The project

To plan some thing, an intellectual act, means that you just made a project. Your success in the transformation of this plan in reality will depend, however, of the structure and case study of your plans...

For the accomplishment of an alternative modeling project you will need to match some basic requirements:

• To know the shape of the airplane to be mounted.
• To imagine the structure that this airplane must have in form to its shape can be reached.
• To know the necessary materials for the assemblage of the mockup.
• To possess a suitable tool set for the confection of the airplane with those chosen materials.
• To know the necessary techniques for all parts assembly, in the same way you have imagined in the structural draws.
• To establish an order of assemblage of all the component parts of the mockup.

The two first topics are reached with the drawing of a structural project that informs the modeler about the shape of the airplane, and separates the entire model into distinct parts (It’s the mockup’s structure). These parts of the model are organized into a known positions coordinate system. The measures of these model parts are well known, as well as the angles between them.

The necessary materials for the assemblage of the model can be the same ones that were exposed in the list of suitable material, supplied in this website, but you need to know that their use must be limited by their availability. In case that you knows or wants to use some other material on the assemblage of your model, you can use it at your own criterion.

The adequate tool set you need to make the models must be acquired or to be produced before starting the assembly of the models. It is important to at least obey the basic list of tools suggested in this tutorial. If you disagree to this step, you certainly will have difficulties when assembling the models trough my method...

All the techniques you already have tried are valid. The same I can say about the ones who you have enough information to execute. To imagine new techniques is important, but this only works when you need to solve an unexpected problem, or when you need to improvise. To imagine one technique, not to test it and to wait to use it at a posterior moment of the model’s assemblage can conduct you to a great disillusionment. You also need to attempt against the risk of get poisoned with unknown materials, or with the risk of accidents due to the use of a new and unknown tool. It is necessary, therefore, that you always have in mind the use of security equipment when using tools or materials that offer any wound risk to you. By disobeying to these basic rules, you can even impossibility the ending of your work.

A good reference on useful techniques can be found in the second part of this tutorial. There are, however, two technical papers whose reading I recommend to you: ‘Handcraft home made decals use’, that talks about the research on techniques and materials to paint models, and ‘Restoration of alternative models’, that argues about the use of some techniques that I just have the pleasure to try... Both these papers can be found in the technical papers section of this tutorial: http://www.modelismo.alternativo.nom.br/ingles/artigos.php

To establish the assembly order of the model is also important, therefore it can make difference in the model’s finishing time. See that the position of an inner part could need to be set before you do some external work on the airplane. For example, the cockpit must be ready before its setting in the fuselage, since mounting it and painting it in a limited space like the fuselage of a mockup, can be an incredible difficult task. It is also convenient to mount as more of those easy to make structural parts (as wings and fuselage) as possible, before working in parts more difficult to make, like the cockpit, or the rear of the airplane’s tail, or the landing gears, or the propulsion helix. It will be useful just in case you get bored with the assemblage of some aircraft parts... If you get bored, you can get incentives to continue mounting your airplane by seeing all the work you already done.

At last, you must remember that when you are making your project, you do not need to be formal at the point in which you write down the needed steps of work you planned, or the ideas and the useful materials lists you figured at the planning time. It is a fact that this procedure can help you during the assemblage of your model, but it’s only necessary to have in mind these topics before starting the assemblage of your mockup.