SSW R.VIII scratchbuild- Tales of tails and wings.

Modeling Subjects Aircraft
1

Okay, so my first “official” scratchbuild (Bezobrazov Triplane) isn’t done yet, my Goose is languishing, my Zveno needs a trapeze, and my Short Stirling needs masking. Why start another build?

Simple. I’m taking a sculpture class this year at school, and have access to tools I would otherwise not have, namely a bandsaw and belt sander. Taken together, they offer me an excellent scratchbuilding opportunity I DON’T want to pass up.

So what I’m a building, you ask? A biplane. A BIG one. The biggest ever built, actually. The Siemens Schuckert SSW R.VIII.

One of Germany’s WWI R-planes, it was intended as a night bomber with the specification that the engines needed to be serviceable in flight. As such, they put all six of them inside the fuselage and ran driveshafts out to the four propellers. It was completed after the War and never flew- during a fully-staffed high-speed taxi test a prop flew apart severely damaging the plane. It wasn’t repaired.

I plan to use many methods to build this thing. The fuselage is a carved balsa core which will be covered by thin plastic.

Here I’ve begun skinning it.

Under this front piece I’ve carved it out and painted it black. Three windows will eventualy be cut out. I didn’t get too detailed because the interior of this thing is basically all open. If I cut too much out, however, I lose the integrety of the balsa core. Thus, compromises must be made.

Here’s the rear gunner platform. The floor will be replaced with woodgrain painted plastic and detailed a bit, as this area is quite prominent.

The same will be done to the cockpit- I’ll cut it straight down starting half-way up the incline to the same level as the back all the way back to the front of the markings on the top of the balsa. I’ll skin it, detail it, cover it with plastic, and cut windows as necissary.

Round windows in “solid” areas will be drilled all the way through to give the illusion of empty space.

You may be wondering about the thing on top.

It’s a tunnel leading up to the top wing. It’s the main support of the upper wing, and it’s carved from a block of wood. I think I’m going to cast this just so I can get all the defects out without worrying about sealing and sanding the wood multiple times.

In addition to all this I’ve started the horizontal tailplanes. They’re drying at school right now. I was originally going to skin them in plastic, but forgot to make them undersized. Now they looks so good I’m going to try to simply seal them and use them as is. They are too thin to really cast, so I’ll see what I can do with them.

Stay tuned for updates on this build, although I AM viewing it as a long-term project. Who knows when I’ll be done.

(Holy crud that was a lot of typing…)

Thanks for looking!

2

Very interesting subject and looking great so far. Being from Mich you may well be able to source a material, a wood called jellutong. Its traditionally used for making patterns in foundries, it has a uniform fine grain, carves as easily as balsa and a couple coats of shellac may make the styrene cladding unnesacsary, In the future of course. Try the web for Bourget bros, if the’re still around they should carry it. As for casting the tail planes they should easily be as castible as a 1/35th bayonnette, still this is your model so you make the call. Hope you have good plans and plenty of good research materials. Good luck and oh yeah its HUUGE.

3

Good Luck, Lucien.

So far I very-much like your approach to scratch-building. Very clean and well thought-out. I’ll be watching with much interest.

4

You would, Mike. You would. Looks like a very ambitious project. Very cool! By the way, how’s school been for you thus far?

5

You are a sick, sick deranged man. [banghead] So sick it’s sickening.

What do you say to a guy that builds this stuff? It’s ubberly amazing and nothing I could ever hope to do.

[bow] I [bow] to you Lucien [bow] [bow] [bow] [bow]

6

Alrighty, another update. I got the major tail pieces back from school, and they are mostly sealed.

I have NO idea what kind of wood this is- it was scrap from my sculpture class, and it was free.

Couple quick mockup shots. There will be a few more auxillary surfaces to be added- two more vertical surfaces under the tail about where the marks are located, and two more horizontal surfaces to connect the arforementioned vertical surfaces to the main rudder.

I was also able to add some interior detail. Not much, mind you, and it’s about 50% accurate and 50% filler. Looks fine to me. (More Ju 290Z parts showing up, by the way.)

I had the covering done as well, with hatches and windows cut out, but the windows disconnected from the part before I could photograph it. Later, perhaps. Now? I’m going to bed.

7

Fantastic [tup] What scale is the 109 in the First picture showing the Fuse ?

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Same as the SSW R.VIII- 1/72.

You know- looking back, I don’t think I ever mentioned what scale this was! Well, 1/72 it is.

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After three days and four attempts, I finally got the covering on the rear gunner position.

A thick section of clear plastic extends the length of the original opening to give a bit of rigidity to the whole top piece. Don’t ask me how I know why to do this. The seams around this piece are a bit rough, but all that will be taken care of before initial painting.

