Guillows Vintage Sopwith Snipe Build

[scigs30]

I am not a collector of kits but enjoy building these old kits, that's why I built this Guillows kit out of the box. Sure I could have cut my own parts or modified for a lighter build, but then why buy the kit? Also DPC makes a laser cut version of this kit that would be much lighter and probably fly great. Nope, there is something about opening an old kit and bringing it back to life. Lets remember most older builders used to build these die cut kits, cursing along the way I'm sure but in the end had a nice plane. Laser cutting has made a great improvement for the hobby, lighter kits with accurate parts. With these old kits one had to do a lot of sanding and refitting parts to be successful. The parts in this kit are old but useable and she actually went together pretty fast once I had the parts removed from the balsa sheets. The strip wood was not too bad and the tissue with decals looks useable. Obviously I am building for the vintage kit and not scale and will be happy with a short flight with rubber power. I will hopefully start covering next week, as shown weight is 40 grams. I pretty much build most of my models with white PVA, Elmers or Titebond Translucent, but these old kits I like the vintage smell of Testors cement followed by dope on the tissue. I thought Guillows was looking at bringing this series back to production...….

[scigs30]

More pictures

[edbecky]

I am not a collector of kits but enjoy building these old kits, that's why I built this Guillows kit out of the box. Sure I could have cut my own parts or modified for a lighter build, but then why buy the kit?................there is something about opening an old kit and bringing it back to life. Lets remember most older builders used to build these die cut kits, cursing along the way .....................

I feel like building is 99% of the fun. Cussing and gluing broken parts back together is all part of the process. Good looking build!

[scigs30]

This little model sat on the back burner while I completed my Hawker Hurricane for the Guillows Facebook challenge but now she is complete. This was a fun pretty straight forward build using everything in the kit except the rubber band. The model was covered with the supplied domestic tissue and I followed the Guillows covering diagram attaching the tissue with 50/50 white glue. I normally would cover a round fuselage with wet tissue, but the odd shape of this plane would have made covering wet impossible. As you can see simply following the recommended covering sequence on the plans produces a decent covering job. Once all the parts were covered I shrank the tissue with water and brushed on 2 coats of Sig Lite dope. The only modification I made was adding piano wire to the landing gear struts so she could survive a landing. Final weight balanced and rubber added is 50 grams.

[scigs30]

Wish I could add more pictures in a post.

[scigs30]

The old decals were a little challenge, but I managed to get them on.

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[scigs30]

The instruction covering guide, I am so glad Guillows adds this to their plans. I do not use jigs or guides to glue the upper wing, I just glue the struts in place with white PVA glue. The slow drying time allows me to adjust the wing as needed.