Desperate Pinning

I really don't have enough fingers to cross for this one.

Pinning is something I've noticed modelers doing in their builds, and I've never thought I'd want to go that far - it looked finickety and asking for trouble. Especially pinning struts. I can certainly see the point, struts are often fragile and in scale form, could well do with strengthening. But so far, I've got by with the parts as they are... until my latest project.

I'm building a couple of large biplanes in 1:72, which have these very long, thin wings. As with all biplanes in any scale, you wonder about the integrity of the structure. It certainly helps if you rig them in a certain way, giving them structural strength. This means making a virtue of the demanding task of rigging, using it to tighten up the structure in the same way it did in real life. In my case, I use monofilament fishing line and thread it through holes I drill with a pin vice, twisting it by hand. You can just see some of those holes in the inset above.

In that inset you can also see the problem I faced with these wings. The model manufacturer saw fit to mould them in three pieces, without any kind of tab or locator at the facing ends, so they would just be butt joints. And the thickness of those wings is only a couple of milimetres. Even if they were one piece there would still be a problem of drooping, and I suspect I'm not going to be able to eliminate that entirely, whatever I do.

I wasn't happy with this situation. So I went for it and started pinning them.

It's gone pretty well. Here's an example of one of the better efforts. I'm inserting one thick rod, 1.4 mm diameter I think, which is as thick as I can drill into the plastic without breaking through up or down. Using that same pin vice. And then a thinner (0.5 mm diameter) rod to the rear of it, to steady it. And I'm using superglue gel, a little messy but I think it'll be okay.

A long way still to go. Later, there'll be high drama and industrial language when I get down to doing the rigging. There are a multitude of struts, as well as engines mounted between the wings. But I'm glad I bit the bullet and tried out pinning for the first time, I'm sure it will be worth the effort.