In progress DHC-2

Wings completed 

Rest of the control surfaces have been built out. Fuselage framed up and window frames are removed.  

Front seats from Manila folder, foam, stretched sprue and balsa. 

Interior, doors and control stick assembled.  

Unpainted interior, room for 6. 

Flight and control surfaces have been covered. I used regular copy paper instead of tissue. Much easier to work with and weight doesn't matter because it's a display model.  

Painted and assembled R-985 Wasp Jr 

Floats are converted to amphibious version with 3D printed wheels. 

Top view of back seats 

View in through the right door and of the dash 

Top view of interior before I cover it up 

Flying surfaces covered and corrugated. I cut thin strips of polystyrene, marked out the spacing and glued each strip on individually.  

Main components assembled, primed and pre-shaded.  

First time trying chipping. Doesn't work so well on paper covered surfaces.. 

How I make custom masks. Scan the decal sheet, digitally extract the outlines, then print on mask laid on a transparency sheet and run through the printer. Peel the tape and cut out the masks.  

My first ever 3D part, designed in Blender.  

White and blue paint is on. The masking went really well this time almost no bleeds. Gloss coats for the win!  

Amazing how adding some simple black stripes makes it 'pop' so much.  

Start of the custom scaffolding I'm going to use to mount the floats. Balsa height gauge and right angle are used to keep everything square.  

More scaffolding 

Float supports glued in place. Nerve-wracking but the preparation paid off and everything aligned nicely and without much fuss. I'm not sure how durable the mounting will be so I'll just have to be really careful from this point forward.  

The scaffolding is cut away. Here it is sitting on wheels/floats for the first time. The prop has been fitted and the engine is revealed. Turns out it's going to need some weight in the nose, I should have accounted for that but what can you do. I'll hide some lead tape somewhere. Now it's time for float wire rigging and final details.  

Oars are a very charismatic accessory. Everybody loves an oar (unless they actually have to use one.) I've also mounted the water rudders, some wire bracing, painted the wheels and prop. I cut access holes in the bottom of the floats for adding weight, once they are painted over no one will ever notice.  

Hinge detail is on and partially painted. Each hinge is two parts cut from cardstock using outlines from real flight control rigging diagrams. 

Door hinges and float steps have been attached. I went through a bunch of different materials for the steps, in the end heavyweight copy paper had the right flexibility and is about the right thickness. I also went over the front door panel lines with a pen.  

To paint the signature Beaver logo I printed it onto Tamyia masking tape then transferred it to piece of glass where I could cut it out with an Exacto blade. Moving it from the glass to the final location was tricky because it doesn't want to hold it's shape once it's pulled up.  

Resulting logo came out really quite nice. A pain but I'm glad I didn't use the decals as the blue wouldn't have matched.