vac form supermarine scimitar

[martin57]

HI all this will be my entry into this sig ,
it is a supermarine scimitar , this is a vac form kit , i have never tried anything like this before so this will be a first for me .
I picked this kit for a couple of reasons ,
1 it has been sitting in the back of my stash for many a year , and since i have returnd to this hobby i have been looking at doing it .
2 the other reason is its coming up to my first anniversary at this great forum , and i have learned a lot and that is due to the friendly
and helpfull nature of the people here , so i will be giving this my best shot .
here are the spure shoots if you can call them that and some sort of instructions , looks like a lot of sanding and cutting .



















thanks for looking

[Thumboy]

Wow I don't think I will ever have the currage to atempt a vac form kit. Not much I can say other than good luck I will defiantly be following this one

[peppie]

This is exactly what I was gone say...
Seen these come buy here and there for sale, and never dared to buy one.
Going to follow this step by step.

[FabianAUT]

Looks like a huge amount of work you got yourself into!

Never seen one of those kits before, this will be interesting!

[Nige201980]

Never seen a Vac form kit being build so I'll be watching this with intrest. Best of luck with it buddy.

[martin57]

Right here is the next installment of scimitar build .
after having a long look at the instructions , the decision was made to cut all the parts out of the sheets, so thay can be handled easier .
As you can see there was a mass of spare plastic









After trimming everything as close as i dare for the first cut , i had a close look at the mouldings to see what my next move will be .
i must admit it was a bit nerve racking everytime i picked up the knife .
so moving on to the sanding side of things ,and there is a good bit to do .














after all the trimming was done now down to the sanding ,
on close inspection you can see how much to sand of by the rough mold and to make this clearer to see i used a pencil to mark a line .



A tip that might help when doing one of these to sandown the parts i taped down a sheet of 80 grit paper and got some blue tack to hold the parts
whist i sanded them and it worked well here some pictures .






and this is the result not bad .
thanks for looking

[Nige201980]

Great start mate. May I ask did you cut it with an ordinary craft knife or something bigger I can tell what the plastic is like wheather it's thick or thin.

[heel]

You are a brave man. I don't know what's going on with this kit but I'm following along from the beginning. It looks like you have everything under control.

[martin57]

HI all right latest update , not much going apart from more sanding .
anyway first off a bit of history .

The supermarine scimitar was an oft-forgotten carrier-based ,jet powered single seat fighter for the british fleet air arm.
The aircraft held a few firsts in its service run with the navy . it became its first swept wing , single seat jet fighter and the first navy aircraft to be cleared for atomic weapons .
the scimitar could be called on to undertake multirole sorties encompassing long range reconnaissance, high altitude interception and low level bombing,making it ideal an lethal addition to the ranks of the royal navy and the aircraft served in these varying capacities for a decade.

Supermarine scimitar F1

initial year of service 1957.
Production 76.
Crew 1.

Length 55.35FT(16.87M).
Width 37.17ft (11.33m).
Height 17.32ft (5.28m).
Weight 23,962 lbs (10,869kg)
power plant 2x rolls-royce avon 202 turbojet engines producing 11,250 lbs of static thrust each

Armament suite standard 4x 30mm aden cannons
OPTIONAL.
4X rocket pods containing 8x3" air to air rokets (AP or HE )
4x roket pods containing 16x3" air to air rokets (AP or HE )
4x rocket pods containing 24x3" air to air rockets (AP or HE)
4x 1,000 lb bombs .
4x AGM 12 bullpup air to surface missiles.
4x AIM-9 sidewinder air to air missiles .

RIGHT on with my progress .
first thing. what i used to cut the mold out of the sheets was a good pair of scissors not the plastic handeld sort .
and one of those retractable knifes witch you can break the end of when it gets blunt , saves using your best knifes .
the plastic sheets the molds are in is about 1 mm thick but as you get to the main part say the wings etc in thins down to about half a mm.



so for a change from sanding i decided to clean up and dry fit the cockpit such as it is .





this was a bit fiddle becuse there are no locating slots or pins , so i will be adding some before final assembly .







And just to see what it glues like i gave it a quick go .



I have just ordered an ejector seat for this from NE. OMEGA-RESIN.COM its a mk1V MARTIN BAKER SEAT .
WELL THATS all for now

[EasyEight96]

Nice job I've never build a vac form before looks like a nice kit to build I see

[planemaker]

Vac-form kit! You're a brave man. Great work so far, good luck with the rest of it.

[martin57]

NEXT instalment people .
not much to report , still sanding and trimming
when i was doing the wing sections i brought out the big guns , the dremeil and sanding pad , made life a lot easier , just had to be carefull not to get carried away which i must admit i nearly did , but all game good in the end .



Tail section cut out and trimmed .

after the sanding on with the sticky stuff , wings and tail all glued and taped '



Then moving on putting the finished wings on the lower half of the fuslarge and trying the top half , showed me i still have some cutting and trimming left to do





top tail section will need trimming as well


Must admit it is coming together slowly but surely ,
sorry these posts are a bit boring but hopefully it will get better .
bye for now .

[Nige201980]

Cracking work Martin and not boring at all buddy. What glue are you using for this will be tamiya extra thin or some thing similar or some other type like super glue.

[martin57]

Cracking work Martin and not boring at all buddy. What glue are you using for this will be tamiya extra thin or some thing similar or some other type like super glue.

yea using revalls glue to give the parts some grip, then going along with the extra thin, seams to be doing the job .

[martin57]

Hi all sorry about the lack of updates.
took early retirement to look after the wife, just trying to adjust to my new way of life .
any way here is where we are up to .

I brought an after market ejector seat for my build because the kit dident come with a seat .



not a bad looking seat ..







getting ready to cut out the tail section .





not to bad a fit. going to need a bit of work and filler .


Turning to the cockpit .
not a lot of features here and is going to need a few adjustments




I decided to trim the lower fuserlarge and glue the wings in place , i done this to make it easier to shape the upper half .





not a bad fit after all that shaping .







now for the top half , laying the top on , and then marking along the wing profile with a pencil seems to do the trick .





getting closer .



all cut and sanded fits ok will need some filling ,
here i have done a mock up just to see how it will fit together .





thanks for looking

[martin57]

last update is here , before the final reveal.
after the dry fitting witch went ok . so onwards and upwards i continued with the glueing.


then on with the filler after the tail was fitted .





after sanding i fitted the undercarriage and dry fitted the canopy .



then glued the hook in place, and i am not sure what the other parts name is i think its called a tail stand .


well moving on , the primer was next on the list, had good results with this ,



re scribed some of the panel lines .


so far so good, next up was the canopy ,this part did not have any frame lines moulded on it so i had to mark my own .





the ejection seat was next up painted and weatherd .


pre shading went well .



a couple of coats of dark sea gray went down next .


i must apologise i thought that i had taken some photos of the next couple of steps but no .
so this photo is after decaling and a couple of gloss coats .





so thats it. used some U M P dark dirt for the stains and panel lines .
The final pictures will be on the reveal thread...