Thomas Lund

Oh my that is soooo beautiful I have a Griffon conversion lying around, I must get to that one soon !! This build has certainly inspired me now...

Please put me down as a recipient - will check the stash for anything interesting

Oh gawd I hope so ... One of my top wishes... in both A-20 and Boston version please

I second that - one of the better Trump offerings and yes, do scrap the turbocharger stuff inside

Thanks Craig - will try that

Ok, slow - very slow - but steady progress on this one. Last I posted I had had some shapes to vacuform over 3D printed by a mate. I did a little playing around with the windscreen so see what it would look like with framing on The windscreen was not correct, because I could not do what I wanted in the 3D software, so it was done with styrene and filler. Eventually I got to the point where I was happy with the shape and they were ready for another mate that would vacuform for me. Don't be fooled by the slightly ragged color of these plugs - they were sanded with high gain sandpaper to a baby-bottom finish, but here and there i went through the top coat. So off they went and just yesterday I got them back... but not all was well. The first vacuform pull was great But during the second one the plugs couldn't handle the heat and deformed. Maybe it was not such a good idea to 3D print shapes to vacuform over... Oh well - I got ONE good canopy so I decided to do some testing on the various processes on the melted one and keep the good one for the final try. So naturally looking at the following pictures it doesn't look too good... First - fitting vacuform parts to the fuselage Went allright, so I decided to try and do the frames. These are to be made in some thing metal plate I got hold of - embrossing foil is the direct translation, maybe the right name is something else in English. Anyway, I traced the frames on a tape covering of the windscreen, removed the tape and cut out the shape. This was mounted on a piece of these metal plates - and scanned for later use I cut out the shape and test mounted it on the (bad) windscreen. Just test mounted because I need to work out how to make the foil less shiny and I want to add some rivets to it before I commit to glue...

Yes indeed it was - thanks for remembering

Who doesn't - but when I start one, I run a string of duct tape around the sides of the box and cut the lid 3/4 to make an opening lid... helps a little

wow - stunning finish !!!

Beautiful work !!! Love the weathering but everything is really really well done

Beautiful work !!! Oscar Perdomo's bird - last ace of WWII

Wow that's really nice !!! Gotta do a P-40 soon - so many cool ones around

Impressive work all around... However I seem to remember - and my memory might be off - that the wooden blades were covered with fabric... so I'm not sure if you'll see wood on a chipped blade... Forgive me if I'm remembering it wrong...

I was just going over the last couple of pages (marvelling !!) but it made me think - how do you cut and drill those thin plates and avoid distortion of the cut edges ? I was looking at the flap ribs with the cut-out's in them especially...

uhhhhh very nice - looking forward to following this... Where did you (Cees) get the Bristol Mercury's from ?

Foreigners - non-native pilots in an airforce... plenty of options in WWII at least, I don't know about WWI, vietnam or Korea

Wow, just wow

In principle yes LOL, but I find if I have too many WIP's i get stressed and rush through builds to reduce the stress - and that's never good for quality...

Yeah me too - Hasegawa's F is hard to find and Trumpeter's is not a F at all - but a G-2... I like the Revell kit too, so perhaps one day when I clear all the other WIP's I'll go that way too

Good article but if you dont want to go the Aires way it skips a bit on the canopy part. The G canopy frames were much wider than the F's - if you can get an E canopy you are close.

I've used a couple of Barracuda's for P-51 cockpits and it does wonders to the look of it... so I'm in for a couple of these. Where to order ? http://www.aimsmodels.co.uk is not working for me anymore - and are you still shipping from Hungary (+/-) ?

That is very very nice indeed And I think I've found someone who matches my ability to make updates to WIP threads

Nice work ! I've had good success with doing wingtip lights and landing light covers in the plastic from transparent toothbrushes - polishes out REALLY nice

I just saw the J7 Shinden back - I thought that was gone for good... So it might be like most other manufacturers that they do a run and then another run a few years later...

Very very nice work