MG for Lohner flying boat in 1/72

jamo · 15 August 2005, 01:04 AM

Hi Everyone
Looking at pics from the recent US Nationals I noticed that Andrei Koribanics's beautiful Wings Lohner flying boat had a nice Schwarzlos MG with a perforated cooling jacket. I have one of these kits in my stash and I have been looking for a PE set to do the gun, but alas there is not one available. The design is different to the LMG 08/15 - see the pic below.

Recently I emailed Fred Hultberg (from Fotocut) if he knew where one could be found. Fred makes a PE set in 1/48 scale that includes the Schwarzlos perforated jacket and he suggested that it would be feasible to scale this down to 1/72 if there was sufficient market demand.

Bit of long shot, but with this in mind, would any of you chaps be interested in buying one of these if it became available?

Let hope this works out . . .

StephenLawson · 15 August 2005, 08:04 AM

Greetings jamo;
Seems to me that Bill Devins did a 1/72 Lohner as a scratchbuilt some years back in FSM. I'll check the shelves in the dungeon and see if I can find what he used...I think he scratchbuilt the cooling jacket.

StephenLawson · 15 August 2005, 02:36 PM

Found it. Finescale Modeler March 1990 Mr. Devins did a 1/72 scratchbuilt version of Gottfried Banfeld's, Hansa Brandenburg CC similar to a Lohner flying boat. On page 55 he describes the Schwarzlose fretted cooling jacket. He used an item from the Plastruct line. This is a plastic coated steel rod the same diameter as the needed jacket. He cut the plastic section he needed off the rod by slicing it length wise. Then he pulled it off of the steel rod. Next the slots were sliced out using a sharp razor knife.

Plastruct is readily available in most Hobby shops and model rail-road specialty stores in the US. Originally designed for engineers to build industrial models.

jamo · 16 August 2005, 03:31 AM

Since I last posted I discovered that there was once a PE set in 1/72 that includes the Schwarzlose MG jacket - called "the Harry Woodman parts extravaganza" and produced by Fotocut. Another modeller has very kindly offered me a spare set.

Stephen - that seems like a very novel scratchbuilding approach to solve the problem. I am not sure that I would be up to the task. It now seems I won't have to try . . .