SPA Modeler

Hopefully good! There is play between the wheel and the axle so I'm sure I can make it sit right.

When I was dry-fitting the cockpit to the fuselage, I was using bits of Blue Tack to hold the resin pit into place. It gave me a little bit of "give" to make minor adjustments. So I thought I'd permanently attach the cockpit in a similar manner using Milliput instead of Blue Tack. Hmmm... I forgot to take a pic of the buttoned up fuselsage!

Attachment of the resin cowling to the fuselage is coming up so I thought it would be a good time to apply the rivets...




After cleaning up the fuselage seams, I added a missing panel on the fuselage bottom using a piece of brass sheet as a scribing template. The shape for template was derived from a scan of a 1/48 scale drawing of a G-6. The scan was imported into AutoCAD, scaled up to 1/32 scale and a mask file was generated for the Silhouette Portrait. The mask was stuck onto a piece of brass and cut out with scissors. Once you get used to a piece of technology, this stuff becomes a bit ho-hum and I didn't record any of it photographically.



The centerline seam was re-established and riveted.

Amazing detail work John!

Thanks Stuart!

Time to rivet the wings. I have to be careful not to break the glue bond between the inner and outer wing panels as the contact area between the two is not very significant.


Using a set of drawings that I obtained from the 109Lair website, a flexible ruler and a soft lead pencil, I draw the rivet patterns on the wings.


The larger Rivet-R from RB Productions is used for the long straight runs. I'll use the smaller Rivet-R Mini for the circle.


The rivet wheel is slowly traced over the drawn lines. I don't use any guides for this so the rivet lines aren't perfect.


The rivets are then given a light sanding to remove the excess plastic that is pushed up around each rivet hole.


I used brass sheeting folded around a form to create the hollow ammo chutes. You can see the white Milliput that I used to wedge the cockpit tub into place. You'll also notice the exhaust pipes... I'm trying to figure out how to add the exhaust deflector plates.



I'm going to tone down the raised details on the rudder.


Here's the smoothed rudder set into place on the tail.

Superb! That really does add a lot to the detail.

On a 1/32 build rivets are a must. You make the process look easy.

Too easy.

Thanks guys! The rivets stand out now because the pencil lead got wiped into the recesses but the final effect will be much more subtle.

A few bits of work on the G-6... wheel wells painted.


Replacing the attachment point of the tail landing gear with brass rod to address a potential weak spot.



The Barracuda resin spinner has some hub detail so blasted the prop openings with black and brush painted the hubs in metallic grey.

That spinner looks great John!

portman wrote:That spinner looks great John!