Scratchbuilt 1/288
Zeppelin L-10
|
 |
Introduction
Can a World War One aircraft collection be complete without a Zeppelin?
In my humble opinion the answer is “no.” Many of the first
winged combat aircraft of the Great War were used as defensive weapons
against these giants. The Avro 504, the Nieuport 11s with rockets and
BE2cs with flechette arrows were all adapted to try and bring down the
dreaded Zeppelin. Before the First World War, battles were fought between
soldiers and not civilians. The Zeppelin, however brought the war to the
whole civilian population. So without doubt the Zeppelin had a greater
psychological effect than any other weapon of the time. It may not have
done so much damage but the fear factor was certainly more widespread
than any other weapon of mass destruction, to use a modern expression.
I have built Zeppelins before, one being a paper card cut out of the
Hindenberg and another of a Schutte Lanz type that was over a metre long.
The size of Zeppelins may be the main reason not many collections have
any lighter than air models in them. A 1:72 scale Zeppelin would be about
nine feet long and 12 inches in diameter! I have now built another airship,
the L-10, but it is in the more convenient scale of around 1:288. This
machine was one of the early successful Zeppelins and it made 28 fights
including five over England.
I was inspired to build another airship after finding a website dedicated
to airships , AirshipModeler.com
. This in turn got me to dig out some plans by Ian Stair from an old article
by Ray Rimell in a November, 1975 issue of Scale Models. He had built
a later type using the balsa and tissue method. I chose my favourite material,
styrene sheet. I arbitrarily decided on making my model 26 inches long.
This is the size of one of my biggest World War One bombers, the Handley
Page V/1500.
The Model
I blew up the plans from the SM article so they would be 26 inches which
is about 1:288 scale. Then I searched for a cardboard tube that was approximately
the diameter of the plans. The best I came up with was Pringle crisps
and hot chocolate containers. I cut these to the length needed and taped
them together with plastic packaging tape. This gave me the section of
the airship that had a continuous diameter. Next I cut out two 40 thou
plastic disks to fit into the ends of the cylinder I had made. A small
hole the diameter of coat hanger wire was drilled into each disk. These
were then super glued to the ends of the cylinder and a 26 inch wire was
glued to the disks after locating the nose and tail on the plans.
At this point I cut out the rest of the former disks, their diameter
having been taken off the plan. Each of these had a hole drilled in their
centre. Their location on the wire was taken off the plan and I glued
them on with super glue. I also glued small triangular braces to the wire
and the disks to give them more rigidity. All together there were nine
formers cut out of 40 thou plastic sheet. I found it was quite easy to
cut these circles by simply scoring a tangent four times around the drawn
disk, then four more and four more etc. When I snapped off all the scored
bits I had almost a circle. A little trimming and sanding made a perfect
circle. It took no time at all to make the disks and then glue them to
their respective locations. Once they were all on and reinforced with
the plastic triangles the structure could be covered.
I chose 20 thou plastic sheet to cover the basic frame as it is flexible
in length but fairly rigid in its width. Zeppelins, as many will know,
had 19 sections around their diameter. By measuring off the plan I found
that a strip of about 12 mm would work out alright.. I didn’t have
the full length of the frame so I decided to splice the strips about half
way along the cardboard tube. I had painted this silver earlier to make
it easier to see and work on whilst applying the strips. I started at
the front and continued around until I had completed it. I used super
glue to glue the strips to the cylinder and used liquid poly to glue them
to the formers. A bit of trial and error was used in this process and
I daresay other modellers would do a better job than I did but on the
whole it worked out fairly well. The strips used on the nose and tail
had to be tapered; slightly on the nose and almost to a point on the tail.
What I ended up doing was tapering one side of the strip, then offering
it up against the previously glued on strip and tracing the shape against
the new strip and so on until the whole structure was covered. The top
of the Zeppelin had two strips but the bottom only had one strip. This
is important as if you don’t get it right none of the gondolas,
fins, outriggers etc. will be properly aligned.
Once the basic shape of the airship was achieved it could be cleaned
up and streamlined. Because it has an internal structure the model is
quite robust so it is easy to handle without fear of a finger going through
it.. This is certainly an advantage to doing a model in paper or the traditional
stick and tissue construction. Where the ridges on the strips were too
prominent I sanded and shaved the plastic to get a smooth contour. Where
there were gaps, I filled them using PVA white glue.
Having done this I gave the structure a very light coat of silver spray
so that any remaining flaws would show up. Next I cut a small rectangle
of plastic sheet the length and width of a typical section as seen on
the L-10. I used this to mark out all of the sections on the whole hull,
approximately 500 swipes with a scalpel blade. This may sound daunting
but it probably took no more than half an hour to do it. It’s not
difficult, just boring! Once done it looks quite impressive and really
sets off the hull. This would not be easy to simulate on other methods
of construction and as the sheet plastic is thick a good scribe is achieved
with each swipe of the blade. When this process was complete I cut out
the gun platform on the top of the hull and set in a floor and attached
the apron around it.
The fins were easily made of just 20 thou sheet plastic and sanded to
shape, scribed and glued to the tail of the hull. With the fins on the
hull was ready to paint. I chose Humbrol number 27 medium grey to cover
the entire structure and did this with about three light coats. The colour
isn’t too dark as to obscure the details and the L-10 number.
Next to be made were the two gondolas and propeller outriggers. Both
rear engine gondola and the control gondola were made of 15 thou plastic
sheet. Part of each side was scraped with a razor saw to get the corrugated
metal effect seen on Zeppelins. The tops and bottoms were of 40 thou sheet.
I installed clear plastic windows in the control gondola but the other
openings were simply bits of black decal. The completed gondolas were
painted with number 11 silver. Holes were drilled in them and brass pins
fitted to the bottom of the hull to receive the gondolas. Once fitted
and aligned a drop of super glue fixed them in place. Two propeller outriggers
were made of 10 thou brass wire and attached to the rear gondola and the
hull. The gear boxes on the end of this structure were fashioned out of
a bit of stretched plastic tubing. The gondola bumpers were simply blobs
of Blue Tac coated with white glue and painted light grey. The four propellers
are strips of twisted plastic and sanded to shape. All the rigging is
hot stretched sprue attached with white glue. Any other detail such as
guns, handrails etc. were made of the same material. After applying the
decals the model was given a coat of Klear/Future which gave it a nice
semi- matt finish and uniform colour.
Conclusion
Well, there it is; one World War One Zeppelin. I think this small and
simply constructed model is within the capabilities of most modellers.
The techniques should make it possible to make any of the airship types
used during the war. It may not be to your favourite scale but it will
add a missing element to any collection of World War One aircraft.
|
|
