Airship models by Dan Neuman

[danneuman]

I have been building airship models 1/100 scale for several years. So far I have completed 4 ships - LZ45 (Navy L13), ZR-1 (Shenandoah), LZ126 (Los Angeles) and ZR-4 (Akron). Construction method is a central alum. tube,
1/4" plywood bulkheads and 1/8" plywood stringers approx 1" deep covered with grade "A" Cotton and nitrate dope. (see photos attached)
If you want any more details on construction, please contact me.

I am planning to build an LZ3 next. Does anyone know where drawings of the early Zeps are available?
Dan

[sobrien]

Dan,
I don't have LZ 3 drawings, but I have to commend you on your models! I opened up the thumbnails and my wife said " Oh no you don't!"
They look great.

Sean

[Charles Adams]

Dan, Welcome aboard! These are fantastic models, some of the best I've seen yet. I really love the large scale. Wonderful stuff!! I moved this thread to the Member Gallery where it belongs. :)

I just started patterning the Shenandoah. I have only the inboard profile original drawing and found it to be challenging to work out the true cross section profile without access to the original plan. This ship has an unusual ring shape! I am going to see what else the Smithsonian has on her. What did you use for drawings?

I plan to draw very detailed and accurate plans for LZ-3, unfortunately I have not yet started working on them. It's taking quite a bit of time to get adequate reference to make accurate plans. I started LZ-1 but had to put it on hold because there are two versions and I was having a very hard time trying to tell them apart. I then started work on LZ-2, but have not gotten back to it yet.

I also did some patterning on the ZR-3 Los Angeles. With my book project taking up all my time last year, I did not get to work much on airship stuff. But I'm back to work on it now! Maybe we can talk shop sometime.

I'll create a thread for you in the Buy/Sell/Wanted section, hopefully someone will chime in with help.

Keep up the great work!
:cheers:

[McTodd]

Awesome models, Dan, thanks for posting! :cheers: And I hope you get the LZ-3 drawings you're after!

[MPL]

1/100 scale...mmmmmmm. That's fine work.

[McTodd]

Dan, do you have any more photos of the construction process? I'm intrgued as to how you get the cloth covering to conform to the shape of the frame...

[Digger]

Beautiful work! I'd love to see some close ups of the gondolas, and rigging on the L-13, and propellers on the Akron.:cheers:

[Charles Adams]

I have always been curious about the hull covering process. The traditional method, as I understand it, is to cut and apply strips until it is all fairly smooth. If the covering is tissue or silkspan, then a spray of water and/or diluted dope is applied to shrink it all tight.

On the areas that have compound curves, it should not be possible to apply a flat sheet unless it is stretched substantially. This means applying several pieces or strips and mating them together.

(You could use one giant piece of plastic stretch film and that would make for a very neat and tidy hull. But, because such film is quite flexible and easily stretched, it cannot really be painted. So that doesn't sound like a practical option.)

What I don't quite get is how do you trim the pieces so the seams are not obvious? I can't imagine making a precise cut down the edge of a stringer! This would be a problem whether you used fabric, tissue, silkspan, or even Monokote/Econokote.

The stringers, if accurate to scale, should have the corners facing outboard. This gives extremely little surface area to adhere anything to, not to mention a knife-like edge that would be very difficult to trim along precisely. I would imagine this means the covering must overlap in areas in order to stick to itself.

So, what is the procedure??? Thanks! :)

[danneuman]

Construction has started on the LZ3 hull. By scaling from photos I determined:
length 128m
Dia 11.7m
rings spaced 8m
hull has 16 flats spaced 22 1/2 degrees apart

I have a friend going to the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrieshafen in a few weeks. Hopefully, he can get plans from them.

The first photos of construction are attached..??? IF I can figure out how to do it!!

[Digger]

How'd you get so close on the measurements from photos? According to my reference book you are spot on on the length, diameter is 11.65m, cubic gas capacity is 12,200 cubic meters (in case you need that info). Post some pics of the building process, please. :cheers:

[danneuman]

Let me know if these 3 photos came through
Thanks

[danneuman]

I tried to send 4 pictures of the covering process. the first one showing the ship 1/2 covered has 570mb and would not take....same witht he last one showing the finished ship with 532mb.

I will keep trying to send the construction pictures I took in the last couple of days.

[Charles Adams]

Hi Dan,

Why don't you e-mail me the photos to webmaster@airshipmodeler.com. I can resize them and post for you. The limit on images as attachments is 500KB.

I have fairly accurate plans for LZ-2 already started. LZ-3/4 are different ships in that they have different gondolas and surrounding structures. But I had completely forgotten that they appear to have the same basic hull. I do have some specs for them posted here:

http://www.airshipmodeler.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=68&d=1142120055

According to this, this ship was 128m long and 11.7m in diameter. It had 16 gas cells. It appears the hull shape along with the front and rear sections are identical to LZ-2 for which I have plans drawn up.

There are some great reference images here:
http://www.airshipmodeler.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33

My plans are not yet finished, but I'll see if I can generate an image that you can use as a template for the hull and e-mail it to you.

I have been meaning to write to the head of the Zeppelin museum. It seems very odd that plans for most of the Zeppelin types have not been published. The museum lists plans available for LZ-126, LZ-127 and LZ-129 but nothing else that I have seen so far in their online store. There must be more available!

I have the ability to draft extremely accurate plans given sufficient reference. My goal is to create plans for every major Zeppelin type. This will take some time, but the results should be worth the effort. If anyone can help me with needed reference, I will be happy to share the finished drawings.

