1/32 recovered B-17 - UPDATE 12/10/13 - FINISHED - YAY!

[Guest Peterpools]

Rich

Incredible. Your attention to detail and accuracy is unreal!

Keep 'em coming

:popcorn:

Edited April 14, 2013 by Peterpools

[pakrauss]

Mindblowing!!

[mark31]

The only thing i can say is woooooow.

Great work.

 

Mark

[richdlc]

thanks a lot guys, cheers for checking in!

 

Got the nose attached to the fuselage tonight...

[Shawn M]

Rich its almost a shame to glue it to the rest! Its a model unto itself.

Fascinating work you've done/are doing.

[fastzx]

Rich,

 

Fantastic work on your flak damaged B17.

I feel daunted about making just one turret on the Martin B26B Marauder

I am starting on. Wow great work!!

 

 

Jon

[dodgem37]

Build Of The Year, Rich.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[fightnjoe]

wonderful stuff. love the work done and thank you so much for posting it. while mine current version is 1/48 i hope it comes out half as well as this.

 

 

 

 

joe

[shepard]

Your work is more than fantastic my friend...

 

congrats from Brazil

 

Shep

[Nic C.D.]

You must be building this for some kind of movie or documentary, right? This will probably go on a green screen with some Hollywood filmstars in front telling how they survived a bellylanding after a raid deep into Germany... Must be!

[Ripaman]

Build Of The Year, Rich.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

You got that right Mark,

 

Rich just love the detail you are putting into her, have ordered one of those 1:32 B17 just so I can see if they went with all of the detail you have done.

 

By the way great books I bought from you, will see if you have anymore I'am looking for

 

Regards

Richard

[fastzx]

Rich,

Super build so far and great idea about recovered

B17........

 

But since youve come so far with this build I can see this

Flak damaged B17 with detail showing through gaping holes

I am just suggesting you could do a bang up job on the whole plane

Just by adding wings oil stained flak holed with feathered props on several

engines would be a piece of cake for you after such a super job

on the fuselage!!

 

Just a suggestion but you are already so deep into the great job.

Maybe you could find a suitable plane for your recovery vehicle (ju88, he111?)

Instead you could have a couple of "meat wagons, jeeps and such"

There should be some detail resin wheels coming out soon for B17.

Just super job.

 

Jon

Edited May 10, 2013 by fastzx

[richdlc]

**update 20th May 2013**

Hi guys - time for another update!

Last time I left you with images of the nose which had been completed inside & also had some metal skinning begun outside. Once I had done the skinning, I moved back to the cockpit area - there were several things I needed to glue in their final positions, finish off etc. First up - the seats:

Here they are all painted up - I added some HGW 1/32 US WWII seatbelts. This was the first time I'd used these & I was very impressed - in my opinion they are probably the best you can buy (although I've not tried any alternatives)

One thing that I needed to address was the stencilling - each one has 'US Air Corps' on the back cushion and 'Do not remove from aircraft' (or words to that effect) on the seat cushion. The back was fairly easy - I hand-painted the necessary words and immediately dabbed off the excess with a tissue to give a patchy, worn out look. As for the wording on the seat cushions, I made sure the seatbelts were strategically positioned, & then just gave an impression of some text showing in any gaps. Needless to say, it's very hard to actually see anything once the seats are installed & the cockpit roof on....

Next, we go back to the dash over the I.P. - I added all relevant detail from plastic card etc. There's various gauges, as well as the de-icer vents which divert hot air from the engines to various places around the aircraft, including the windscreen:

Next up was the cockpit roof, including the window framing (which was particularly hard to make). There are numerous instruments above the pilots' heads - I made the decision not to overdo this bit as it's virtually hidden once the roof is in place - but I gave a good approximation of what's there - I started with this:

and ended up with this:

I added all the cockpit glass from shaped pieces of clear thermaform. I tried my best to get these as clear as possible, but the trouble with thermaform is that unless you store it correctly it picks up numerous tiny scratches - so out came my canopy polishing system that I bought from little cars at one of the shows - it incorporates polishing pads of varying fineness, and a final polishing paste. After I'd done that, I applied a coat of Future to each clear part. Even then, there were one or two blemishes. In the end I thought 'sod it' - it looks good enough to me. You could theoretically keep finding fault & never be happy, but in the end I came to the realisation that I am scratchbuilding everything - there are bound to be bits I'm not 100% happy with...

The hardest parts to form were probably the skylight windows on the top as there are complicated curves involved. Hot water and lots of bending / sanding involved here:

A test fit:

[richdlc]

All the cockpit area bits were now painted & glued in place, including a few more knobs and switches I'd forgotten to add to the I.P. There are some sidewall instruments that I decided not to bother with - frankly they would be invisible anyway...

The nose was then attached & further metal skinning begun...

I also had to attach the top turret permanently - there was no possibility of adding it after I'd glued on the cockpit roof...

As I was working from the nose backwards, the next part I got to that needed addressing was the wing root area on each side. When the wings are removed, there is still a substantial protruding bit that blends into the fuselage. Luckily I had saved the bits I removed way back at the start of the build - I modified the front and rear pieces and stuck them on around the wing root:

Here's the real deal:

I could then build up the pewter panels around them like this:

After that I carried on skinning the front half of the plane...I referred to my reference pics to get the panel lines and rivet patterns as accurate as possible....I'm not saying it's 100% correct but unless you are an actual rivet counter, how will you know? It looks OK to me & I'm happy. Purists will argue that the rivets are too heavy - I disagree. But thats just me - I think this particular aircraft merits raised rivets, even in 1/32....what do you think?

[richdlc]

The underside will be completely invisible, therefore I didn't bother with riveting these panels:

Now here we have a comparison - my model vs the HK Models kit. At first glance, they are similar in length, give or take a few mm. My kit is much more 'bulky' if that's the right word. The HK kit is somewhat 'delicate' to my eyes - mind you, better minds than mine have designed this kit. In certain areas I have certainly overestimated the size of things - windows, the astrodome openingetc...Here are some pics so you can see for yourselves:

HK kit has narrower roof, smaller astrodome opening, smaller windscreen and larger cockpit roof windows. (regarding the latter point, I think HK have it right - I was debating for some time whether to make my roof windows longer to the rear - however, due to the way I've scratched the interior, I have over / under estimated in some respects, therefore larger windows extending further to the rear weren't viable)

I've also either made my waist gun windows far too large, or the HK kit has them far too small. It would be a lot of effort to change mine now so I'll leave them - unless someone physically puts the two side by side, I don't think it'll be a problem in terms of authenticity. I honestly think the vac kit is engineered a bit bigger and fatter than the HK kit, hence the need for slightly larger openings.

One thing I think that HK has definitely got right is the shape of the fuselage cross section at the nose end - it should be like a 'U' with flared sides. I mentioned this in earlier posts & decided not to add this feature to mine as I'd already gone too far with construction. Once the nose transparency is on, I don't think it'll be that noticeable. Here's the HK one:

and mine:

Finally for this update, here's a few shots of the battle damage area behind the cockpit. I left this area until last on this side of the plane as I need to add some stringers & ribs to the inside of the blown out panels. To simulate blown rivets, I used the riveting tool as usual & then used a dentist's tool (basically a sharp spike) to poke through each one from the rear - I then removed excess metal on the front with a sharp scalpel blade. To simulate ripped metal, I attacked the edges with some needle nosed pliers. Once the model is finished, I'll be able to decide on the final position of the blown out panels. But here's very roughly what it'll look like:

the panel on the roof surrounding the top turret has been left loose for now as I need to do further work on it...