Making a Wooden Curtiss Goshawk (Legends of the Air Kit)

As I've said on numerous occasions...I'm a sucker for $1 Store wooden toy kits, especially airplanes. It's fun to try and turn them into something that that is immediately recognizable as a particular plane and give them some fun historical detailing.

While you come to expect the sub $5 arc welder, 20' band saw or 3,000 ton industrial press from Harbor Freight, you might be surprised to know that they also sell little wooden airplane kits for under $2. The line is called "Legends of the Air." They are made in Taiwan and the pieces are punched from 1/8"sheets of plywood not balsa wood and they are not puzzles as the HF site says.

There are six kits in the line. Four are WW1 aircraft. Two of those are Allied - a SPAD and a Nieuport, and two are German - a Fokker Triplane and an Albatros. The other two kits in the series are interwar biplanes - the Bristol Bulldog and this model, the Curtiss Goshawk.

So this is actually the Curtiss F11C Goshawk that was made for the US Navy in the 1930s. The Navy only had a few dozen of them in service. There was another more widely produced version of the actual aircraft and it had retractable landing gear, not the fixed "spatted" gear on this model. A little bit of an odd choice as a "Legend of the Air" but still reasonably cool.

So I started on this model over a year ago. I had finished the Fokker Triplane from this series and was ready to tackle this one. Over the course of a weekend little one and I painted parts and glued parts up following the "directions" included. The instructions consist of an exploded view of the numbered parts. It is an exercise in patience and clairvoyance to put them together.

I covered a bunch of this when I wrote up the Fokker build but these kits really aren't for unsupervised construction by the "Age 6+" crowd. Besides the issues with the instructions, the wood is fairly stiff and you are going to need to use rubber bands and or clamps to hold the pieces in place while it is gluing up. I even boiled some pieces to make them bendable. Speaking of glue... not for one minute did I think about using the white glue that came with the kit. I went right to my wood glue.

So after some initial work, it all went into a clementine box with the intention of being pulled out the next weekend for completion. Well, something, or a lot of things, must have come up. Quite a few weekends went by and the box sort of bounced around in different places throughout the house for a year before making its way to my work bench a couple of weeks ago.

Only one piece was missing; a vertical strut. I was able to trace out a pattern on a scrap piece of the 1/8" plywood all the pieces were punched out of. That trick is something that I learned to do when I built my first balsa wood and tissue airplane from way back in the day. (A Guillow's Hawker Hurricane, thank you very much.)   You certainly can't do that with plastic models if you break or lose a piece.

In my book a toy airplane has to have a spinning propeller. Unfortunately, these kits are not designed with that in mind but where there's a will, there's a way.  This one took a little figuring to get to a way. Basically I assembled the cowling and then drilled a 3/16" hole through the center. I assembled the prop but drilled a shallow 1/8" hole in the back of the spacer so I could put a piece of 1/8" dowel to use as the shaft. I also made a small nut with a 1/8" hole in it to place at the end of the opposite end of the shaft.

I then used a forstner bit around the back of the cowling to make a hole deep and wide enough that I could put a disk on the end of the shaft that would allow the shaft to spin freely once the assembled engine was glued to the fuselage.

Hole deep enough to allow nut to spin freely.

Wood nut cut from scrap and glued to shaft.

The wing roots needed to be trimmed up a bit to fit into their slots on the fuselage. Again, this is one of those things that will be a little tough on the 11 year olds who work on the kit but dad can lend a hand. Just remember the woodworking truism... You can always remove more wood but you can't add any back on. Take off a little at a time and keep checking the fit.

I paint as much as I can before I assemble things because sometimes it is awfully hard to get the paint in there with parts in the way. I made a mistake in initially painting the struts black so I repainted them silver and then took my time and glued them up carefully. Take your time. No rush. Make sure everything lines up. With the outside struts in place, I fit the small ones on the fuselage. They needed to be trimmed up to fit in their slots the same way the wings did.

