1/48 Gladiator Rigging Experiment (warning: long, image heavy post!)

[DougN]

When responding to Mish on the Finnish Group Build thread, I was about to point him over here to my Gladiator rigging build thread, when I noticed I had only posted the finished product back in Jan 2009, not the build progress thread. My apologies for digging this back out and posting it here, hopefully it may help some who are afraid of rigging. While I am certainly no expert, and this is not the best rigging job in the world, I did find this method easy and I am pleased with the finished result!

So here is my old 1/48 Pyro Gloster Gladiator that I built as a rigging experiment (first time rigging a biplane!). I built the Gladiator pretty much out of the box and rigged with fishing line used some Model Alliance decals that I had not planned to use.

This is my first attempt at rigging, and initially I thought I would go with the kit instructions of using one really long line for each side of the wing. However, after thinking about it, I decided to do individual lines and superglue one end of each line into the holes on the upper wing (except the cabane strut bracing wires which went into the fuselage) and the tail wires. So it turns out I did not need to drill all the way through the upper wing holes (we live and learn!),but it was good practice on filling the holes in once the wires are attached. Of course, I damaged some of the panel lines in sanding/filling, and thought I could just touch them up with a knife blade. Of course it went astray, so I ended up having to fill and properly scribe them! Below is the start of gluing the rigging line (I used 3.2kg/7lb fishing line for 1/48 scale) into all the holes for step 1:

Next I needed to fill the holes in the outside of the upper wing. For this I used Apoxy Sculpt, which is great stuff. You mix two parts together like Milliput, apply and use a wet finger to smooth it out (another advantage – no crust to deal with if it gets old):

Then sand to smooth out:

Now for the fun part, RIGGING! I placed the upper wing on the fuselage, leaning it between the windscreen and the cabane struts:

I started out from the center and worked towards the wing tip, running each line through its appropriate hole in the bottom wing, doing one side, then the other:

One should take care not to tangle the lines up, and ensure you are consistent on each side as to what line is on the inside/outside for lines that cross each other... I also glued the upper wing to the cabane struts, and then put the outer struts in place on each side. Check to make sure everything is lined up, and here we are – now it is starting to look like I’ve accomplished something!:

Now I will let the wing struts dry, and the next step will be to tighten all the rigging, by pulling it tight through the hole and putting a drop of superglue to hold it in place! Here I am using some clamps to pull the rigging lines tight, after applying a small amount of superglue to the holes:

Suspended to pull the cabane strut support wires tight:

And finally, here she is with all the lines tightened:

Next, I trimmed off the excess with a fresh blade:

After cutting the excess off:

Sanding and filling to get rid of the remaining superglue and holes:

To finish off, I repainted the silver on the top of the upper wing and bottom of the lower wing (as well as on the rigging lines), then put some Future on and applied the decals. I am pleased to report that the Model Alliance decals went on beautifully without any issues at all:

Once decaling was done, I sprayed a coat of Model Master Semi-Gloss on to achieve the proper sheen. Here she is finished off as a member of No.3 Squadron at Kenley (as seen in my other thread where there are more finished photos):

Thanks for reading all the way to the end! Although there are many ways to rig a biplane model, this way was pretty easy and hopefully you enjoyed it!

Cheers,

Doug

Edited May 19, 2010 by DougN

[Jazzy Jase]

Excellent, thanks for the tutorial.

[Doug Rogers]

Doug, do you use accelerator with your superglue? I did a repair job on my neighbours damaged Airfix Tiger Moth using a similar process to yours, but occasionally the line detached from the upper wing once I put the clamp on it to pull it taut. Maybe just not using enough glue?

[DougN]

Doug,

I would have used accelerator, but I was out when I did this model.

On both this model and my Fury I, I made sure the holes on the upper wing were as deep as possible, and used as much superglue as possible and did not have any problems.

Cheers,

Doug

[bertie]

I bow to your patience and craftsmanship.

I love that Pyro kit of the Gladdie but I didn't have the patience you demonstrated so I used stretched fuse wire cut to length and attached carefully with superglue.

There can never be enough Gloster Gladiators.

[DougN]

Beautiful Gladiator Bertie! From my perspective, your method might be more difficult You should post an in-progress set of photos to demonstrate how to do it. I'd like to use your method that on a couple of 1/32 biplanes I have in the stash that use RAF flying wires.

Cheers,

Doug