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Snoopy verses the Red Baron - My Daughter's Third Build


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Hot on the heels of her PR Spitfire diorama, my daughter has started her new project today. This project is going to be a picture / diorama of "Snoopy verses the Red Baron" using a 1/72 Revell kit and a scratch built Snoopy and kennel. The idea is to have a picture that hangs on the wall, with a 3D Fokker DrI Triplane fighting Snoopy on his kennel, flying out of the picture. Snoopy and his kennel will have to be scratch built at a size that looks right, once the Triplane is finished. We can then find a suitable picture frame for the background picture.

 

 

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Here's an impression of what we're trying to achieve.

 

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After she got home from school, we had a quick a snack, got changed into the modelling clothes and managed 90 minutes of work before wifey came home and it was time to eat. Now she's heading towards seven and a half years old, her attention span is much better, allowing much longer build sessions than before.

 

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We've moved modelling day to a Tuesday, as we get a lot of homework arriving home in the school bag on Thursday, so today was modelling day! The last session was all painting; this time we got to do some gluing. We started out gluing the control column to the floor, and seat and fuselage former together, then setting those aside to dry while we cut out and sanded the fuselage halves.

 

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The cockpit floor was a fiddly little component, so we softened the locating brackets with some solvent glue which made the area sticky enough to position the floor without it flopping all over until we were sure on the position. I'm glad my daughter has tiny fingers, as I was struggling picking it up with my sausage fingers! The whole kit is in fact tiny.

 

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While the floor had a little time to harden up, I set my daughter on to finishing painting the Red Baron, painting his boots first, followed by his face. Her eyes are probably good enough to manage without magnification, but I gave her a magnifying glass to aid careful painting of his face without getting flesh tones on the rest of his leather clothing.

 

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His seat went in next, and after the seat joint and floor were reinforced with a couple of drops of cyano, the Baron took the controls for the first time.

 

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With the Baron comfortably seated, we joined the fuselage halves, and set that aside to dry.

 

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Step 4 in the instructions was working on the centre wing and gun mount. The wing was cut free from the sprue along with the gun breech holding piece that was painted in the previous session. She's becoming more confident with the scalpel, although still needs additional pressure from a daddy hand to cut through some of the thicker sprue joints.

 

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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With that done, we began to get a feel for the size of the model. By this time, we'd almost been working a couple of hours, so decided we'd done enough for one session. It doesn't seem much for a couple of hours work, but it takes so much longer describing how to do a job before actually doing it, but it's all part of the learning process.

 

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Happy with the progress for the day, the builder shows off her work.

 

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Half term holidays and the busy social life of a seven year old, pushed our planned modelling day back from Tuesday to Thursday. So today, amongst other things, my daughter got some sanding done on the DrI fuselage joints, then got the centre wing attached.

 

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Parts were again left to dry before returning to the project later in the day.

 

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The tiny machine guns were tricky to fit and align, and we resorted to blu-tac to hold them in place while a drop of cyano applied with a watchmakers screwdriver attached them. A little while later, the croc clip pinged off the front, catching the Blu-tac, and pulling off one of the miroscopic barrels which extends from the cooling jacket. I haven't decided whether to try drilling the jacket end for some brass wire.

 

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To help my daughter attach the lower wing, I had some 9mm thick MDF off-cuts which were just right for spacers to hold the wings parallel from the front. I told her she would also have to pay attention to having the incidence parallel and also parallel in plan view.

 

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A bit of trial fitting helped her understand the lining up process.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

My daughter's Triplane has made slow progress recently due to school trips, homework and other after school clubs, but we did get the tailplane attached on March 17th, using a block of ply and some styrene shims to get it parallel to the wings.

 

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Today, we got back to it, assembling the engine. My daughter cut out the cylinders and cleaned up the sprue cuts with some sand paper while I cut the very fragile manifold, each pipe of which was attached to the sprue. Delicate work, but it was cut free without damage.

 

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The tailplane struts were more tiny fragile parts. I cut them out but it was a joint effort to get the tiny parts in the right place and glued. 

 

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She cut the rudder out next, and attaching it was another joint effort. After placing it in the right location and applying some glue, it was held for a little while before we realised it was going to droop if unsupported. I quickly rolled some Blu-Tac sausages and stuck them in place to hold the rudder still until the glued joint hardened up properly. That was it for today. The glue all needed to harden before progressing.

I decided we should paint the rest of the airframe next, then apply the decals, before attaching the landing gear, engine and cowl; mainly due to how fragile the landing gear is. While the paint is drying on the airframe, we'll make a staart on Snoopy's kennel and Snoopy himself.

 

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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