1:72 Lioré & Olivier LeO 451

[CATCH 22]

Started with some cleaning and filling here and there. All in all the molds are very good with very fine lines and details, some of them I can't see without a magnifier. The plastic parts are relatively thin, compared to some models from the same era. I'm afraid I can break some of them if pushing too hard with the sanding stick.
Most of the holes to fill are on the left side of the fuselage where some notches for the interior are molded on the inside.

I started with the empennage, because in the next step of the build it will play a very important role. The empennage consists of 2 parts and the elevators are molded in one with the bottom part of the stabilizer:

Now take a look at the small angled ends of the elevators above: in the most drawings I've seen and on the model they are shown symmetrically sloped/angled to a point. In the reality they look differently:

The idea is to have enough space between the elevators when they are in up-position:

I started cutting the elevators based on the first photo. Compare the new and old:

And the end result:

The second hinge from right is too short and must be filled. Probably will need a piece of styrene 1x0.5mm.
I will rescribe all panel lines top and bottom in the next step. Started on the right side of the stabilizer already; because of the V-shaped empennage (it doesn't lay flat on the table) major P.I.T.A. ahead. And not the only one....
In the next story I'll show you why is the tail one of the most important parts.
Cheers!

 

[Wurger]

 

[fubar57]

Good stuff

 

[Gnomey]

Good work so far!

 

[Crimea_River]

Good catch on that detail. I wonder if they found out about the interference the hard way.

 

[CATCH 22]

Good catch on that detail. I wonder if they found out about the interference the hard way.

The middle part of the stabilizer resp. inner part of each elevator is horizontal

and the outer parts are sloped under a specific angle (which I don't know exactly but measured from a drawing it's around 13 degrees from the horizontal)***.

Since all 4 hinges of each elevator are in the sloped portion, the pivot line of the elevators is parallel to the slope left and right. The inner portions of the elevators (in the middle) move differently but under a constant angle to the pivot line. Knowing all angles and lengths and having studied analytical and descriptive geometry I think I could find empirically (20-30 years ago, not today) where to cut the corners of the elevators. I believe the guys designing this a/c knew it even better .
Could be a different story though, who knows....
Cheers!
P.S. *** The dehidral of the tail surfaces is exactly 13 degrees as per the sources I checked after writing the above post.

 

[Crimea_River]

It's an odd and complicated detail.

 

[CATCH 22]

It's an odd and complicated detail.

It is, I agree. It reminds me of the outer flaps on a B-25 (outside of the nacelle). After the constant dehidral was deleted with the 10-th production a/c, the flap had to follow the form of the gull-wing.

The flap next to the nacelle moves in a similar complex way, but doesn't meet anything in its way up or down as in the case with LeO.

Cheers!

 

[Wurger]

 

[CATCH 22]

In the last few days I'm re-scribing the original model parts with some good or not too good success, depending on the details. As I expected it's a P.I.T.A. on a huge scale, especially when the original panel lines are not correct and I need to first re-draw and then re-scribe them. I'm also adding some minor elements made of aluminum foil to better represent covers, caps etc. which will be visible later. Below is a comparison between the original and the re-scribed empennage:
Before:

After:

The photos are approx. 3 times bigger than the original part.
Most of the parts are not finished yet resp. are in progress.
Cheers!

 

[Wurger]

Looking good.

 

[Crimea_River]

Good work there and hopefully the pain has subsided.

 

[rochie]

nice job scribing on small parts

 

[Gnomey]

Nice work so far!

 

[CATCH 22]

...hopefully the pain has subsided.

In fact it became chronic!
After finishing with the re-scribing on some of the bigger parts I found out that I'm using the wrong drawings for panel lines.
For example: the tail I've shown earlier has 2 small rectangular hatches in the middle area. 70% of the drawings I collected or copied show them. They were on the model too (see post # 30) so I followed the idea:

But the correct hatches are different in size, positioning etc. Good that those were not re-scribed! I revised the tail for 5-th or 6-th time:

The point is that there are many drawings one can find but if they are accurate in the dimensions and proportions, the panel lines are mostly wrong and vice versa.
I started with some very good (at a first glance) drawings from a Russian site, matching the general sizes of the original a/c. I also checked some French modellers' sites and followed a few of the ideas, but unfortunately they were wrong. Below are some corrections I did to the original panel lines on one of the wings after a few mistakes.
This is the original top side of the left wing:

1. This fairing does not exist on the real plane (maybe on the later variants with different engines though):

2. Those panel lines are not in the correct place.
3. Contour of this piece is wrong.
4. Too many panel lines and not in the correct place.
Below is the re-scribed right wing (I forgot to make a photo before changing it) for comparison:

You can see some of the mistakes being refilled and sanded down. It's not 100% accurate (I couldn't change everything as per drawings) but good enough for me. The foiled parts will show later under the paint as 3-dimensional elements - I did a test and they don't disappear when painted.
I'll show the rest when all is finished.

