almost complete. i'm not putting in the motortray as the plans call for because i want a full cockpit so i'm going to have to redesign alot of the interior. one of the problems i have is with what the cockpit looked like. i'm posting 2 pics of interiors, one has a rectangular dash with the instruments mounted in it the other shows the bullet caseing catcher with instruments mounted around it and i don't know which is correct or maybe they both are so i would ask for anyones input or knowledge of the eindecker lll to set me on the right path.

That's looking great. But you're right about having to keep the weight down. I did a semi-scale EIII as my first RC build and it ended up a lot heavier than a model like this should. The fuse, undercarriage, and tail feathers were as scale as I could make them at the time (about 6 years ago) but I used a non-scale fat airfoil wing (with ailerons).

The greatest challenge was trying to get the all the radio gear AND the fuel tank into the front 3" of the model! I ended up making a custom brass tank to fit over the servos.

I didn't really do any cockpit detailing, but I don't think the EIII had any "instrument panel" at all.

What will you power your model with? Electric or gas? I'm wondering because with a 4-stroke you'll need to be using a recessed firewall, which will end up also affecting where you can place the "guts."

BTW, just for reference, the basic fuselage frame so far (with firewall, ply doublers, wire bracing, skid assembly and turtledeck) for my 1/6 scale DrI weighs about 250g. What's the weight so far on your fuse?

Always be asking yourself "what's the lightest, thinnest I can get away with." For the wirewall on a 1/6 scale model, even 1/4" is probably overkill. And remember that if you're going to be using a 4-stroke engine that 1/4 firewall just ends up being a "dummy firewall" since the engine will actually be mounted to the back of the recessed box. On my DrI, I'm only using 1/8" ply for that "dummy firewall" and I think 3/16" for the actually firewall.

dcflyer001, good to see you back. I am looking forward to your new build.

it will be electric power and i'm not sure what the weight is my digital scale was floating around in my basement, we had a lot of rain and when the temp outside went up to 50 degrees the 4 feet of snowon the ground decided to melt rather quickly needless to say a few things got ruined and my scale was one of them.it's aproctor kit and those kits are designed like tanks, to take a spill and come out unscathed. just me useing lite ply instead of reg ply has cut down the weight considerbly and i'm also building the tail feathers from aluminum tube which will help. i'm also not useing a removable motor tray, thats a considerable amount of weight there. i have a digital scale on order and will get back with you on the wieght when it arrives. it seems like every step i makei should be cutting the weight down by 1/3 coming down from 1/4 scale but in fact i'm 10 to 15 percent more than that by scratch building and customizing a lot of things. most of the brass proctor calls for is 0.25 and i'm useing 0.15, a couple of points less than a third so it not proving to be to difficult. thank you allan for welcomeing me back, again i can't wait to get this fuse weighed to see where i'm at. BTW my ribs arrived. i had them cut by manzano laser at a great price and excellent work, ill post a pic of them. i was going to use a metal template and cut them my self with a table router but when i saw how intricut they were, and how many lighting holes they had i began to doubt i could even do it or even wanted too in any case this is the first time ive had any thing laser cut and i think it's a tremendous service to offer, it's right up there with etching. i have to say that charlie and vickiat manzano laser have some of the best customer service and workmanship ive come acrossed and also delivered in an incredibly timely manner and will have to say i'll never have to look around for laser services and will always deal with them. i redrew the ribs in corel draw opposed to one of my cad programs, it's just plan easier, i can just scan in the rib from the blue prints and redraw a perfect match right over it, then step and repeat on a 12"x24 " template of 1/32" ply and email it to manzano, bing,bang boom and done, it works fabulous. i'm working on the upper cabanes and drawing alot of the brass fixtures and pully's and geeting them ready to etch right now so i'lltalk to you soon.

Laser cut ribs is ABSOLUTELY the way to go! Even as a "purist," I can't imagine cutting out a full set of uniform ribs with lightening holes myself. My DrI ribs were laser cut and I don't feel the least bit "guilty" about that since I still had to make my own rib capping jib to cap 60 ribs and add 8 reinforcing strips to each of them.

dcflyer001,

Following with great interest your beautiful build.

Q. What type of glue did you use between the wooden dowels and brass fittings?

Teus

dcflyer001,

It's an idea to write you text first in your favorite text editor and than copy/paste right in the message box here. That's also the way I do things with long and extensive text.

