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Old 04-10-2012, 05:38 AM
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John Brohm John Brohm is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Mars, PA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BEC
John (or Rick): How many of the longer ridges are there around the circumference of the nose cone/sharpener - four or five?

John: thin strips of fiberboard or wood or what? I'm rebuilding a crashed Semroc Mark II (tipped off in the wind on a Quest A6-4) and would like to better replicate the sharpener/cone whilst I am at it.

Thanks!!


Hi Bernard;

There are five long ridges around the nose. In my reworked Semroc nose I used 0.047" square styrene strips, each cut to length and then glued to the nose with CA. After the CA had cured, I used a medium grit sanding block to taper each strip. I found that sanding each strip after it had been installed resulted in a much more consistent taper.

About a couple of months after doing my build I came across an original Leeds Sweete sharpener and discovered that the depth of the ridges at the aft end of the sharpener are barely 1/32"; they're much more subtle than what I had imagined, and using 0.030" square styrene strip to replicate the ridges would result in a much more accurate representation.

I found this to be a relatively straightforward (and cheap!) modification to make to the Semroc nose and I'm quite happy with the result. Even with my Fred Flintstone-sized ridges the overall effect, once blended and painted, is quite distinctive and I'm often asked if that's an orignal sharpener when folks see the model. If one were to use a strip size closer to the actual ridge thickness it would be very hard to tell the difference once finished and painted. I plan to build another (I quite like this model, and Carl has done his usual great job with it) and will do exactly that.

As a final note I'll mention that I had prepared an article for our club newsletter outlining my method for this rework, and I've attached a copy below.
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File Type: pdf Nose Job.pdf (284.2 KB, 158 views)
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