Canadair CT-114 Tutor "Snowbird" (1/72 scale)

[Oceaneer99]

Here is a profile-scale model I made of a Canadair CT-114 Tutor painted as a member of the CAF Snowbirds precision aerobatic team. I chose this subject in tribute to all the wonderful Canadian model builders I keep in touch with.

I cut the parts from thin plywood, then glued them together and filled the grain. After coats of primer and then white paint, I was left with a blank canvas of an airplane. This was back in January 2008.

I finally decided that rather than try to paint all the color stripes and then glue on small pieces of paper with the roundels, flags, and logos ("paper decals"), I'd cheat a bit and use really large paper decals.

I printed the covering in 12 sections and carefully pasted them on. Then I mixed paint to match the colors as best I could and painted the edges of the plywood to match. This gives a "wrap-around" appearance and really helps make the model look realistic.

Total time was 6 hours, including computer time drawing the decals.


http://smm.solidmodelmemories.net/Gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-1737

You can see here that the white diamonds on the bottom line up if you look from the right angle:

http://smm.solidmodelmemories.net/Gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-1738

[Kenny Horne]

Hey Garet,

Love the Snowbird!  The paper seems to settle nicely to the profile surfaces.  A great solution to complex schemes, though I'll have to learn quite a bit more of computer graphics to be able to match your results.  Keep up the great work!

Kenny

[Oceaneer99]

Thanks, Kenny! I should probably make up a profile-scale tutorial.  You tackled several issues with making them, such as how to handle low-wing airplanes.  I know Lou made a fighter jet.  Did anyone else make a simple scale/profile scale model during the cook-up?

The paper for the upper side of the fuselage actually wraps out across the wing.  You can see the edge in the red region if you look closely.  I did it that way so that the roundel and the "Snowbirds" logo could wrap over to the wing.

Believe it or not, the computer graphics part was fairly simple.  I had a folder of Canadian logos and insignia, as well as the three-view with Snowbirds colors, which I had scaled to 1/72 for cutting out the parts.  I used Gimp, which is a free paint program somewhat like Photoshop.  It takes some learning and getting used to, but it works fairly well.  Like the later versions of Photoshop (after 3 or so), Gimp has multiple painting layers that you can show or hide. 

I put the three-view in the lower layer, then plopped a roundel in another layer.  I scaled it to match, then moved it into the right position. For the control surfaces, I traced the three-view parts, extending the lines off the wings so that I could trim them after the paper was glued on.  I made another layer with the color parts, which also ran over the edges of the wings, fuselage, etc., so that I could trim them later and not have any white edges where the paper didn't exactly match the wood.  When all the layers were ready, I hid the ones I wasn't using and put a plain white layer in the background.  Then, I made a copy of the image as a single-layer Tiff file, which I printed to an inkjet printer onto paper.

I trimmed the paper to allow for the thickness of the plywood, then carefully coated the back with glue from a gluestick. After I stuck each piece down, I used an old plastic gift card to smooth out the paper and make sure it was stuck down.  After the glue and paper was completely dry, I trimmed with an X-acto knife.  If you don't wait long enough, the paper tends to tear instead of cut.

I did mess up one wing, and tried to tear the paper off.  It left a residue of paper all over, but I was able to use a wet paper towel to re-wet the glue, and the whole thing came off.  I was careful not to get water on the other paper decal pieces.  I did spray the finished plane with lacquer to seal the ink.

Garet

[lastvautour]

Very nice work Garet. The artwork is awesome to say the least. Congratulation on an excellent Snowbird.

Lou