As mentioned previously, one of the gear doors made it's way to the Bermuda Triangle, so I had to scratch up another one. In this case, I had nothing suitable to salvage, so armed with varying thicknesses of styrene sheet scraps, a pencil, knife and many other tools, I used the one door I had to create a mirror image as best I could. I only wish I had thought to take more than 2 pictures. Grrrr
Here is an in progress picture. I've made the lower section, to include the support skeleton. I took a short metal ruler, and measured everything in millimeters, to get it as accurate as possible.
Here it is completed, without paint. To create the bulge in the door, I stacked styrene to the correct height, then slowly trimmed it with first a chisel blade, then a #11 in my Xacto. After that came much sanding, filling and sanding again. When I was satisfied, I then smoothed everything out with 12k grit polishing cloth. Lastly, I scribed the details and created "rivets" with a model railroad track nail held in a pin vise.
Here she is, finished. I'm happy with the results. Enough so, I've been slowly working on building a partial canopy for my PCM Macchi Mc200. The original canopy is keeping the MiG's gear door company, wherever that is....
Thanks for looking.
