These are a collection of tips and hints I have collected from others on my wanderings round the internet and talking to folks at fun fly's etc. As most of these are not my ideas, I have credited the person from whom I got them. First comes a nice idea for painting grilles from Jerry Hicks of Scalehouse. Most builders think that the screen on the engine covers of the Rangers is just that-screen. It isn't. It's perforated sheet metal, and the holes are round. There's an old trick to make the holes round, though, and it's easy. Fix the screens by the edges that will be glued inside the body so you can blow paint through them without having it come back through the front. I use alligator clips on a balsa stick frame for this. Spray your colored paint through the screen repeatedly until the build-up on the intersections starts to make the holes look round. Yes, the surface will be uneven. When the paint is completely cured, flat-sand the screen on a hard flat surface with 400-grit wet/dry paper used wet to make the surface of the "screen" flat. The holes will appear to be very round and the material will appear to be sheetmetal. Clear it and glue it in place as usual.
Another tip is in creating non slip surfaces. Neither Jerry nor Joe Howard endorsed the wet and dry sandpaper idea, they prefer to paint the area and then throw either micro balloons or sand onto the paint to create the texture.
Painting panel lines which are not moulded in can be a problem. Jerry Hicks has this answer. What you see when you look at a panel line is seldom a solid black line. Rather, it's a shadowed version of the surrounding area. Panel lines also collect a lot of dirt, grime, and soot that makes them look even darker. There are two easy ways to make this effect happen. First, mix a few drops of black paint into a small amount of the same clear you use to finish your helo-use just enough black to lightly tint the clear. If you have an airbrush, lightly spray this mix onto where the panel lines are supposed to be.You can also apply the mix with a teeny-tiny fine artists' brush. All you want to do is create the illusion of panel lines if you don't have real ones in the surface. Both of these techniques will work for those models having actual panel lines. Done this way, the panel lines will look much more realistic than hard black lines since you'll be able to see the colors under the shading.
A tip from Julian Garrett concerns fitting windows in place. He suggests some miniature rare earth magnets can be used to hold the windows in place while the glue sets. He also suggests you check the strength of these things before applying them to sensitive paint as they can be difficult to pry apart sometimes. These things can be bought from Radio Shack.
Another one from Jerry Hicks, if you use the glue and syringe method of applying rivets, you can also make screws with them by pressing a screwdriver tip into the glue as it sets. Its great for Phillips head screws. Thats one I am going to use! Sandy Squitieri from V-east offered some valuable advice in laying out your model so that the minimum weight needs to be added to make it balance. Here it is.
KEEPING SCALE IN BALANCE. BY SANDY S.
Weight vs. detail work , an age old problem that can work for if you plan ahead. For those of you who have visited our website, you may have seen these series of pictures. I am going to show you how to "balance" your details. Balance you say, what manner of balance do you mean? I mean balancing the weight of you detail work to enhance the fly-ability and performance of even the heaviest of ships. When one becomes involved with adding details to his/her project, some careful considerations must be made... they are ,
1. How does the finished, unpainted model balance out with the mechanics, fuel and batteries laid out and installed?
2. What materials will I use to create such details. and
3. How can I use these details to my advantage in producing a highly detailed, lightweight and flyable model.
It seems a shame to see a wonderfully detailed helicopter only able to hover with minimal power on reserve for forward flight. Don't get me wrong, I love the details but they must be planned in such a way that they do not add too much excess weight to the finished product. Paint color and choice is also a weight factor that must be considered. Some colors require more layers of finish to achieve the results desired. Candies, pearls and other exotics such as the chroma-color system, all require heavy clear coats to achieve their effect. Paint can add from a half pound to up to 10 pounds if you go crazy on a paint job. True, most scale schemes do not use too much of these, but the clear coats must be considered even for stripes. Placement and mounting of details requires some forethought before painting such as, will it be easy to paint the body with this detail on or off, and if off is the answer, then how will I mount it after the body is painted? In a lot of cases screws or glues will do the job, and if screws are used to attach something to the skin, has the skin been properly prepared to handle the mounting during flight without cracking or distorting the fuselage?