US planes from this era are often called "Yellow Wings" because... well... THEY HAD YELLOW WINGS! They also tended to have red and white tail stripes and brightly colored cowlings and markings. It's a very classy look and a big part of the reason for this was to make them highly visible for search and rescue efforts. It was also a bit of a bold confident statement but the idea was never to go into combat like this. I went with the blue stripes and cowling on this so that it would look like a Goshawk that was assigned to the USS Saratoga. Blue painter's tape gave me great lines for what I needed. After I glued the top wing in place and let it dry, I put the single rear struts in place on each side.

I probably glued the landing gear a bit higher into the fuselage than the plans called for but it seemed to match the scale better that the picture on the box. I also think it will make the landing gear less fragile. I had temporary shims wedged in while the gear dried. I made sure the wheels were level and the angle was the same on each side. After they dried, I added the external fuel tank... which had two different size teardrop sides... weird.

Last thing was I printed out some US 1930's roundels with a color printer on regular paper. I carefully cut out and glued the roundels in place and then sprayed the whole toy with several coats of clear gloss acrylic. (We stopped using those roundels early in WW2 because the red dots could be confused in the heat of battle with the markings on Japanese aircraft.)

There you go. I like how it came out and it makes me want to make more "Yellow Wings" era themed toys.

Again... these Legends of the Air kits have poor instructions and some questionable fits but are really fun to turn into a neat looking little toy. Now to make a toy aircraft carrier for it to land on...

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Making a Wooden Fokker Triplane (Legends of the Air Kit)

I'm a sucker for $1 Store wooden toy kits. Most are "meh" but some are a bit of a pleasant surprise. If you don't take them too seriously with a little bit of work they can be fun and turn out a neat little toy. Like the cannon that really shoots.

So with the shop space still coming together, the little one and I toyed around with "Legends of the Air Fokker Triplane" kit. I picked it up at a Harbor Freight a couple of months ago for the wallet busting sum of $1.29 - American. To sweeten the deal - It is made in Taiwan not the OTHER China like 99.8% of everything else in the country for under two bucks.

First the prerequisite Toy Making Dad puts his History degree to use paragraph:

The Fokker DR1 is certainly an iconic airplane. It is instantly recognizable as being "the Red Barron's" plane probably thanks more to Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts Gang than anything else. The Germans had developed the DR1 in response to a British tri-plane that had been introduced late in 1916. The three wing arrangement made the Fokker triplane incredibly maneuverable but there were real tradeoffs in other areas like speed.  Throw in the fact that there were construction issues that lead to structural failures and that faster, sturdier, biplanes were available meant that its operational life was pretty short. Only 320 were made during the war.

Now back to the kit. The box contains three little sheets of plywood that have the parts stamped out on them as well as a one sided sheet with the "instructions", a square of sandpaper and a little bottle of white glue. Not bad for $1.29.

Having built enough models in my day I know you need to familiarize yourself with the instructions first. So I was pretty much out of luck with this kit since the instructions are awful. There is a five bullet point list in eight different languages (six on the sheet, two on the box. One may be Klingon.) that has general pointers like use the sandpaper to smooth rough pieces and the glue to hold things together (Whoda thunk it?!) but the only way to know how it all fits together is with an exploded view of the parts. Some of the parts need to be bent and how the bottom attaches is a mystery based on the instructions.

Now having said that... the kit does go together reasonably well as long as you accept that this is just a toy and that you are going to need to keep the general shape of the plane in mind as you build it.

I glued the ribs down the sides of the long keel of the plane. I used painters tape to hold the pieces in alignment while they set. I also went straight to the yellow glue and left the white glue in its tube. I figure if I'm going to put a weekend into this build, I want it hold together for a bit.

