Handley-Page HP.42 Kroonduif airlines [1/100] part 1

Fellow Papermodeler-forum member Gary Pilsworth designed a nice model of the HP.42 in 1/72. I reduced it in size to about 1/100 (by printing two pages on 1 A4 sheet).
I also changed the livery into the Kroonduif livery which was the actual airline of Dutch New Guinea. They never really flew with HP42's but this is a What-if, so there. (see previous blogpost).

This is how it looks right now, a quick resume of the start of the build follows below.

It of course all starts with the printout of the model. I used 160 grams paper, my new standard weight paper to go. Two pages on one sheet makes it about 1/100 and just about the right size to still fit into a spot on my shelves.
 

The fuselage is not hard but has a tricky shape. It isn't exactly round but rather square with rounded corners.  I cut off the glue tabs and used inner strips to make the fit better but it still had some roughness in the segment transitions. It was a little tricky to get the placement of the nose section right. In the end I managed to do it.
I think the post-war livery is striking and gives the plane a much more modern look and feel.

Before glueing it all together, the central part of the lower wing needs to slide in. After that, the fuselage can be closed up. I used a cut-off knitting needle for the shaping of the wing attachment of the central wing part. I really recommend cut in half knitting needles of several thicknesses (number =millimetres) for using in rounding things or shaping cones and cylinders.

The lower wing was coming on all right. A little tricky, again, was the bend in the wing. I used a three-view drawing of the plane as a reference. The bend itself will be camouflaged by the engine nacelles anyway. the point is to get the angle right. I had much more trouble with the main wing, which goes on top and is made out of two parts with just three formers inside. In my scale it is just over 30 cm long. The two halves went together well but when I joined them to become one long wing I see the wing is totally warped. Now how do I solve this?
 

I printed out a new wing and had a nice long big thought for a couple of hours.

This time I used Aleene's tacky glue instead of my regular white PVA glue. Aleene's glue doesn't dry as fast, so it can be handled for a longer time. I used double the formers and glued the two wing halves. I used an inner glue strip to attach both halves together and after lining them up, I got two long rulers and some clamps and reversed clothes pins. I had the wing with the trailing edge between the clamps and I just hoped this would straighten the wing during the time it dried.

It did.
 

Now, the kit provides in three jigs for getting the top wing on the right height and distance from the fuselage and bottom wing. But it didn't have any lateral reference or structure to it to provide in a working rig. So I cut slots in the jig parts and used a piece of cardboard to join them together. 
As you can see, in the picture below, I also had the tail ready and glued on. The tail has three vertical tailpieces and two horizontal stabilos. I flattened the end piece of the fuselage a little to have a better surface to glue the tail on to.

Engines. Looking tricky but very easy to build, actually. Nicely done designwise.

The engine itself is a little thing, just over one cm across. I presume the pointy part actually had to be flat but I kind of liked this shape better. There will be rotating propellers in front that will camouflage the engine a little anyway.

This here below is my new scale cube I made with my own logo on it. You might see it more often from now on. Each bigger square is 1 cm, the small squares are 2mm.

Time to put the nacelles on the wings. The two bottom wing ones are shoved over the leading edge and fit almost perfectly into place. Again, nicely designed, Gary.

This is a nacelle for the top wing. Most of it will be hanging below the wing.

All nacelles on.

Now, four engines await propellers and there are some struts to join the top wing to the bottom one. I decided to do those struts out of grey thick 275 grams paper.

That is for the next post, perhaps. This is it for now. Thanks for stopping by and until next time.
--PK