PHOTOS: DAVE MITCHELL
Use a pencil or crayon to lightly mark the edge of a hole (above) so that the mark will transfer to the paper being embossed into it. Embossing paper (at right) into the hole. Your paper should be well oversized to allow you to work it without kinking the edges. Manilla file folder paper is shown. Be sure to return the spoon.
Mike Isermann or Jiro Sujimoto model—just to name a few of our modern masters. Look for consistency of approach, and maybe you will begin to arrive at your style. Back to Tom’s PT-26, and a picture illus- trating his method of creating small scoops and cable fairings. Tom cuts or grinds an appropriate shape into a thin piece of alu- minum sheet, lays a piece of card stock over the aluminum, and then uses the rounded end of a paintbrush handle to bur- nish the back side of the paper, embossing it down into the cavity to create the round- ed fairing. Note how the clean edge of the aluminum die leaves a clear line around the perimeter of the fairing. A bit of work with an X-Acto knife around this line and—hey—presto, you’ve got a fairing! Give it a light dusting of color and you’re good to go.
One small sheet of thin aluminum will serve for at least a billion different odds and ends like this, and thus qualifies as my fa- vorite kind of tool: cheap and flexible. This idea of embossing paper into a form has practically limitless applications. As anoth- er example, you can use a hole-boring bit in a drill press to drill a shallow hole in a piece of hardwood. Run a pencil around the edge of the hole—you’ll see why in a minute—and lay a piece of card stock or some other paper with a bit of body to it over the hole. Now use a smooth, rounded device like the back of one of your wife’s very best dinner spoons to emboss the paper carefully into the hole. Work the paper firmly but slowly—
you don’t want to kink it—into a concave dome; when you’re satisfied, flip the paper over. You’ll be able to see the edge of the dome thanks to the pencil you applied earli- er to the hole edge, and can now use scissors or an X-Acto knife to cut out around the perimeter.
There you have it...a really satisfying, slightly domed wheel cover. Is it worth all the trouble? Of course it is! It’s a subtle ef- fect, to be sure, but when you compare the look of a nicely turned wheel with a flat cov- er to one with just a bit of a dome...ooh la la! “Eh, enough about embossed paper fair-
ings and domed wheel covers,” you say. “What I want to know is what did he use to make that tailwheel boot?” Tom is a big fan of a product called “Hearty Clay”. Another essentially identical product is called “De- light Air Dry Modeling Compound”. Both are moldable clay-ish materials that air dry and are very lightweight. Both can be found on the internet; some folks have reported also finding this stuff at craft stores like Michaels.
The material can be rolled into thin sheets and cut, formed into complex shapes (like the tailwheel boot), or even extruded through a modeling syringe to make ex- haust pipes, cockpit coaming, cabling and hydraulic lines. It’s sandable and flexible, not inclined to crack or break once set, can be pressed into molds and takes detail and paint beautifully. The only drawbacks are that it shrinks slightly when dry—about 10%—and a “brick” of it dries out quickly
once the package is opened. Tom recom- mends keeping unused material in a tightly capped glass jar. Wonderful stuff.
Speaking of ooh la la
Moving on to a bit of pure show and tell, Alain Parmentier sent me photos of some of the lovely planes he and his buddies are building in France. One that particularly caught my eye was Alain’s Peanut Scale S1 Bozena, which he built from Modelar docu- mentation. This is a beautiful model, with just enough detail to carry forward the idea that it’s a scale job. I asked Alain about the general guidelines for Peanut Scale competi- tion in Europe.
Here’s his reply: “The rules for Peanuts in France are the FAI rules (F4F). Maximum dimensions: 33cm (13 inches) wing span or 23cm (9 inches) overall length excluding the propeller. Documentation: a general arrange ment drawing of at least two inches wing span plus one photograph or printed reproduction of the aircraft or a colored 3- view...” Thus, in FAI competition you could have a Peanut Scale model that had a wing span longer than 13 inches.
So if you are ever planning to build a French Peanut for FAC competition, make sure you measure the wing span first and ad- just the scale if necessary! Alain mentioned that this plan was first published in the French modeling newsletter Les Cahiers du Cervia. Interested in more? Check out this fine French website dedicated to Peanut scale:
http://peanut.scale.free.fr/index.htm.
PHOTO: TOM HALLMAN
Close up of the tailwheel boot on Tom Hallman’s PT-26 (above left). What, no valve stem?! Note also the applied cable fairings. Alain Parmentier’s S1 Bozena
FLYING MODELS
PHOTO: ALAIN PARMENTIER
(above right), a Polish lightplane from 1928. Clean, crisp, and uncluttered—a superior model of a most attractive subject.
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