Scratch-built 1/32 Grumman OV1-D Mohawk

By Jack Gryskiewicz

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Thinking about other ways, besides regular kits (even vacforms), of making a certain aircraft model in large scale got me started on carving balsa wood pieces into close looking shapes of particular models like the X31 and…the Mohawk.

I had learned about the process of heat-forming and tried it on the X31, made some trial and error pieces and finally put all the parts including the balsa fuselage form in a box and forgot about it….

But still intrigued after a while I tried the same method on what would be eventually the Mohawk. I stress eventually, because at first this whole "project" seemed a bit far fetched when looking at some scratchbuilt projects by other builders I heard about on LSP. I didn't visualize a finished model in the beginning, thinking I wouldn't have enough skills compared to others, so at first it was just fun trying to heatform styrene parts around the balsa core.

And of course by doing so (trial and error) it slowly evolved into this scratchbuild project. Not being able to use bass-wood (no availability) in order to try a vacform version, I decided to continue with the balsa wood mould by means of heat-forming and go from there. By going this way I was more or less committed to use the balsa fuselage together with the heat-formed parts, because of the nature of heat-forming (stretching over a mould) I had to make up several small parts instead of being able to vacform a whole fuselage length. So the balsa core ended up inside the model, which was fortunate actually because this way I had some substance to work on or in, but needed some careful planning as well.

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I made provisions for cockpit aperture and nosewheel well before I covered the mould with the styrene parts, but for instance the electronics bay at midfuselage position was done after the fuselage was already finished in rough outlines, so I had to cut right thru the plastic and balsa parts, which could have been done easier at an earlier stage, so indeed…..trial and error..:o)

Of course the fuselage section needed a lot of filling and sanding and after that I turned to wing parts and tail section. By the way, all plans/drawings came from the squadron signal issue on the Mohawk, and after some calculations I had a large 1/32 scale layout plan made at a copier-centre and multiplied this in parts for several intermediate constructions. Also documentation and pictures itself came from Squadron signal, together what I could come up with on the internet (djeez, how did anyone do this before the Internet-age???), several other "hardcopy" publications and my own photo shoots made at the American Wings Air Museum at Anoka county airport in Minnesota last year.

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Ok, so on with the construction: In fact I can be short by saying that scrounging thru spare parts, large and small, you can find what you're looking for, so after a while the Mohawk began to emerge…..in 32nd scale that is to say…:o)

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It took me a pretty long time to finish all the detail parts (work was interrupted by the real work in the outside world…;o), but I totally scratchbuilt the cockpit interior, the electronics bay, wheel well interiors and such, whereas careful searching for "airfoil" parts in the scrapbox did the rest of the job and of course some help from others like Larry Hawkins who provided the prop blades, these being P-51K wind-millers which I carved into the ones they are now.

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I decided to do the light gray paint job version which I actually saw a couple of years ago at the airport I work at as air traffic controller (aka pilot's pest….:o), and had some pictures made by a colleague to use as guidance material.

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In all this is my first all-scratchbuild project, and of course it has several shortcomings by the way it turned out at the end (here and there some dimensional inaccuracies, paint job problems and some shape distortions) but it was really fun building this thing and I learned a lot about scratchbuilding by doing so.

Finally on November 16th it was displayed at our IPMS nationals and it won 3rd place in its category.

Now…..up to the Vigilante….:o)

© Jack Gryskiewicz

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This article was published on Wednesday, July 20 2011; Last modified on Saturday, May 14 2016