The first step after the basic fuse is completed is to check balance, Most helicopters will need some sort of nose weight to bring them into a slightly nose down position when suspended on the flybar or central mast hole. This being the case in most situations, we then plan what type of materials we will use where on the fuse. On our Graupner/Heim Bell 230 , we determined that we needed about 2 oz. of nose weight, therefore all the nose details will be made from the heaviest materials and all the details aft of the main mast will be comprised of only the lightest materials.
The Bell 230 is available in retract or skid UT (Utility version) in both full size and model form. Our machine is being done the UT motif... It's quite attractive and very simple to build, and the skid gear keeps things easier, lighter and less costly than the retract form. The particular subject we are choosing to model has a lot of wire strike parts, radar and comms antennas, access - hatches and vent tubes that really add a lot of punch to the detail. The wire strike kits go where the most usable weight can be added to the nose, so we can make them out of brass since it looks real and is most workable with solder for tough, long lasting pieces. Here we use .015 brass sheet cut out with snips to the desired shapes, in this particular case, we layer three pieces to create the blade effect . This is done by making the outer skins slightly smaller in the jaw area than the middle piece. They are carefully aligned and checked then soldered using silver solder. Once cool, any excess solder is sanded/ground off and the part cleaned in acetone to remove any traces of flux left over from the soldering process. I use a propane torch for all this, so careful heat control must be maintained.
I then cut out the base plate I want, then lay some solder on it only and heat it till it melts, then quickly heat the base of the finished cutter just enough so it sticks to the base. The cutter portion of the part is temporarily clamped during this procedure to ensure that if it does overheat, it won’t fall apart...that can be most upsetting!
Now, we have the cutter soldered to the base, we need to add the supports . We make them out of solid brass rod with ends pounded flat for mounting holes. I use holes on the body end of the rods with #00 size screws, and then solder the other ends to the cutter blade using a soldering iron this time to control excess heat to the rest of the part. Simulated bolts are added here as it will look better than just being cross-bolted with a small bolt. Once this is done and the holes are drilled into mounting plate and rod ends for fuse, we then add ply plates behind the skin to support them in case of accidental hanger rash or vibration. Plates are made of lite-ply and glued in with epoxy. Rivets can be added to the cutters via syringe and Elmer glue after priming and sanding, before paint. Final installation is done after paintwork is complete otherwise the clearcoat will build-up in the wrong places or force dry spots or runs trying to get paint coverage around them.
The area aft of the main shaft must have the lightest possible details, and so then we make them out of lightweight plastics to keep the balance penalty as low as possible.On our Bell 230, there are stabilizer trim tabs; here I decided to make these tabs out of sheet lexan, approx .015 thick. The shapes are cut leaving tabs for installation into the fins. Thin slots are cut into the fins to accept these tabs for gluing, making them exceptionally light details. Another area often overlooked is how much does the tailskid weigh? On this model, we use half the diameter needed to cut the weight in half. It is much harder to counteract tail weight than nose weight, so we cut all the corners we can. The paint will build up enough millage on the skid between the colors and clearcoat, that it will appear large enough in diameter, yet be half the weight. Spring steel is used so the skid can actually take quite a beating without damage to it or the model.
So you now you have some the basics in planning your details , it is always better to get something from your added weight than to just have it be dead weight.We are able keep this model with the above described process within a weight of 12.5 pounds, 13 maximum with paint. That is pretty good for this 68-inch model sporting a 3+ horsepower .91 powered set of mechanics. At the time of this writing the model is coming apart for paintwork, it was test flown many times and the performance was that of a pod a boom machine, with the added grace of it’s shapely form. Simply poetry in motion to watch it fly, and that’s what is most important, above all it must fly well. I hope I have helped shed some new light on some things… for more info feel free to contact Sandy at 352-371-3132 or www.v-eastonline.com
