How I Build Dioramas in 1/16th.

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On to the upper wing! I haven't got around to weathering the cockpit yet but I think I will set this aside for now and build the upper wing assembly as it is really the base for the rest of this upside down piece to be built upon.

The upper wing is built all in one piece and I will leave it intact except for the odd ding here and there.The fabric will be mostly flash burned off so I will have to build all of the internal structure including the drag and anti-drag wires.

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The first step is to spray lacquer both sides on the laser cut board before removing the ribs.

Now take a piece of pink insulation board,lay on the upper wing plan and put a piece of wax paper over that and pin down.Take your ribs and pin them down over the wax paper/plan.The ribs themselves are not numbered so be careful that they are in the right order.Don't worry about the varying sizes of the lightening holes in the ribs as the plans are just not that accurate.

Next take your rib stiffener strips and lay them over the ribs.Be sure to leave a little extra room around the spar areas, as these will need some filing out later to have the spars fit through the holes properly.

Secure the ribs using small pins and put a small drop of superthin superglue at each rib/stiffener joint area.

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Fire scorched wood. I have been trying to think of a way to scorch the wood of the wing ribs,spars and cap strips. I had originally thought of using pastels after the wing was built but now I am thinking that nothing will look as good as actually scorching the wood itself.I will have to do this before I finish the assembly of the wing.The key is to scorch the wood in such a way as to not affect the glue joints or distort or warp the wood in any way.( I know great time to think of this now)

I was thinking of using a butane lighter but that could easily get out of hand.I have an old iron that I used in my ship building days for bending planks and it seems to me that if you let it get hot enough it would eventually scorch the wood.I also have a wood burning tool that I used for bird feathering on carvings.

I also need to experiment with a controlled burn on fabric ,as although most of it would be flash burned off ,some remnants would remain.

Should be fun!

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Before scorching and weathering the skeletonized wing assembly I fitted the ribs to the fore and aft spars. Then when they were all bunched together I sanded the noses of all the ribs flat to later accept the leading edge.(there actually was very little to remove) The trailing edge will be worked on after the wing is assembled.

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After a few further experiments I decided to go with a woodburning tool set at medium heat.Most other methods did not allow for enough control over the rate of scorching and some were too hard on the glue joints.When the wing is built I can further refine it a bit with pastels.

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