Testor F8F-2 Bearcat in 1/48 scale

[Paul]

Your builds have always impressed me. Keep doing what you are doing.

[dmminiatures]

Count me in. I made a glue bomb out of this one after unloading a handful of allowance on it at a K-Mart years ago.

Already making a respectable build out of this one. Can't wait for more.

Hi Jim - Aircraft id like to build again from childhood memories: 1/72 Revell B-17 and B-24

[BsYamato]

.. i saw pictures of it on a Testor product catalog many years ago. It was on display at a toy store when I just got off from school but never picked it up.

...

LOL sweet vengeance after few years

Looking for the wip, not particular intresting in this subject/scale but it's a Monty's wip

[dmminiatures]

Fast forward on some of my next progressions on the Bearcat. This picture shows how the PE cockpit gets glued onto the fuselage. The PE was advertised for the Testor bird, However, it did not fit the fuselage. I should have known, but This is my first PE cockpit set so now I have learned my lesson. I had to wrestle the still metal and add bits of styrene so the cockpit doesn't fall off the wall.



Once I have secured the cockpit in place, time to put the halves together. that didn't work well too. I need to thin the the plastic around the cockpit tub. Actually the fit of the fuselage were good, its just because of the PE, gluing them both has become a major challenge. Rubber band and masking tape helped a lot.



The fun part begins. one of my objectives is to show the Bearcat with its wings folded. Again, to make the model more interesting (since its pretty plain). Here is how I started, sawing off the wing using a stainless mini saw. took me 10 minutes to cut up the wings.



This is where things got a bit serious. You can see the white styrene being the outer wall (where the folding mechanism are) and the PE bit for the wheel bay. they wheel bay from Testor is just a big empty hole and the PE piece helped make it more convincing. I think wiring it up will make it a lot better. (I have not planned to do that though)

[Thomas_M]

Combining stuff that wasn´t intended to be combined, as the plastic kit and the PE, could make for some serious modelling as shown here. Monty, I wonder how you separated the wing halves with those PE saws, for there is no straight line to be followed when sawing.

[CallSignOWL]

whoo! love the pe work.

scratchbuilding is my second hobby

[dmminiatures]

Combining stuff that wasn´t intended to be combined, as the plastic kit and the PE, could make for some serious modelling as shown here. Monty, I wonder how you separated the wing halves with those PE saws, for there is no straight line to be followed when sawing.

I wish I had taken a photo on that processs. But to explain it in few words, I use the tip of the saw to thin the plastic as much as possible before I snapped it. luckily the snap was clean.

[dmminiatures]

Fast forward a bit more, the construction of the main wings were a bit tricky since the butt of the wing had an uneven surface (lots of eye-balling here). And I had expected the worse case scenario with the putty. There is minimal surface detail, as you can see in this image.



What I did not plan was sawing off the flaps. Looking at more reference photos, there were some Bearcats that had their flaps in the dropped position. I think that is a cool idea (though extra work) and would give the aircraft a better appearance. So, the project got a bit delayed because I had to saw off the flaps and had to add some more styrene onto them



Again, with little resources in my apartment, I had to make do with whatever i have. The white colored plastic is left over sheet styrene. The darker plastic is a former sprue tree which I cut and carved to make a 1/4 round rod.