Teus

i used a drop or two of thin ca to prime the surface because of the hardwood and then a couple of drops of medium ca before the thin setsto bind the surfaces and then a one inch bank pin centered on the verticals and offset on the horz.. the ca the way i used it held amazingly well, i had to predrill holes in all the joints 2/3 of the way and then tap a bank pin in all the way with a small hammmer and not one joint came apart through all this. ive used thin ca as a primer and then medium before it sets and its always worked well for me, again it depends on what i'm doing but this seemed the best way to go. i still use titebond, gorilla glue and expoxy as well as ca in all my builds. BTW thanks for the posting info, somtimes like everyone else i show moments of pure brillance and others i'm not to brite at all, thanks again.

i finished the cabanes and the upper pully system today. it took me a little while to figure out that the cabane was u shaped. i took a piece of 1/4" brass and buy putting it between two pieces of hard wood and putting that into a wood vice and a little determination and also drawing on my super powers was able to colapse it down into the shape i needed. the pully system i redrew from the plans and etched the parts excluding the actual pully wheels these i purchased from cornwallmodelboats.co.uk , i also buy all my turnbuckles from them. they havebetter prices than the U.S. and just about any size you might need they even have working turnbuckles for 1/12 scale and thats small. there a great company to deal with. out of a dozen times 1 shipment was lost and they sent me another right away. back to the pully system if you'll notice on the pic of the etched parts because your useing a film on each side you can score to make a bend line or for that matter a three demensional part or add words, verbage like AUS or a brass nameplate whatever. after i make my bend whether it be slight or 90 degress i put a little solder ( 1/32 detail solder) into the channel and it gives the piece an enormous amount of strength, thats how i made the bracket that holds the pully wheels. i used nylon washers on the inside between the wheels and the sides of the bracket this keeps it from binding and the pully's move freely. on the proctor plans all the plates are stacked with a bolt running through. i soldered down the fist 4 way plate with stay-brite solder not only to give it more strength but it's easier keeping all the brackets square. well it's on to the next set of fabrications which will be the landing gear.

here are a few more pics of the fuse. i got all the servos, motor and electronics intalled. i want to get all the control wires in place and all of the cockpit detail done before i rig the fuselage and like abufletcher said this is a tough nut to crack and after trial and error for many days i got every thing to fit and working very well. i had to move the rudder bar down about a half an inch from the original drawings as i only have 3" to crame all this in. i also completed the shock system and seat + mounts. i couldn't figure out how i was going to do the swirl tecnique. what i ended up doing was useing a cardboard applicator from one of my wifes tampons( not a used one) and by glueing it to apolishing tool and stuffing the head with fine steel wool after a little practice it came out fine and consistant. well i'm off to finish the cockpit details. BTW i did make the seat a little larger, on the proctor plans the the seat looked a little small plus it wasn't the right style seat for this plane.

You've made fantastic progress and as always, everything looks great!

It may be too late, but you should be aware that the EIII did NOT have neat rows of swirls. This is somehow doggedly entrenched modeling myth. Fokker used a sort of random squiggly marks to finish the metal panels. On my model I accomplished this with random short bursts with an electric eraser.

could you post a couple of pics of the tecnique you used i think it might be very helpful. i noticed out there that even in some of the museums there swirl pattern is wrong along with hundreds of eindeckers built on this forum, why is this? is this just a common misconception. please post some pics.

I'm not sure how this particular modeling myth got started, but it's very clear the rows of swirls were never used on any Fokker aircraft. Sopwith used this technique and maybe also Aviatik on some aircraft. But never Fokker. I think part of the reason why we see this particular "error" over and over and over again, is that people just like the way it looks and don't really care if it's historically inaccurate. They just want to do it! And of course the fact that SR Batteries actually includes a tutorial on how to do it on their website propagates the myth. And you're right that a lot of (poor) museum replicas also bought into this myth.

To practice, I bought a cheap aluminum pot from the $1 shop. At first I tried to replica the exact squiggles I was seeing in original photos. But somehow it ended up looking more like Arabic writing! Then I thought about the poor factory worker who spent all day grinding away at cowls. He's not trying to create some pattern. So, my best result came from using 1-3second burst with an electric eraser and just working of fulling up the cowl with a certain density of squiggles. I think it looks pretty good...maybe not perfect but very close.