The bottom of the plane (piece 12) needs to follow the curve of the keel/backbone of the plane. The plywood seemed sturdy enough that the only way I saw that happening without breaking the wood was to  boil some water and throw the piece in. Let it soak for about 1/2 an hour. Lightly dry it off and then glue and clamp it in place. I let it set overnight before taking the clamps off.

The soaking

The clamping

Next the three top piece went on and since I live in a house with four females and NO RUBBER BANDS ANYWHERE, I used ponytail holders. (Necessity is the Toy Making Dad of Invention)

The long sides went on next and were clamped and banded together until the glue set.

I then set to work on the engine. If you ask me, an airplane model without a spinning propeller is a statue not a toy. So I departed a bit from the kit here. I assembled the engine block and then drilled a 9/64" hole in it so that a 1/8" dowel will spin freely in it. I drilled a 1/8" hole in the prop and the one in a little disk (actually part 27 since I replaced it later) that was sanded down to reduce its thickness to be a stop. I test fitted it and then after it was all painted up, I glued the shaft to the prop, slipped it through the engine block and then glued the disk the other side so it couldn't slip off.

Test fit of the shaft and hub

Final test fit before paint and glue.

Wheel on the right looks closer

to the real deal

Last bit of tinkering with the design involved the wheels. While I wish they could roll, that would have been a bit too much of a redesign. I didn't like that part 27 was supposed to be used for the hub caps because they are too small. The engine was supposed to have two spacers (parts 28 and 29) but I thought that was overkill and used one for the hub cap. I then trimmed and sanded down the inside disk of the engine cowl (which was just waste now and not needed.) Actually, worth the effort because if you look at a real Fokker DR1, the shape of the wheels is a distinctive feature especially when painted white.

Little one and I started painting things up before final assembly. This always leads to cleaner lines. I used painters tape to mask off some areas, paint them white and then masked those off as I painted the rest of the plane in crimson.

There is a hole in the sides that the bottom wing slides through. I needed to trim up the inside with a razor because it was a pretty tight fit but it eventually found its way in. I had some touch up painting to do but then I could glue the landing gear in and make sure the plane would sit level.

The middle wings are in two pieces and have the struts through them. This goes together pretty well you just want to check their alignment as best as you can. The machine guns go in as well at this point and I just couldn't resist doing my bit to them. While not museum quality reproductions of  German IMG 08's... they were detailed enough for Mrs Toy Making Dad to give me the "I married a 12 year old" look that I so crave.

Final assembly used slightly larger clamps and healthy dollops of wood glue. I trimmed the struts up a bit to ensure level contact with the top wing. I only clamped it after I got the alignment as squared away as I could. Again, I let it sit overnight to cure. While building other kits like this I rushed this step and have had to constantly repair the wings.

I tried to paint the crosses and while the first one wasn't awful... the second one was. I painted over those and printed out markings from the inter-web and then cut them out with an X-Acto knife. A very thin coating of white glue attached them to the plane. Several coats of spray acrylic later.. all done.

Basically a weekend project. I picked up a SPAD kit that same day so soon I should be able to stage a mock battle or two.

Okay. The box says "Easy to Assemble Wooden Aircraft." They are half right. It is a wooden aircraft but I wouldn't say that it was easy to assemble. Granted, sometimes I treat these projects like the people from "Better Homes and Dollar Store Wood Kits" are going to pop by at any moment and judge me harshly but snap together this isn't. It is a pretty neat kit but I can't imagine it going together well without some clamps, rubber bands and a whole lot of repeating to yourself to "Relax, it's not a real airplane. It just needs to look pretty much like an airplane at the end... no one is going to get hurt... EXCEPT MAYBE THE CLOWNS WHO WROTE THE INSTRUCTIONS.

 Clearly a lot of thought went into the engineering of the kit and it is a great value. It is shame that it is short changed by the instructions' lack of detail and clarity. Still a fun dad/kid project as long as dad doesn't mind being helping out a bit more than usual.

Also, it helps to have someone (or something) lend a paw as needed.

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