It's the middle of the month, more or less, and I was able to get a few more things done that were done to show in a new tour. We'll be skipping the Motor Pool as that crew is getting some well deserved time off after the marathon they did to get to the milestone of one thousand vehicles completed. Thus, this will be a bit of a short tour for all. As always, we'll start in the Hangar so all aboard the trams and get ready for this next tour....
Here in the Hangar, a couple new projects were started while work continued on the two B-2 bombers. In this first bay, we have one of those new projects. This is the 1/72 scale Cooperativa Fairey Swordfish. They included a lot of photo-etch in this as seen next to the competed cockpit:
The cockpit was then installed inside the one half of the fuselage:
Finally, the fuselage was closed up and the seams and other issues were taken care of:
That's where we left off on that. This will be the very first Swordfish in my collection.
Moving on to the next bay, the cockpit for an E-2C Hawkeye was started:
The main wing was cemented together too, but there's not much reason to shoot that so I didn't.
In this next bay, the two B-2 bombers got another coat of the dark grey, after I finally got the mix right:
Later, the undercarriage was installed and painted white on both planes:
Later these got a nice gloss coat in preparation for decals.
That concludes the tour of the Hangar for now, let's move on to the Shipyards....
Here in the Shipyards, a couple ships had been launched so a couple more slipways were opened up for new projects. Some of these are also shelf queens that had been sitting in drydock for far too long.
In this first slipway, we continued work on the PT-109, this time working on making the wooden gun mount for the 37mm gun, using good old trusty coffee stir sticks from Starbucks:
Then they were positioned on the deck to make sure they were the right length and to get an idea for the best positioning:
Once I was able to determine they would work, I glued them down on the deck with Gator's Grip glue and then added the gun, using Gator's Grip glue to secure it. Now to find some suitable thread to do the lashing:
On to the next slipway while that dries, I started another small boat; this time the old Revell Tugboat Long Beach that I won in a raffle. The main deck and cabin were first assembled:
Later the upper deck and pilot house were done:
As always, I dry fit everything together to see any potential fit issues or other surprises:
That's as far as I got on that, so we'll move to the next slipway to see what's happening there...
In this slipway we laid the keel for the old Revell box-scale Icewind Coast Guard icebreaker:
Not much more was done here as in the next slipway, we also laid the keel for another new ship, the Revell USS Montrose assault ship:
That one went together fast as you can see and so we let it sit while we continued with a shelf queen from long before. This next slipway has the Revell USS Enterprise in her WWII fit. First the sides went on the main hull:
Later the deck extensions were added to the fight deck edges. Some were broken (this was a "distressed kit" I got in our "distressed kit auction" so I expected broken or missing parts), but over all, most of them are on the deck:
Later the flight deck was added to the hull:
And that's where she sits now. That concludes the Shipyards part of this tour, now we head back into our Automotive and Miscellaneous bays for two more projects that have been sitting for far too long waiting for more progress.
First is this Phaeton Roadster that had been neglected. Now I added the wheels, the soft top and windshield frame:
That's as far as I got with that; too many significant pieces were broken or lost so further progress was halted. However, I did get some progress done on some of the Budweiser Clydesdales for my beer wagon. Using photos I'd shot during the Rose Bowl parade some years back as reference, I painted them up using an airbrush for the white, while brush painting the brown on their coats. Any brush strokes that remained would hopefully look like their fur:
Now they are starting to look like Clydesdales!
That concludes this short tour of the facilities. I do hope you enjoyed it. Thanks to all who came through, and comments are always welcome.
