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Lindberg's venerable 1/48 JN-4 "Jenny"


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Since the Fokker D.II build is cruising right along I thought I would get another one underway while the momentum is still going. Curtiss' combination of the Type J and Type N trainers was an instant success as a trainer with the US Signal Corps and when the JN-4 was introduced in 1916, even the RFC placed an order for schools in Canada.

This of course is all just an excuse to build the thing-always liked Jenny's lines.

The kit:

JN4_zpsea4b18de.jpg

This will get Mike West's resin Jenny cockpit. A couple years ago I sent a set of 1/48 B-29 wings from the junkyard for a resin project he was cooking up and he sent me his Jenny resin cockpit in exchange. So that's where I started:

JN4001_zps21b33a9e.jpg

The throttle rod was pretty rough so it got carved out and replaced with stretched sprue. And the fit was pretty good:

JN4002_zpsa791418d.jpg

And here's the progress so far. I had to make another bulkhead as there was just an open hole aft of the pilot's seat:

JN4005_zps681ffc56.jpg

He did the seats so you sand the backs down until you can see daylight through the wicker. I look forward to seeing how that turns out.

Ken

Edited by WymanV
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Just a little bit of progress to report here. I've been cleaning up parts on my breaktime at work-plenty of ejector pin marks on the wings and tail. Also found a killer deal on .1325 inch drill bits so I've been drilling holes for rigging. The Jenny was a bit of a stringbag:

JN4006_zps314d1de0.jpg

You can see I've been working with the resin seats as well. Here's a before & after shot, showing what has to be sanded away to expose the wicker lacing in the seat back:

JN4009_zps5d0ff9e3.jpg

I like it-great effect. Sadly, the ends of the lap belt are right there so they get sanded away in the process. Which is OK, as the fuselage is real narrow and no one will ever see there anyway.

Ken

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indeed the wicker lacing effect looks great on those seats!

sanding those parts without breaking any must be a very delicate task...

I enjoy seeing some progress being made on builds!

i'll follow your with great interest70.gif

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Some progress on the Jenny. I nibble away at this during breaks at work, and it's been about cleaning up seams and ejector pin marks, and translating the spider web that is the rigging on this one. One of the things I disliked about the kit was the way Lindberg dealt with the struts. As you can see in the first pic, they're molded in a U shape, with the bottom of the U going into a slot under the upper wing. Lindberg did this with their S.E.5a kit too and I wouldn't be surprised if they did this with many-if not all their biplane kits:

JN4010_zps1b5a3dc1.jpg

My fix for this was to cut the strut uprights off the bottom of the U, and glue that remaining piece into the slots in the wing. Once they've dried well enough, I'll sand them smooth and fill if necessary. I'll still have holes for positive location for the struts, and I'll be sandwiching the rigging lines in there when I glue the struts in. That way I don't have to drill more holes than necessary:

JN4011_zps1f608acf.jpg

Planning to button up the fuselage this weekend.

Ken

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Jenny update. Got a bunch of the interior bits done. Not exactly the way I wanted the seats to turn out, but they'll do. And there seems to be an instrument panel missing and after a lengthy and fruitless search, I may have to use one of the kit panels:

JN4012_zps51c282a9.jpg

I was hoping to close up the fuselage tonight, but it's not the missing instrument panel that became the problem. It's the seats. As you can see, they're WAY too wide:

JN4014_zpsf0126eef.jpg

That floor pan represents how wide the inside is. I will have to take an incredible amount of material off them to make them fit.

What a shame.

Ken

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And I've come to the conclusion that instead of sanding the seats down to fit so far they get wrecked, I'll either scratch build some buckets to replace them or look for replacements in other kits. It's not like I can't use them elsewhere-I still have nearly 20 more WWI kits to build.

Ken

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah, it does kinda suck but the nice thing is I'll have a couple seats for kits with poor cockpits-and that should make another build pop a little more than it would have.

