I am in with my SBD 1/2 with Eduard Big Ed detail set!

[DaveJ]

This is looking great! I know it can be a major pain to get yellow colors to look good, and yours look really good.

 

You've also got some guts painting before assembly of the wings and fuselage. I always end up having to sand something....

 

Keep the updates coming!

[49bull]

Dave,

 

My theory is that though the wings don't line up perfectly with the fuselage, I made sure that the trailing edges lined up by slowly adding super glue and accelerator as I glued the wing in place. I also used super glue to "tighten up" the potentail gap between the wing and fuselage using the same technique whcih leaves a small, though visible, gap. Instead of trying to fill and sand which will destroy the detail due to the lack of height alinement, I figure when the decal foe the walkway is put in place that by positioning in a clever manner, I can hide the majority of the misaligned join. It isn't perfect, but this is one place in the kit that the parts don't line up great and it would be lots of filling and sanding and I think my solution will camouflagethe discrepency unless one really wants to look closely at the joint.

 

Thank you for the comment on the yellow and it was tricky to get it to look good without using too much paint that would then hide the detail. I used several light coats then the last coat was applied to get that just "wet" look and once it dried it looked good.

 

Bob

[49bull]

I did glue the main wing assembly to the fuselage and ended up doing some filling and sanding to smooth it out as the gaps were worse then expected. To avoid the need to repaint in the area, I masked the wing close to the joint and was careful to avoid sanding too far past the joint on either side. I missed a bit on the fuselage side but after I was done the sanding, I touched up the area by dry brushing gloss aluminum enamel onto the bare area. Then, I added the wing walk decals from Yellow Wings Decals (these settle in great but be careful as they are very thin and I did tear both). Once the decals were dry, I used gloss black paint to touch up the torn areas and voila! it looks excellent. The cowling half was painted (half is unpainted as it is clear and I wanted to be able to view the engine compartment from one side and show the color scheme from the other). The center dive break mechanism from Eduard was installed( as I said these were small kits in themselves) and the landing gear was painted and attached. I must have had a weak spot in one strut as I was working with plane and it broke off. I drilled a hole in both pieces and used metal wire to strengthen and secure the strut back in place.

 

Next steps will be painting the interior of the cowling pieces, masking and painting the canopy, paitning the bombs and remaining pieces, adding the dive brakes and the rest of the mechanism which will take some time as each actuator is built from a PE and plastic rod then glued into place. The last steps will be attaching the small exterior pieces, bombs, canopy and the like followed by decaling the plane. I doubt I will finish by the end of the 28th though my guess is that 90% or more will be done.

 

Here are some photos with the first two showing the wing root before and after adding the wing walk decal. The cowling piecs are shown and the center dive brake mechanism. The last two (with one on the next posting) show a front view of the plane and a side view with the engine compartment attached.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[49bull]

Here are the last two photos looking at the plane from the front showing the landing gear in place and a side view of the plane with the engine compartmnet attached. I hope to get the cowling in place by tomorrow and get the canopy masked and ready to paint. The dive brakes will take a bit of time due to the number of small pieces that need to be placed but it will look nice when done.