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Thread: Staakens at Sea!

  1. #1

    Default Staakens at Sea!

    Yes the arduous odyssey is almost accomplished! Like Ares I still have a few struts to add. . .



    The irony of a seaplane made of paper!



    It all began with the 1/80 scale Staaken from ECardmodels.com. I printed off 3 at 1/44 scale and began the clipping odyssey. After a LOT of clipping I started to test fit the parts and discovered I could eliminate a lot of work that had already been done. When you shrink a model this far there are many steps the bigger bird needs, but you do not. The wings for example are 5 parts whilst one only really needs 3. Propellers at this scale as well as many tiny bits become impractical-or at least much easier in wood or plastic, no, I still can't make decent paper struts! Then there are the wheels, you can see how my cunning plan eliminated them! And those tiny tooth tab fold over bits, gone! Use a thick glue.



    Up to here the process was straight forward, although I did make inner wing spars of 1.5 mm foam around 3/8" wide to stiffen the wings and create an airfoil. Struts were made from flat styrene strips.



    Repeat 3 times



    Engine pods formed around a pencil tip to induce a conical curve



    Stub struts glued to the lower wing to nest the engine pods



    Instead of the zillion wheels, I had a cunning plan . . .



    German Giants had a great article with drawing of the seaplane Staaken, and of course pontoons are much easier to build from, say left over Zeppelin foam, you can see the madness born!



    Pontoons cut, sanded, filled and primed with clear acrylic



    Pontoon struts were impaled into the foam at the marked places, glued and tipped into proper angles, then re-glued. Six times!



    When set the struts were trimmed with scissors to the right length, glue applied and then set carefully on the bottom wings in locations



    Then after the night of curing the birds were tipped over and gawked at



    Close up detail, much very nice detail is printed on the models which save a lot of detail time



    Props and a step back and they look lethal, but where's the guns?



    That's better! Because of the wing seams I had to paint the paper joins with a matching water color wash, now they look like rib tapes!



    Ready for deployment! Don't need to say they only made one in reality, and it was a different color, and it was not armed, we don't need to mention that. This is a game with some wiggle room. As for the color I thought long and hard about painting it, but that defeats the purpose of a printed paper model. Even the all blue one available now is not correct for this one : ) and so far an uncolored one is not available-although the development patterns are online . . .



    So there they are, not a build for the beginner, but still very rewarding, keep them out of the water!



    Next I am building torpedoes and planning an encounter of the Felixstowe kind . . .



    Clipper at war!

  2. #2

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    Your insanity cup continue to runneth over! Awesomeness!

  3. #3

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    If his cup is insanity, I wash my hands of it.
    Another inspired set of aircraft David.
    How much do you spend on printer ink per month?
    Rob.

  4. #4

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    Never mind the ink - Where does he put them all?
    Does have palace, with an entire wing dedicated to 1/144 aircraft?

    /Niclas

  5. #5

  6. #6

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    Cup! I think your bucket runneth over
    Another fantastic build I don't think I will emulate.

  7. #7

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    Excellent model work, David!

  8. #8

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    Nice pictures! They are very informative.

  9. #9

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    David: here's a couple of links to W. I. Boucher's blog. The recent postings have your name on them
    Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI, s/n 8301

    Zeppelin-Staaken R-type pt 2

    Siemens-Schuckert R.VIII

    Karl

  10. #10

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    Once again....and again,and again.very nice

  11. #11

  12. #12

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    What was your wackiest post ever? This is close to It!



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