Here's what I came up with. I was considering robbing the seats from the Eduard Albatros D.II and D.V kits in the stash, but there's always the chance doing so will mess up those builds down the road. But I also have another Albatros C.III in the stash. An old school Eduard kit with an all photo etch cockpit, including the pilot's seat. So I used it as a template, traced it out on some sheet styrene and made 2:

JN4022_zps8d9f03f9.jpg

Here they are with a kit seat, the resin wicker seat and the photo etch I traced. A crewmember from the kit still fits in the new one so it can't be too far off, and they will fit in the cockpit.

Still wanting to get this fuselage buttoned up so I can get on with the build. Found some early US roundel insignia decals for it too. Actually, what I did was found a French decal set for the DML Spad XIII in the stash which is done in a post-war US scheme. And I just need the insignia, since the US didn't use fin flash colors on early WWI aircraft.

Crawling right along... dry.gif

Ken

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  • 2 weeks later...

On a side trip with this build, I wanted to replace the plastic kit wheels with something in a pair of photo etched spoke wheels. I think that would look pretty slick on this plane. I picked up a couple sets of Tom's Modelworks PE, and I'm not terribly pleased with the idea. Here are the instructions:

JN4023_zps5d9dc908.jpg

I would have to have four wheels to do this. In many cases, I'd imagine this would mean a second kit and what kind of option is that? Not to mention the seam from hell that would have to be filled.

The Jenny kit came with 4 wheels-an additional pair for the dolly on the cover pic. So I may give them a shot anyway. But I would have thought they would have come up with something better. I was hoping for something that would work with rubber O-rings.

Ken

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I believe this is as far as I will take the cockpit. Forgot to mention I found the other resin instrument panel-on the floor, right up against the table leg:

JN4024_zpscd8a387e.jpg

The seats are made from a thin enough sytrene that they will flex when they're in, but they won't fit well if I glue them in. I'll seal up the fuselage with the seats and engine unsecured, and I can manipulate the seats into place with a tweezers. The engine is canted down at the nose on the real ones, and the fit on this kit is rather hairy. Leaving the engine loose under the cowl will help fit the radiator and get the angle right.

Ken

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  • 2 weeks later...

The weeks progress. The fuselage is buttoned up. The fuselage halves were quite warped so sealing it up meant superglue and C-clamps, but it's closed up. Lots of sanding to clean up the warp in the seams and I had to redo the turtledeck detail, but it's getting there.

Next step was getting the wings ready. The bottom wing panels were warped (they are also warped on the kit box cover build, if you look closely) but a spin in boiling water took care of that. Since the fabric on Jennys were quite transparent, I had some more to do to get them ready. First, a coat of Krylon white primer to cover the work on the ejector pin marks and to give it the lightest base to work with. Then I had to do insignia. First, mask it for red:

JN4_029.jpg

Then for some red. I went with US Insignia Red, not because it may or may not be correct but because it doesn't really matter. Since I'm creating an illusion, it doesn't have to be perfect:

JN4_030.jpg

Then of course, mask off the red and spray the blue-US Insignia Blue of course, for the same reasons:

JN4_031.jpg

And since the wing structure was quite visable, the rather laborious task of masking and painting spars & ribs:

JN4_032.jpg

The white is not taking well to being handled, but I suspected I would have issues with that. Keep my hands clean and hope for the best.

Ken

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those "preshading" roundels looks great, and that will surely give the transparency effect you're searching for. (so you won't use the decal roundels that where on the boxart? (stars))

a was too lazy to do so on my Ni-11... and since there is not much Russian Ni-11 photos available...

as for your white paint not taking well being handled, maybe you could use nitrill gloves? (or any other surgical type gloves, if you have some... clean ones!)

Edited by mingwin
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This one will be a 1916 trainer, which pre-dates the "meatball" insignia. In fact, I think the US used the roundel until after the war.

