I was bemoaning the lack of models of a number of classic pre-WWI and interwar aircraft like the Wright Flyer, Bleriot. Pea Shooter and Spirit of St. Louis. Someone suggested the Revell Spirit of St. Louis is a new kit of recent origin. It’s got 50 parts and is pretty spartan, and in the instructions it looks very close to the complexity level of the Revell Texan I did not long ago. But the Spirit was a pretty simple aircraft. I had assumed this kit was something pretty old. Do we have a new model that’s worth building here? (Tom Cleaver claimed that the Revell Ventura was the first new 1/48 the company had done since the Do-217 in the 90s. I found a Do-217 on eBay and it looks like a very interesting kit. Wonder why it isn’t available. Guess bombers get no respect. Actually the Ventura looks very nice - wish they’d done a Hudson which wasn’t a great plane but did yeoman work throughout the war in several air forces.)
Actually TC was wrong, the Do-217 was tooled by DML, then released under Monogram’s Promodeler label. The Spirit kit isn’t bad. The fit of the wing isn’t the greatest, and the front “swirl” panels are represented by decals not by and type of molding on the fuselage. The cockpit decals is sparse, but you can’t see much of it anyway.
I thought the kit was excellent, and built up very nicely. Got a few ribbons with it. I’ll try to take a shot today and post in this thread later. Nice figure of Lindberg comes with it. No airplane is really that simple, so there is room for a great model kit for even the simplest plane. I added just a few cockpit details, exterior is basically OOB.
That’s very good to hear: for $15 and 50 parts it would make the perfect Zen build. And this summer I’m going to start the construction of the Minnesota Navy: old Revell Baltimore/Helena will appear as USS St. Paul and the equally old Revell Campeltown will be incarnated as Ward - the Minnesota Naval Reserve gunners on Ward did indeed sink a Japanese mini-sub right before the attack at Pearl and thus fired the first American shots of the Pacific War - the gun is at the Minnesota capital building. So we need a Minnesota Air Force. As Lindbergh (note the “h” - a perfect example of odd Scandinavian spelling - Lindberg models were not named after him) was a native son and gave my grandmother her first airplane ride in 1924 (no joke: grandfather worked at bank robbed by John Dillinger - my two claims to genuine fame) the Spirit would make a good place to start. (There’s a full sized replica of the Spirit in the Minnesota airport and every time I see it I think how odd that there’s no windscreen.) Richard Bong was a native of Superior Wisconsin which is about 100’ from Duluth, but I guess we can’t claim him.
I built this model a couple of years back having memories of James Stewart convincing financiers for his historic flight. The kit is easy to build, good fit ,detailed instruments and a good detailed decal set specially of the hammered finish of the cowling although tricky to apply. I highly recommend it.
It’s a great little kit! I added engine-turned Bare-Metal Foil, and scratch-built the anemometer. The door can be displayed open so you can add some nice details to the interior. You’ll have to pick the bird up to look inside, though. Fit was decent.
Hey Gene, how did you do the “engine turning” trick on the Bare-Metal foil? That sounds interesting as I too, have this little jewel in my stash. Thanks in advance, Gary
Maybe I missed it but what kit number is this? I bought one 3 years or so ago and remember some poor reviews on the one I have. Seems to me there is another Revell kit that was more detailed?? I also have the glencoe SOSL which might make a decent desktop model
Gee Gene you did a great job on the engine-turned foil; Just what I want to do so I can finish up my Spirit. (that and a few details will have her done.)
I have tried to find some kind of gift foil to replicate the turning without any luck, tried to figure out how to make engine turning on other foils but had no luck or results worthy of the name.
Now you come along a show it can be done, and very well too.
So hows about letting me in on your secret? Please!
Personally I though the decals for the turned cowl look fairly nice, except for the fact that the decals were not quite large enough. They left a strip/gap at bottom. But there are two sets of the decals, one for the NYP trip and previous, the other for the tour afterwards. I was able to cut a strip from the later decals to fill in the gap. However, I’d still like to know the trick to putting that circular burnishing on BMF.
Wow. Sorry I missed this, guys. I may have been consumed at work, or something.
I read about the process somewhere, but don’t remember where. I’d love to give credit where credit is due, but simply don’t remember where. It may have been on the Scale Auto site where someone was doing a firewall or dash on a Ferrari, or something. My apologies to the person I originally got this from, it’s an awesome technique.
Anyway, here’s the process I followed:
I used Bare Metal Foil. The only silver-colored foil I had was their chrome stuff, which is what I used. Perhaps something with a less glossy finish might do better, I don’t know. I liked the results with the BMF chrome.
I figured out how much I needed based on the kit decals, trying to use as little as possible, but leaving a little excess for errors in cutting/laying down.
I grabbed a drafting template that had different-sized circles on it. I happened to pick up a Pickett cricuit drawing template. That worked nicely.
I located a regular #2 pencil with a decent eraser on it. I lucked out and had in the house a completely unused pencil. These have the red erasers on the ‘correcting end’, which is slightly abrasive. That’s key.
Depending on the size of your ‘turnings’ circles, you may need to trim the sides of the eraser down a bit. I had to for the Spirit. You want it to just barely fit in the hole of your template, but still be able to be turned by hand.
I figured out what size circle I needed to use, and after a couple of tests to get spacing and overlap right, figured out how much the template needed to move for each spot. I measured out a grid to follow on some paper that I laid under the BMF page that I could use to keep the circle template lined up on and be able to follow so the spacing of the turnings were uniform.
So I laid the paper down and taped it. Laid the BMF down over that in such a manner that I could see the grid on the paper and align the template with that grid. I then laid the template over the foil and went to work with the eraser. You locate your first ‘turning’ location, press the eraser to the template/foil and give it a couple of turns by hand. I think I did 4-5 turns by hand. It doesn’t take much to get decent results.
Once you have your first spot done, remove the pencil, carefully relocate the template so you still get some overlap, but can cover the most area at a time, and just keep working. It’s tedious work, about like scribing panels or re-marking rivets, but the results are nice. It probably took me a couple of hours to ‘engine turn’ enough foil to cover the cowl of the Spirit with a little left over.
After that, you cut out your pieces, using the supplied decals as templates. If you don’t have that, I’d try to duplicate the panels, so any ‘panel’ overlap you have will look like a natural panel joint.
After I applied the foil, I dotted the edges of the panels with flat silver to look like screws, and then gloss clear-coated the foil. That had the added detail of turning the foil a little brown, a feature I kind of like. The clear-coat didn’t affect the ‘engine turn’ look, the shine that seems to move when the light angle changes, just like real engine turned metal.
As Don mentioned, the supplied decals are fine, but this technique really makes the engine turned surface look really engine-turned. As you move the finished model, or as the light angle changes, it does look convincing. It’s not something to do every day, you’ll quickly grow tired of the process, but it’s pretty neat on the rare opportunities where you do.
Yeah, picture posting from Fotki continue to confound me. I can get links to appear, but find no way to get the images to appear any more. Fotki worked when photobucket was giving people fits, so fotki is where I set up camp. Now photobucket fixed their issues, but fotki is screwed up, or so it appears. Some seem to be able to display photos, but I don’t see the options they mention. Sorry, just follow the link, though.