Also, I have seen photos of the museum in its early days and they had some beautiful large models of LZ-1 and LZ-2. If these are still on display, could you ask your friend to take some photos of them? And any other models they have. I know we'd all love to see them. I would like very much to visit that museum, but travelling overseas is somewhat challenging right now. And I don't speak German! :)

[Digger]

Those came through all right. Sometimes when I upload pics I have to do it four or five times per pic, before it will 'take'. Look below the text field, once they show up under the manage attachments button theyre uploaded, also be sure to check file size before attempting to upload. By the way, have you thought about doing more detailed gondolas, with the interior and such, at that scale your models would be superb. The hulls already look fantastic. Even just very minor interior objects would really bring them to life. Just a thought, not criticism. Keep up the great work!:cheers:

[danneuman]

347

348

349How'd you get so close on the measurements from photos? According to my reference book you are spot on on the length, diameter is 11.65m, cubic gas capacity is 12,200 cubic meters (in case you need that info). Post some pics of the building process, please. :cheers:

I used a dial caliper and an adding machine on photos.
I am trying to attach some pict..bear with me.

[Charles Adams]

Oh, my that is beautiful! :D

I have one word for you: LASERCUTTER. Imagine how much faster you could build models if all the parts were pre-cut? The laser cuts with accuracy measured in the thousandths of an inch. By saving all that time and effort required to cut the parts out by hand, you could probably build twice the number of models in the same amount of time. Something to think about. . . :)

[Digger]

I've been toying with ideas on scratchbuilding a hull, using sheet styrene, and a very similar approach to the stringers. you just filled in the missing piece! The pipe down the center, great idea. Out of curiosity, about how many hours did it take you to build each hull (not counting the planning stage, just cutting and building)?

[danneuman]

I've been toying with ideas on scratchbuilding a hull, using sheet styrene, and a very similar approach to the stringers. you just filled in the missing piece! The pipe down the center, great idea. Out of curiosity, about how many hours did it take you to build each hull (not counting the planning stage, just cutting and building)?


LZ-3 is simple so it will take 6-8 hours
LZ-126 took approx 20 hours
Akron Lots big of pieces 30-40 hours
We are talking the hull only here....no engine cars, covering, tailfins, etc. just the basic hull.

[Charles Adams]

D'oh! :o Well, to show you how rusty I am, I was thinking of the form and shape of LZ-5/LZ-6. After reviewing the pics of LZ-3, I remembered it's nearly identical to LZ-2 except for a minor change to the gondola and the addition of "tail feathers."

I have a great book on LZ-2 from the Zeppelin Museum which has the most amazing photos I have ever seen. I used these to recreate the gondola in precise detail, the hardest part of the ship to draw. All of these reference images are online here at the site. Check out the LZ-2 reference page here:

http://www.airshipmodeler.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28

Also check out my progress at figuring out the gondola. I almost had it finished the last time I had a chance to work on it:

http://www.airshipmodeler.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46

[David B]

SpongeBob Airship SpongeBob Airship SpongeBob Airship SpongeBob Airship!!

Seriously though, Great job on your models!! I particularly like the Los Angeles

-DB:D

[danneuman]

Construction has started on the LZ3 hull. By scaling from photos I determined:
length 128m
Dia 11.7m
rings spaced 8m
hull has 16 flats spaced 22 1/2 degrees apart

I have a friend going to the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrieshafen in a few weeks. Hopefully, he can get plans from them.

The first photos of construction are attached..??? IF I can figure out how to do it!!

Feb 18 2007.......
LZ3 construction

[Paul Adams]

Great work as always. I think your hull will certainly be a lot stiffer than the actual airship!

Paul

[Charles Adams]

I had a nice chat with Dan last night. He restores vintage aircraft! This guy really knows his stuff.

Dan has mastered the art of covering wooden frame models with fabric. Amazingly, he has used real aircraft cotten covering for these models! That is many times thicker than the coverings typically used for this sort of thing. The fact he was able to get a smooth, wrinkle-free finish and hide all the seams so well is a testament to his great skill and experience!

Once again, great job Dan! :)

:cheers:

[Charles Adams]

Dan has been making some nice progress on his LZ-3! He just sent me these great photos to post. Wow! This model is looking great!

I was able to help by supplying drawings of my LZ-2 complete with gondolas and all the geometry figured out for the props and prop struts. Dan will be tackling those next.

How about those gondolas? Aren't they great? Dan made a wood master and then used it to hand form TIN to make the finished gondolas. These were carefully cut, folded and SOLDERED. Wow! That must have been some painstaking work. But the results are beautiful. :WOW:

(BTW, Dan's on a short vacation, so he might not be able to post replies to questions right away.)

[Charles Adams]

Here's another shot of those metal gondolas. The "lip" was made with thin brass strip soldered on to add detail. Wow!

[McTodd]

Stunning work, Mr Neumann! :cheers:

[FlyTexas]

The fabric covering is just amazing!! :WOW:

Brian

[Charles Adams]

The model is now complete! Dan just sent in these great photos of the finished project. Great work, Dan! :D

[Charles Adams]

Here are some close-ups of the gondolas. This is a great piece! :)

[McTodd]

Fantastic work!

[zrs4]

Wonderful Work Dan, what part of the country are you in?

I have plans for about 14 different ships right now, do you still need any?

I can check for any specific models.

You work is very inspiring.

Tim