I considered gloves but the issue comes with unmasking. I'm using Humbrol #160 for the brown and the combination of tacky and flat paint means getting residue on my hands is just as easy as getting it on a pair of gloves. And if I have to wash the gloves from time to time, I might just as well do without and keep my hands clean. The worst of it is some red overspray in the center section, and based on the reference pic I'm using the center section of the upper wing was rather dark anyway:

transparent.jpg

Dig those wire wheels :rolleyes:/>

Ken

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Wyman,

Nice work! I'm really enjoying what you're doing with this kit!

I've got four of the Lindberg pre-WW I aircraft in my stash, all with solid disk wheels. I've been looking around for what to do about them. There is Scale Spokes; they look fabulous, but at $23+ for a 1/48 pair, that's nearly twice the price of the kits. The WWI ML mentioned techniques from Scale Model Aircraft in Plastic Card by Harry Woodman. I also found this site and this site making wire wheels for cars.

Edited by David N Lombard
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Yeah that is a little pricey but they sure look nice. Also been thinking about picking up the Bleriot someday. Re-released and cheap enough.

I'll have a go with the Tom's Modelworks spokes. Not sure what I'll do about extra sets of wheels yet. I had built Eduard's Albatros C.III some years ago as my return to WWI modeling (pics in the Past Builds thread) and was pawing the styrene in another one recently that I picked up on the cheap when I noticed they have both solid wheels and another set that seem to be just the tires. They're shaded out on the sprue pics on the instruction sheet as 'parts not used' and I saved all the leftovers from the last build so I had to dig them out. Found the baggie they were in, but of course I didn't save those.

Ken

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  • 4 weeks later...

Sorry about the delay, gents. There was a woman involved (and no, it wasn't a bad thing :coolio:/>/> )

It was also a PITA masking and painting the ribs! Four at a time on the top wing but only two at a time on the bottom, and of course I forgot the tail surfaces. But here's what I came up with:

JN4_035.jpg

And with a few coats of really thin Humbrol 71:

JN4_042.jpg

I was looking for the "correct" color for the sheet metal around the nose (like there IS one) and most color photos of museum pieces and restorations show it to be an "olive" color. I didn't want to go with straight up Olive Drab as that looked too dark, but I remembered I still have some Model Master Faded Olive Drab languishing in the paint stash because it never seemed right for anything I worked on, but I thought it would do the part here.

Hoping it'll really look the part with some gloss coat on it.

Ken

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indeed, your doped linen fabric transparency effect is really impressive, and convincing!70.gif

Great job Ken! can't wait to see that model completed! (not to hurry you!... just to express the hopes and interest your build created!w00t.gif)

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Thanks gents. It does help knowing when I went into this build that it was going to be a handful and I think the worst has yet to come, with the rigging. The control wires for the ailerons pass through pulleys and I'll need to come up for something there as well. The more I look at photos of these, the more I find.

Clearcoat, and decals. The rest of the markings will be dry transfers, which are on order. Also got the rest of the wood bits painted and Futured for grain treatment. Fixed the radiator while I was at it too. The original part had ejector pin holes in the face, so I carved out the details and replaced with a sink faucet screen. Still haven't tackled the wheels yet. Went to the parts store yesterday for brake pads for the daily driver and totally forgot about looking into O-rings:

JN4_043.jpg

Ken

Edited by WymanV
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  • 3 weeks later...

A little progress to show here:

JN4_044.jpg

I had planned to mash the wires into the openings for the upper struts when I put them in, but the first one popped right back out. Obviously, that wasn't going to work out but drilling a hole in the top of the strut where it goes into the wing worked. Half of these (the long ones) are double wires so once it dries well, I'll have to drill yet another hole in the struts for the second one.

The engine is a mash fit with the Lone Star resin. Superglue and accelerator seems to be holding it all together but the prop doesn't line up on the shaft so I may have to drill out a hole for a new shaft. Since the clearance is so tight, I think it'll be hard to tell.

Still looking at those wheels...

Ken

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  • 4 weeks later...

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