Lozenge Pattern WW1

[Erfolg]

I am building a V29 Fokker. I am not so so far from the end that my mind increasingly turns to finishing it.

 

In the past I never worried to much about the finish. I was reassured that a few experts suggested that for the the 3rd (final) aircraft trials that, due to the difficulties and time constraints, the aircraft would most probably be just doped or at best painted roughly in a streaky green.

 

I now believe that to be untrue, their is one photograph that shows that the aircraft body at least in covered in the typical lozenge cloth. I can and do suspect that the wing was painted green, as the D8 seem to leave the factory so painted. The aircraft is essentially a D7 with a bigger D8 wing.

 

I have finally got round to addressing the issue. Initially I though perhaps I could use my ink jet printer to print out A4 sheets of tissue. I then thought how? I then thought the printed areas would probably run when doped.

 

My next thoughts moved to maybe I could produce a stencil that I could draw the pattern onto the tissue. My thoughts were/are. would I need more than one template. After that I would just brush paint the pattern. Still not knowing the how.

 

I know that this task will have been undertaken previously many times, the question is how, are their current methods or processes that make life much easier?

 

[J D 8]

 I wonder why the German aircraft makers of the great war went to so much bother painting such a complicated pattern, must have taken some time on the production floor.

[PatMc]

8 minutes ago, J D 8 said:

 I wonder why the German aircraft makers of the great war went to so much bother painting such a complicated pattern, must have taken some time on the production floor.

They didn't paint the lozenge patterns, they were printed on metre wide cover material. This would have been no more difficult than normal fabric printing for curtains etc so peacetime machinery & expertise/labour would have been in place anyway.

 

Erf, have a look here  it's a plastic kits site that probably has done all the research & come up with a reasonably confident representation of the colours. 

[leccyflyer]

One of my clubmates found a haberdashery which produced a lozenge printed fabric at approximately the right scale and was able to finish his magnificent Magnatilla in this fabric.

 

She looks fantastic. 

[RottenRow]

I did what you are suggesting, made templates from Frisk Film (a tacky, translucent film), from which some of the lozenges were cut using a sharp knife. The templates were (one at a time) laid onto the model and the lozenges drawn through using a pencil. Once the whole area was covered, they were painted, one colour at a time, using Humbrol enamel mixed to give the right shades.

 

It was necessary to make three separate templates; that was the minimum that would be required to avoid cutting out any two adjacent lozenges. Mine was for a Fokker DVII (Flair kit) and my covering was Solartex, but it would work the same way onto tissue. The first step was to enlarge some lozenge pattern downloaded from the internet to the correct scale, this was then used to mark out the Frisk Film templates. I made the templates long enough and wide enough to get a couple of 'repeats' working in each direction, it is then just repositioned over the already marked lozenge working outwards on the wing span. On the full-size, the covering linen was joined every third rib, so I simulated the joins in my pattern. Each section was also reversed in relation to the previous one, though that might not have been the case on all full-size.

 

Here are some photos of the process.

 

 

Cutting out non-adjoining lozenges from printed paper pattern.

 

 

Transferred onto Frisk Film and cut out using a sharp knife.

 

 

Pattern transferred onto wing. Note simulated join in the lozenge pattern on third rib in from tip.

 

 

Painting partially completed.

 

It does take a while painting in all of the lozenges but the effect is good once finished.

 

Brian.

[Erfolg]

Pat Mac, thanks for reminding me about the kit. Must be very old age, in that I forgot that I stumbled across it well over a year ago, during a Covid Lockdown. I think at the time I had issues in precisely what the V29 looked like, due to a number of conflicting sources.

 

One source suggested it had a parallel cord wing based on the D7. That it also took part in the selection contest, and so on. At that time the finish seemed well down the pecking order of issues. There was or is a photo somewhere on the web that shows this version as well as a kit.

 

I doubt that I will have any luck in coming across a suitable material in a haberdashery. So it will come down to stencils.

 

The Potmac link throw up something I had not thought of, the elevator being cloth covered would also be treated in the same way as the rest of the tubular framework. Although the rudder, seems to be white, like doped linen. The fin is lozenge covered.

 

When I get round to it the colours will be a small issue. I have in the past photographed D7s, one in Cosford I think, one the Shuttleworth Collection and one in the USA Navy Potomac Museum, I think I have seen one at Hendon, just need to find the photographs of both the Shuttleworth and Hendon aircraft.. Without checking the photos they all seemed different in hue. Non the less others experiences are more than welcomed. I am not to concerned about precise colours, as who knows what a single example looked like.

 

At least one had purple in the arrangement, much to my surprise. I guess that they are all correct, in that there will have been more than one supplier and age will have caused some deterioration (the Shuttleworth example).

 

Even the dimensions and details are subject to issue. There was perhaps just the one, maybe two V29s. The aircraft was almost certainly using a BMW 3a engine, as a stipulated requirement and it the photograph hints at one. 

 

At the end of the day my model is a club semi-scale everyday model. Certainly a long way short of a Dany Fenton example, in all respects.

 

 

 

 

[Maurice Dyer]

I did the same as above on my Flair Fokker D7. But I used water based Volspar ( B and Q) emulsion.

Lots of work but looks OK.

Maury