The build itself its not that difficult more repetitive.
The body starts with two sides laminated together with a wire between to help keep the body straight. You need to be careful glueing the body havles together not to get the tabs stuck together. These tabs are used to attach the body scales later, there are also cuts that go beyond the tab so the body scale can slide into them. It sounds a bit weired but when you look at the print in the book it makes more sense. There are about sixty internal formers fitted to both sides of the body. Then the body has 47 external sets of scale from the tip of the tail to the head, ranging from a small tube at the tip of the tail to a quite large oval at the mid body. To fit the scales to the body I found the following method the easiest way to fit them. Starting at the tip of the tail roll and fit each part but dont glue them on yet as you may have to remove some of them to get a part to fit over them. Once you have got a most of the tail covered the parts get bigger and easier to handle so you can use the following method. Bend the scales to about the right shape first, use the internal former as a guide to how to shape them scales then attach the top of the scale to the tabs on the body. There is a cross formed on top of the body scale by the scales themselves so use use that to align the scale with the body. The part of the scale with the tab on it was attached to the bottom of the body next followed by the un tabbed part of the scale. The little tabs on the internal formers I glued to the inside on the scale and held them until the glue set this helped bring the part into shape. All that remains of the body is to fit all the spikes, there are more of them than you need so you will end up with some spares. The legs are a bit fiddly but not too difficult. Construction is similar to the body in that there is a former inside to which you attach the scales of the legs. I did find that when I fitted the claws to the former that it did not look right as the claws sort of wrapped around the leg. I found that by crimping the former into a Z shape it made the claws look better, but thats a personal thing. The legs are then glued to the sides of the body, not a very good method of attachment but it works so long as you dont go throwing it about. The wings are not too difficult once you sort out what bit goes where. There are 8 parts to each wing with a lot of scoring and folding to do. Glueing one tab at a time the wing soon begins to take shape. You need to trim the edges of the wing to shape as the front part is cut to shape but the rear needs to be cut to match. A good idea I thought as you dont have to try and match two cut edges. The Head is straight forward really and the instructions in the book are easy to follow. The hardest bit I found with the head was the Antlers or Horns. You start out as one tube but you have to score and bend so that it looks like one tube segment fits inside the next. If you look closely at my pics you can just about make out what I mean, (or is that because I know what I mean so I can see it). Then it just a case of fitting the big teeth and the frilly bits. I hope this gives you all an idea of what it like to build, I'm sure that with the blog link and my blurrb you should be able to make a Dragon. Bill This post edited --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Papermodels II" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Papermodels?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