I’ve also started drilling out the portholes. I was planning on just adding small clear disks to each end of the “tunnel”, but the balsa inside frayed a bit more than I anticipated. I might find correctly sized acrylic rod and shove it in each hole- they’ll still look clear, and it should push all the nasty frayed bits out of the way.

Next up, a real focal point of the build- the cockpit. Construction method is the same as the rear position, only bigger. The front third will be the open cockpit, and thus will be the most detailed. The second third is the covered navigation compartment, which will be detailed with a chair, table, and some other stuff. The rear third exists only as empty space under another set of upper deck windows. I’m not sure if I’m painting it black or wood (like the rest of the cockpit). In reality it would open up onto the engine room a level lower than what I’ve cut, but I can only cut away so much of the balsa core.

Finally, people may be wondering something- “Sure, it’s big- but it’s not really THAT big.” You may be correct. The SSW R.VIII did have a rather stumpy fuselage. Where the size of this sucker really shines is the wingspan. No, I don’t have the wings done yet. But to give an impression of size, here’s how big they are GOING to be.

Until next time.

10

Sickeningly sick… but in a good way, indeed!

This could be a major-general centerpiece to your collection in the making…

11

Once again you take on a project that other modeller only dream about!

Very impressive!

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Work has begun on the area directly behind the cockpit- the navagator’s compartment.

The side closest is accurate. The side farthest- not so much. The schematic I was working off of had the one side with the chair, but no opposite side, so I just basically threw a bunch of filler stuff over there. Hopefully it won’t be too visible.

Same goes for the black section- on the real thing this dropped down to the engine room a level lower. I wasn’t really able to build the entire engine room, so a bit more visual trickery was in order.

Two more areas I took care of are thus:

The small air scoops (the other is on the other side) came from Monogram’s 1/48 P-38. Despite being different scales and different eras, they fit the schematics like a glove. Also, I blanked off the windows with aluminum tube to clear up the “frayed balsa” issue. A bit o’ black paint, and we’re in business.

I have the upper decking to the navagator’s station all cut out- I just need to add the clear backing and get it in place. Then- off to the cockpit proper.

Again, thanks for looking.

13

When doing a scratch build of such an obscure plane it is logical that you have to make up / do an educated guess on certain details. It looks convincing (and nobody can tell that it is wrong because nobody really knows [:D])

Keep up the good work!

14

Looking fantastic so far. Where on earth do you/ have you got your refs from? Surely it cant be from that one picture you posted lol.

…Guy

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For anyone wanting information on the R-Planes of WWI, check it out here:

THE GERMAN GIANTS

This is pretty much the only source for information on the R-planes- everything else (on the internet, for example) is most likely taken from this book. It contains info, photos, and three-view diagrams of nearly every R-plane built by Germany during WWI. It is, as someone else has stated, the R-Plane Bible

As for this particular aircraft, there’s also a nice collection of photos… HERE.

Depending on how this build goes, I might try my hand at a few more of these centrally-engined birds. Heck, I might try and complete the whole set! [:D]

FYI: The German R-Planes were a group of large aircraft who’s main specification was that the engines needed to be servicable in flight. This led to two groups- internally mounted engines that used shafts to transfer the motion to outboard props (like the SSW R.VIII), or nacelle mounted engines that had engineer stations built into the nacelles (like the Zeppelin Staaken, subject of a recent Roden kit release).

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Still chippin’ out those details…

As you can see, the upper decking for the navagator’s compartment is on. Interestingly enough, it didn’t take me as long as the rear decking did, despite being much more complicated. I guess I’m learning, or something.

I’ve also started work on the cockpit and nose position (you can really call it a “nose gun” because no armament was, in fact, installed). The black post will recieve some control levers, and the brass bar will connect with the two control wheels to be installed later. The nose position also needs cleaning up.

The whole build in all its glory. And finally, this:

I’ve begun work on the auxiliary tail surfaces. While the SSW R.VIII had two sets of elevators and three rudders, it did NOT have a true “biplane” tail unit. What these are could be better called floating elevators, as they were directly controlled by the main elevators and had no additional surfaces to pivot off of. The two extra rudders (connected at each tip of this unit) are similar in this respect.

These were easier to build then I had anticipated. I basically took a brass rod the correct length of the span, glued a thin plastic sheet cut to shape to the bottom of it, then curved two more sheets over the top. Except for filling in the ends, it was that easy. I’ll probably to the same for the rudders.

Except for some massively huge conical radiators, there isn’t much detail left to the fuselage- I just gotta finish the cockpit, cut some windows, and glue in some porthole glass, and that’s it!

As always, thanks for looking!

17

you make it look so easy to scratch build.

18

Looking good so far.[tup]

19

Looks great; another amazing scratchbuilt project… Was watching some documentary couple weeks ago that included examples of those huge german biplanes with the engineer “hanging” out between engines while in flight… fascinating stuff!

20

Looks good, you must be glutin for punishment first it was the spruce now this.[:D]