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Lukgraph SBU-1 Corsair FINISHED


ericg

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I have started working on the external details. During my research for this build, I could not find any photos of the aircraft armed with bombs, either on the center line or on the wing pylons. This also applies to the rear machine gun. I decided that I would load the model with a 500Lb bomb on the center line, provided in the kit to add some visual interest to it. The articulated yoke that assists with keeping the bomb clear of the ariframe when it drops wasn't quite up to the task as during its clean up, snapped right where an air bubble was located. This and the fact that the part was going to be very hard to clean up, as well as being quite easy to break once it was installed forced my hand a little to fabricating a new one from brass. I wasn't going to do anything fancy, just a simple copy of the kit part.

 

Intial soldering together of the new brass parts.

 

IMG_6776_zpsbwkg5mbe.jpg

 

Dry fitted to the model with the kit bomb.

 

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Eric,

  Nicely done. I really have to learn the basics of soldering, as fabrications like this are so superior then always trying to fashion or modify parts using CA or epoxy glues.

Joel

 

 

Me too, Joel!

 

Kev

 

Soldering isn't all that difficult, but it depends on the application as to how you do it.  When I was building RC, I used to silver-solder throttle cables into brass control horns, which was slightly more involved than regular soldering.

 

Regular soldering (usually for electronics):

 

Silver soldering:

 

As long as there's no real load on the object you're soldering, you can get away with regular soldering on brass.

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Soldering isn't all that difficult, but it depends on the application as to how you do it.  When I was building RC, I used to silver-solder throttle cables into brass control horns, which was slightly more involved than regular soldering.

 

Regular soldering (usually for electronics):

 

Silver soldering:

 

As long as there's no real load on the object you're soldering, you can get away with regular soldering on brass.

These covered it pretty well, and I've got to say, it is a lot easier than you'd expect.

 

Another video I found which was helpful when I was learning how to do it, was this one by Paul Budzik.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBji-Oz3J7E

Edited by Zank_Frappa
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  • 1 month later...

Moving along with this build. I wanted to pose the cowl flaps open, so a bit of scratch building was in order. Of course, I could have just left them as is (a flat photo etch part) and kept them closed but looking at reference photos, most aircraft have them open on the ground.I cut each flap from the photo etch parts and glued them open, before adding some thin plastic card to each edge to give the the overlap of each adjacent flap.

I then punched a disk from some thick plastic card, cut it into a semi circle and then glued it to the back of each flap to give it some detail and then applied several layers of Mr Surfacer over each flap to blend it all in. I then fabricated each actuator mechanism from plastic rod. I have painted it aluminium in this photo and it will be completed with a wash later on.

 

DSC06809-X3.jpg

 

I was searching for Willow green for the tail when I came across some paint sets by Hataka that seemed to the fit exactly what I needed to paint the model. After reading lots of reviews (both good and bad) I took the plunge and ordered some.

 

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The Section colours set has all of the required paints to depict any of the 6 different colours used by various sections of the USN.

 

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The Light grey applied very nicely. It was a little difficult to get used to at first given that I have mostly used Tamiya and Gunze acrylics before. It is quite sensitive to the type of thinner used, and air pressure. Very watery paint but am happy with the results.

 

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The green tail. I painted the top of the wing with Gunze yellow H29 with a few drops of H86 Red Madder mixed in. This was done before I received the Hataka paint sets otherwise I would have used there Insignia (orange) yellow from the Ealry US Navy and USMC paint set.

 

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Getting close to the finish line. I am yet to work out which scheme I prefer. The aluminium doped surfaces were painted with Tamiya AS-12.

 

DSC06812-X3.jpg

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Thanks guys. I have started getting the markings and serials on this model. I have been deciding on this one for a long time, as I was unsure of whether I wanted to do the kit schemes over something a little more off beat. There isn't a huge amount of reference material available for this aircraft, and I wanted to make sure that the one that I chose was something where a photograph existed of it. I wanted to get the model as colourful as possible, using as many different colours as I could. This then led me on a path of discovering the different marking standards applied to aircraft of this era. I settled on 41-S-8, an aircraft that served on the USS Ranger, sometime after the neutrality star was applied to its nose cowl and after the award (to the squadron or the ship, I don't know)of an efficiency `E'.

 

SBU-1ofScoutingPlaneSquadronForty-OneVS-

 

I was a little hard to interpret the colour of the cowl band, but using the common code of the day, it was a wingman with the upper surface of the cowl painted in True Blue. The problem that I then encountered was that the kit upper wing chevron decal was the some colour as the blue of the roundel which made it far too dark. Luckily the Hataka set had Tru Blue as part of its section coulours set that I purchased.

 

The next issue was obtaining the serials. I made up a mask of the serial and the US NAVY using my sillhouette machine.

 

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Sprayed

 

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Next up was the top wing 8. I had previously masked and painted the top chevron, which I forgot to take pics of.

 

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The Efficiency E was next. Using the software, I position two E's over the top and offset to each other before using the subrtract feature, essentially splitting them into two masks, one for the black shadow and one for the white E

 

Capture%202-X2.jpg

 

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To the top of the cowl was masked and painted. As I will be using the kit decal roundels, I made up a circle mask using the exact dimensions of the roundel and then positioned it on the cowl before masking around it.

 

DSC06857-X3.jpg

 

Still lots more work to go but certainly getting there. The top wing is only dry fitted at the moment.

 

DSC06852-X3.jpg

Edited by ericg
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Eric,

  Absolutely perfect. :wow: I'm going to assume that the stripes on the top of the wing are painted on. Decaling over them even with several heavy coats of clear, never works for me.

Joel

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