SPA Modeler

It looks like you're going to have fun pulling that all together John!

Wow, I gotta stop looking in on this; I get so depressed when looking at my work....

But I CAN'T! It's too stunning and enjoyable to watch all this realism come to life! Bring it on John!

Lovely.

Thanks guys! The fun part is just starting... fitting all of these components together and that's going to start with this update.

The landing gear bay wall components have been given a pastel wash and a flat coat and are ready for assembly.


The landing gear bay walls are glued together now. As I stated earlier, I had to trim the front end of the center spar down a little to make it fit.



After assembly of the landing gear bay walls, I wanted to conduct another round of dry-fitting to see the painted components in place. I am getting more comfortable with the fit as I go.





I got the gun bay/nose gear well to sit a little better by trimming the forward corners of the vertical walls that protrude beyond the small circular bulkhead.



With this last dry-fitting exercise, I felt confident enough to finally glue the fuselage halves together using Tamiya Extra Thin cement.


This was followed by gluing in the gun bay/nose gear well into place.


As the glue was drying, I temporarily taped in the bottom wing into place to give the model additional stiffness and help ensure that the fuselage halves and gun bay are in correct alignment.


I've left this small gap without glue for now. I want to make sure that its cross section matches the nose cone before I secure it into place.


To improve the fit of the gun cowling, a small raised rib on the interior of the cowling was removed along with some raised details on the gun deck right along the contact edge.



Even with the tape in the way, the nose panels seem to fit fairly well with a few previously identified exceptions.



I'll let the the glue dry now before I move on.

The glue has dried so I can take off the tape around the fuselage joins. Test fit of the nose panels looks very promising.



The nose cap is balanced on the end. Can't tell for certain but that small gap at the front of the fuselage may remain. If so, I would shim it with sheet plastic or stretched sprue.


I have started the initial puttying of the fuselage seams. While that is curing, I placed the main landing gear legs into position. Revell provides three small holes in the bulkhead separating the landing gear leg compartment with the main wheel bay and I'm thinking that it could be utilized to mount the hydraulic lines in the landing gear wells.

This all looks really good so far John. You're gonna have to expand on this whole pastel wash deal. Just trying to see if it's the same thing I'm doing or if there's something different to it.

FYI....... Believe it or not I'm planning on another aircraft build....soon. An Me-262 as a matter of fact.

All great progress John! I'm sure you'll dress the landing gear up just as nice as the gear bay.

mustang1989 wrote:This all looks really good so far John. You're gonna have to expand on this whole pastel wash deal. Just trying to see if it's the same thing I'm doing or if there's something different to it.

FYI....... Believe it or not I'm planning on another aircraft build....soon. An Me-262 as a matter of fact.

I can't wait to see your 262 build! The pastel wash is used after the painting stage. On parts that have molded details that I want to highlight. It's also a good way to hide a few errant brush strokes from the painting. Looking at the landing gear wall frame as an example, a dark brown pastel wash was brushed into all of the raised or recessed details, even corners and joints. After it dried, it was wiped off with a moistened paper towel, leaving remnants of dark brown behind. Can you see the details outlined in a dark color below?

Floki wrote:All great progress John! I'm sure you'll dress the landing gear up just as nice as the gear bay.

Thanks Clint! Yes, the landing gear legs will be painted but I'm trying to figure out attachment points for the brake lines before that.

I've performed riveting on the smaller control surface parts. The riveting has been highlighted with a brown pastel wash. After photos, the parts will be scrubbed with a toothbrush under the faucet to try and clear the rivets and panel lines as much as possible for the later painting stages.



The fuel ports in front of the windscreen are raised, which makes the seam line awkward to clean up.


I'm going to whack them off, tidy the joint properly and then re-scribe the ports using templates. The David Union DU400 hobby sander is the perfect tool to level out this type of raised feature. Also shown in the photo are about 14 grams of fishing weights that I've glued into the nose to help balance the model on its tricycle landing gear.


The DU400 makes the fix easy but also uniform without any carving gouges that would've resulted if I had tried to use an x-acto blade. I'll probably wait until after the gun cover has been glued on before I scribe the fuel ports.

That's a neat tool! It perfectly removed the raised areas and I can't tell they was ever there.

Not essential but a nice tool to have. Similar results could've been had with a sanding board but the mechanically-provided motions allow you to impart a more uniform shaping result.

Moving along on several different fronts. The shiny metal bits on the landing gear have been painted. This is Alclad Chrome over a gloss black base. It's best to let this dry a complete day before masking.


It's finally time to glue the forward cowling pieces into place. First the gun bay cover. It's not a drop-in-and-forget-about-it fit. It takes some pushing and pinching to get good cement contact along all of the edges. This is where Tamiya Extra Thin cement really shines, allowing for spot control of glue application on pieces that are already in place. The known gap on the rear edge of the starboard side has been filled with a piece of stretched sprue fused into place with Tamiya Extra Thin.



I let that dry for about four hours before gluing in the next piece. I didn't want to push gun bay cover out of place. The next piece didn't fit quite as well as the gun cowling with some noticeable overhangs and steps as if the part was just a little too big for the space it occupies. Not perfect but I can deal with that. The main thing is that I get a good glue connection all the way around so that the joints will stand up to the puttying/sanding/re-scribing/riveting that will come.



The nose cap presents some issues. The base for the nose-mounted radar antenna is supposed to be glued in place before the nose cap and would result in two bits sticking out from the nose. I'd like to clean up the joint all the way around the nose cap and those two prongs would undoubtedly get in the way.


Playing around with some Albion Slide Fit brass tubing, I thought I could create an antenna base that could provide the correct geometry and be attachable from the outside.


I cut the plastic antenna base, keeping the locating tabs in place. Brass tubing was used as the central (female) mount. Smaller brass tubing were attached to the plastic antenna mount pieces.


When this was fit into place, it was apparent that spacer under the central mount would be needed.


A spacer was made from a sheet of styrene.


The central mount brass tubing is glued onto the spacer and now I have an antenna that can be mounted from the outside with the nose cap in place.