Cheers!

 

[Gnomey]

Good work so far!

 

[fubar57]

Good stuff Yves. Though I've never attempted rescribing panel lines on a grand scale, I use these to replace the ones I sand off. The line they leave is usually finer than the existing panel lin

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For round/oval inspection panels I had some success with a plain old sewing needle chucked into a mini drill and a scribing template

 

[CATCH 22]

Good stuff Yves. Though I've never attempted rescribing panel lines on a grand scale, I use these to replace the ones I sand off. The line they leave is usually finer than the existing panel lin

View attachment 652197
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For round/oval inspection panels I had some success with a plain old sewing needle chucked into a mini drill and a scribing template

Hi Geo and thanks for your input!
I started doing this rescribing just because the panel lines of the original model are raised and very very fine. Many of them could get lost during the building process resp. will disappear after painting. What I'm using is the Tamiya-scriber and different types of sharp tools for smaller, curved, oval etc. elements. What I found for myself (so it's strictly personal and IMHO) is that the thin needles in a pin-wise or any other type of handle work worse (for me) than thicker tools with a very sharp end. The needles tend to "jump out" of the template easily. On the other hand this sharp tools basically "scratch" rather than "scribe". So I have to repeat the e.g. oval hatch 2-3 times and usually on the 3-rd time the needle does not follow the previously scratched oval/circle and the whole job "goes south".
These are my primary tools for scribing panel lines (have some more, but they just repeat the function of the ones below):

The blue pen with the thin needle is the worst - the needle simply doesn't follow the template. The dental sound (or whatever it is) is hard to handle because of its length - it's only used in special cases where I have thick elements (e.g. fuselage) and need to scratch a line on the bottom of it.
The red pen has a thicker needle (I bought it from a dollar-store called "Silver dollar" many years ago) and is easy to handle, but must be sharpened more often.
The black needle is a pimple popper tool or an "extractor". Could be found in many variations. This is the one I'm using the most. After trying 3-4 of them this particular one has the best steel and does not need sharpening every other day.
The silver tool is even better, but only for bigger elements (mostly not in 1/72) - it's a pedi/mani something and I sharpened it in such way so it is not round but flat (triangular) at the end and follows a line steadier. The sharp edge makes thinner lines than the Tamiya-scriber.
Anyway whatever tool one has, it needs proper handling and mine is far from perfect.
How do you use the micro-saws? Do you scratch lines with them just pulling them in one direction or do you saw very shallow lines, moving them in both directions?
Cheers!

 

[Airframes]

Similar to Geo's tool, I use an old tip point from a drawing compass, sharpened, and clamped in a mini hand drill, as well as a "hooked" scribing tool, mini saws and scalpel.
I found the best way to scribe a circle ( or oval), with or without the use of a template, is not to try to scribe the entire circle in one go, but do a quarter at a time, and then go around the completed circle / oval, to smooth things out.

 

[CATCH 22]

Similar to Geo's tool, I use an old tip point from a drawing compass, sharpened, and clamped in a mini hand drill, as well as a "hooked" scribing tool, mini saws and scalpel.
I found the best way to scribe a circle ( or oval), with or without the use of a template, is not to try to scribe the entire circle in one go, but do a quarter at a time, and then go around the completed circle / oval, to smooth things out.

Thanks for the advice!
I'm doing almost the same, scribing let say 1/3 of a circle at a time and then I rotate the plastic part so the template edge is always on the top. For bigger circles it works but there are always 2-5% mistakes. I have this video from YT - check @ min. 4:00 how he's doing the ovals. With a pin! Never could do this. The material of standard pins is too soft for me and the tip is not sharp enough, same with needles, nails etc. But still this is 1/48.
For this particular model I decided to do the inspection panels from foil instead of scribing them. They are not that many (I'll omit the very small ones):