SPA Modeler

To avoid burnout on the B-47 I started this one, it will be good company for the T-28. Seems to be a very nice kit, well engineered and detailed but not fiddley, at least so far. I made a decal for the instrument panels from an image out of the pilot's manual. It says it needs an ounce of weight in the nose, which is a complication. I am working on making a mold to cast a weight that will fill most of the space. I tried hand shaping a weight but I can see that's not going to work. We'll see what happens. The mold will take a day or so to cure hard enough to pour lead into into it, I developed the shape with modeling clay and poured high temperature silicone over it.

You can see what happens when I brush paint by looking at those awful seat belts. I'll try to fix them, wish me luck!

The seatbelts shouldn't be an issue John (and they don't actually look bad), you could just run a bit of the green along the edges with a fine brush. I really like the printed homemade decal for the IP. I used to do something similar but with a printout reduced to size.

Its a great little kit John. Looking forward to your rendition. Great idea on the IP.

Those Minicraft kits are fun to build even if they lack details. Looking forward to seeing this one done.

John, that's a good start on this one!

That cockpit looks super realistic!
Have you thought about scraping off the molded seat belts and making some tamiya tape belts? Shame to have those molded ones with that nice IP you made.

Still waffling on the seat belts, should do PE and I have some for that. I finished the mold for the nose weight and successfully fit it today, so work on the T-34 can resume. Here's the evidence. If anyone else is going to build one of these I can make more weights, out of the mold they need some filing but I was able to get this one fitted at 1.2 ounces, 1 ounce is what the instructions call for. Fresh out of the mold it was 1.5 ounces. I hope the main gear is up to it, the struts are rather small, being to scale.

Brilliant!

What a nice fit

What a great idea! Well done John