1/32 Zoukei-Mura Ta152H-0 White 7

[speedgraflex]

Happy New Year and congratulations on 26 years of marriage, John. Also: congratulations on your progress to date. I have a question, if you don’t mind. How are the upper shoulder belts attached? Does leaving out the rear seat back rails affect their position? Based on these photos, the base arrangement looks like hook and loop style fasteners, only fabricated from steel, and then countersunk within the rear cockpit bullhead. Tidy, but quite cramped! Perhaps my understanding is incorrect, though. I’m not sure! Will you be attaching those somehow? Maybe I am missing something here. I need to find the book that ZM makes. I have it packed away someplace.

[jkim]

Happy New Year and thanks for the reference photos, Bruce! The attachment lugs for the shoulder harnesses ended up below the top edge of the seat back. In the photos shown so far, you can see that the shoulder belts are just hanging there, unattached. Since then I've pushed the shoulder harness attachment tabs behind the seat, pointing downward, kinda like they are shown in the reference photos. Not enough space to place the half-loop connectors so I think I'll just leave them as is.

[speedgraflex]

My apologies - I was just worried unnecessarily for some reason; also feeling guilt to not be here to directly see your progress. Personally I would have sided for a closed panel but I have no doubt that you are the ultimate arbiter and found Radu’s argument credible. Hey, have you ever tried his paper seatbelts? I always wanted to try them.

[jkim]

No apologies required! Life has a way of intruding upon our hobbies and I know what it is like to be disconnected from the modeling community for long periods of time. I didn't feel strongly either way about the missing panel so I went with the most persuasive argument, which was Radu's. In the long run, it's all going to get bundled away underneath a closed canopy so I'm not going to sweat certain interior details.

I tried RB Productions seat belts once. Very similar to HGW's except there are no imprinted textile details on the fabric itself like HGW features.

[jkim]

Here is an update covering some of the work that I've been doing on the Ta152 over the past few days.

A view of the cockpit encased within the fuselage. This was before I realized that the instrument panel hood would place the IP too far back. So I've popped off the IP and will be adding an additional spacer to push it out closer to the pilot.


A preliminary view of the engine parts. As usual, I don't think I will be leaving any fuselage hatches/covers in an open position so engine will most likely be hidden from view. So I've decided to paint the kit parts but not add anything extra.



The panels on the wing bottom need to be changed so the first step is to fill in the conflicting panel lines. I'm going to use my newly concocted batch of sprue goo for the fill operation. Hopefully, this plastic material will provide a uniform base for the scribing of new panel lines.


The goo is given ample time (24 hours) to cure before sanding. The engine cowling, previously filled with Mr Surfacer, is also smoothed out at this stage.

[jkim]

A light coat of grey to check the filled panel lines. So far so good.


Using masks cut with a Silhouette Portrait cutter, I can mark the locations of the new hatches and ports. The brass template for the large 4-sided access panel are temporarily glued into place with CA glue. Black paint is used to mark the locations for the smaller ports upon which I can use a standard scribing template.



This is where I started running into trouble. I had hoped that the panel lines that I had filled with sprue goo would give me a consistent material over which I could run a scriber but this was not the case. The filled areas were much softer than the plastic and it was difficult to track a consistently straight light through any area that had been filled. The filled areas, being softer, clung to any excess pushed up by the scriber, making it more difficult to clean up the lines that had been scribed. And white putty on black putty is not the easiest color combination to worth with since it is hard to distinguish between the putty and sanding dust.


Another shot of grey paint removes the visual clutter of the filled lines. But it also reveals the imperfections from the scriber getting bogged down by the softer sprue goo. So frustrating... I was really disappointed at this stage and was compelled to put down my work and go do something else.



When I came back, I didn't think the results were THAT bad. Most of the shapes seemed workable. Re-tracing the shapes using the templates cleaned up some of the slop. The worst spots were filled with Black CA and re-scribed. So now I am in micro-cleanup mode, using dabs of Mr Surfacer to repair scratches and make the lines more uniform. Getting there...

[speedgraflex]

I saw you were cooking up sprue goo, but I did not make an immediate connection to the way you were going to employ it. What I do recall was reading a detailed review of various methods used to create scribed lines in styrene, utilizing putties, pastes, compounds such as sprue goo, and the reviewer conclusion was to use CA in much the same way you are doing. Since you introduced me to Milliput my preferred solution is Milliput smoothed to 2K grit, polished then filled with brushed CA, which in turn is sanded and polished all the way to beyond superfine. I did “hear” a warning bell when I saw your bottle, just because a sprue goo join is to my experience the softest join, which is useful for soft seals and edges. CA/Milliput are harder edged and it is possible to make fine precise cuts through their surfaces.

[jkim]

I was thinking of sprue goo as a magical "plastic in a bottle" solution thinking it would solidify into hard styrene plastic. I've used CA glue as a filler but it has the opposite characteristic...it is significantly harder than the surrounding plastic. But harder is better than softer and I think using CA glue from the start would have led to a better result. But... I think I can make this work with a few more corrections and adjustments. And once I put the riveting on, I think the small imperfections will be masked even further. That's my hope anyway!

[LyleW]

Did I read that you used sheet styrene? I made some using pieces of spruce that worked pretty well. Could that have had an effect?

[jkim]

Hmmm... maybe. When you say that it worked well , did you scribe over it? As a filler only, it worked good. Problems arose when I tried scribing over it. Plus Ive read that spruce goo needs to dry a really long time before you can scribe over it.