1:10 Scratchbuild

This item is being built for a theatre show that I volunteer for. Over the years I have build some interesting stuff (1:1 scale Styrofoam motorcycle, 2 huge Chinese lion dogs, 5ft USS Enterprise TOS along with a Klingon Battle Cruiser, 6ft grasshopper) Most of the items were built using blue Styrofoam insulation. An excellent material for carving

December 20th 1996

References
Had trouble finding bulkhead sections. My search on the Internet failed although I have been told that there are plans out there. Used an old Monogram kit that I cut up into sections. I also have a few books with loads of pictures
I then traced these sections onto a piece of paper and enlarged them to 1:10 scale. These were then traced onto foam core to be cut out

Old kit that was going to be sacrificed to the model Gods

Kit after built sliced. Parts traced onto a piece of paper then photo copied to 1:10 scale

Building
The foam core sections were hot glued onto a PVC tube backbone. Most of the sections were filled with blue Styrofoam and carved to shape. Since the plane is supposed to be flying no landing gear will be made. Due to the limited amount of time I am not sure if I can make any missiles. There is a provision for a centre line fuel tank

Looking a lot like a dinosaur skeleton

The sytrofoam guy extrodinaire strikes again. Looking good

Lights
As an added bonus I have added lights to the engines and formation lights. All the wiring runs to the cockpit area and I am not sure how I will finish this yet

Wings
All wings are removable and made of Luon. Smaller wings are form fit and will probably be glued on at the theatre. Main wings are held on by a couple of bolt hooks that the plane will hang off of. The nuts for the bolts are mounted into a 1/4' sheet of plywood bolted to the PVC tube backbone. There will be another bolt hook near the nose for flying the plane

Gaps
The gaps have been filled with that expanding foam stuff. This will be carved to shape before the paper mache is started. Some minor imperfections will be filled in with light weight spackling compound and sanded to shape

Future
Since the audience sees only the bottom of the plane I am not sure how much detail I will add to the canopy section. Hopefully I have time to carve a buck and vac-form a canopy.
If possible I would like to work out a mechanism to eject someone out of the cockpit when it crash land
That's right the plane will crash onto the stage so it has to be sturdy. To try and achieve this I am going to give it a Fiberglas outer shell. Since the resin reacts to the Styrofoam I am going to give it a paper mache cover before the Fiberglas is added

December 24th 1996
Spackling compound added to surface to smooth out some minor errors. Will paper mache soon

January 6th 1997
Newspaper with white glue went on quickly. Started to Fiberglas. Resin and Fiberglas was tricky to work with. Lost a batch of resin when I added too much hardener and it set up too quickly. Made smaller batches from then on. laying Fiberglas over leading edges of wings tough. Also hard around the engine intakes. Fiberglas stunk up the house for a few days. Mental note: Don't do this again or do it all outside. Fiberglas and resin left surface really uneven. Took quite a bit of sanding and cutting with the Dremel tool to clean up the Fiberglas errors. Painted on coat of acrylic grey to check out the errors. there are a lot of errors. Fiberglas weave left indents all over the place. Also overlapping Fiberglas created large ridges. Hope to use compound to smooth out the body again. Didn't realize that the resin rejected the acrylic paint so I had to paint the model very slowly so the paint would stick. Not sure how the model will hold up to multiple crashes

Newspaper covers the Styrofoam waiting for the fiberglass coat

Jan 16th 1997
In checking with references I found out that the canopy was too large. Will have to modify the old one. Sealed the nose in. final coats of Polyfil used. Will sand and start the final paint. Markings to go on soon

May 11th 1997

Well it's done but I don't have pictures of the finished product yet. It did fly. It did do a barrel roll, It did crash and some parts fell off but it is still in pretty good shape