Albatros D.Va - Engine Details
Wingnut Wings - 1/32
The removable engine cowling on the model lends itself to showing off the engine and give a opportunity to really add some detail. 18 parts from the box becomes 154 when finished.
The end of a tooth pick was chucked into a pin vise. A length of copper wire taken from an old household extension cord. Looped in half, the ends of the wires were stuck into one of the spaces in collet which was then slowly turned to wrap the doubled wire...
... all the way down to the tip of the toothpick. Loosen the collar on the collet to remove the whole thing.
Clip off the little loop at the tip and grab just one of the wires at the back with locking tweezers or pliers. With a little fidgeting you can "unscrew" the two wires to be left with two springs. You can do it with a single wire and stretch it out a bit but mine were uneven. The doubled wired acted as a spacer for each other.
To make the caps for the springs, find a punch of the appropriate diameter for there final size. Take a length to lamp cord wire and wrap around a drill bill shaft to then cut rings from. When the wrap is done it should be slightly smaller same size than the punch. Cut rings off the coil and burnish lead foil over the ring. This should capture the ring. Turn it over and place it on the punch base with the ring set in the punch hole. Making the ring size slightly smaller allows it to fit snug in the punch base. All that's left is to punch out the disk and you have the cap with the wire underneath to keep it rigid and a dimple in the middle.
While these are not technically accurate in this application I thought they looked cool so I am taking a bit of creative license here. So break out your Opti-Visor... you're going to need it.
The end of a 0.5 mm brass tube is crimped with flat pliers or, as in my case, a pin punch on a jewelers anvil. Photo 1. This is the tough part... center punch a dimple to drill the hole. After some trial and error, a large sewing needle worked the best. I drilled a hole in a wood dowel, to become a handle, and glued the needle into the dowel. The sharp point is very hard and all you need to do is make a small dent so the drill bit does not wander off the side. It doesn't take much pressure.
After the hole has been drilled use a sanding stick to round off the end evenly around the hole. Photo 2. The piece is cut off by rolling the tube under a sharp hobby knife with light pressure until it separates. At the bottom of the photo is a
brass simulated hex nut from Scale Hardware.
Photo 3 show the completed connector with .006" fly tiny wires glued in the end. The top one has the hex bolts inserted and glued in place ready to mount on the magnetos. The mags were first sanded flat and pre-drilled with a #80 bit. The stem will get trimmed so they seat flat against the magneto. A tiny disk was punched from plastic card and glued to the center of the magneto to replace a little raised detailed that was sanded off. Below that the connector is on a turned
aluminum spark plug from RB Motion. The 1/24 scale is smallest he has but when set into a little deeper hole they look pretty convincing.
Holes were drilled in a length of brass tube for the spark plug wires, the ends of which were glued into a separate hole. The magneto wires were bundles and twisted tight then trimmed to insert into the end of the tube that was glued to the side of the cylinders. A few pipes and blots were replaced, some dust and grime added and the engine is complete.
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