brahman104

Exactly why you owed it to yourself to skin this masterpiece Jay! Beautiful work on the covering. It certainly brings the exterior up to match all the hard work you've put into the interior. Back to reading the rest of your post, but I had to comment on that when I read it! EDIT: Just finished reading the rest of your post. Can't tell you enough how much I enjoy seeing all the engineering effort in this build. Not only in the fabrication of individual parts, but also the clever creation of fixtures to bring all those parts together as assemblies. I doubt anyone here is ever going to tire of this thread! Craig

Nice! Sounds like a solid plan for the printing Pat; hope it works out okay. I'm still blown away by your CAD work; you certainly seem to have made short work of elements that took me months/years to work out! As far as the panel line details in the skin are concerned, how deep did you go with them? Sorry for all the questions, just a massive fan of your work! Can't wait to see this printed. Craig

Absolutely incredible Pat! You'll have the whole plane drawn within a week at this rate! Simply amazing stuff. As Kevin said, do all the pieces come apart to get printed individually? What skin thickness did you end up with? Great job! Craig

That is absolutely gorgeous Pat! I wish I'd been able to subcontract you ages ago . Very impressive set of drawings, looks like you've been able to interpret how it all fits in there very well indeed. Can't wait to see some of this printed! Have you had a look at the cockpit/nose section yet? P.S. probably don't open the bomb bay....... not sure if it's worth the hurt I'm going though!!!!!! Craig

Thank you Sir! Yeah I agree, the little round ones are probably easier to work with due to their size. I should definitely invest is some plastic tweezers though! Cheers, Craig

Thanks so much Peter! A lot going on there but I think I'm winning, slowly.......

Thanks for the "shop" photos Peter! Wow, that proxxon mill is tiny! But you're certainly doing very well with what you've got to work with.....clearly I have no excuses! Another brilliant update, the gear legs are looking absolutely exquisite! Craig

Thanks so much Brian!

Thanks Terry! I couldn't find square ones readily as I think these are mostly used for gaming miniatures, but they do the job and they're bloody strong! I'll be attempting to hide them under some kind of aluminium box structure to make them look less out of place..... You may have just given me a good idea! I wasn't really confident I was going to be able to hide those pin marks very well, so perhaps working your plan might be the way to go. It'd certainly add visual interest like I did in the rest of the bay...... good idea! I think I'll run with it Cheers mate! Oh yeah, really regretting fixing the centre truss in place, but you know I like to give myself a challenge..........

Thanks mate! Didn't realise that Mustang flew over Whanganui the other day. Now that I think about it I did hear something distinctly "non-spitfire" over Ohakea around that time....... Guess it'll become a more regular sound in these skies over the next 12 months all going well

True that my friend! It always amazes me just how closely our builds are running in parallel!

Beautiful work! Thank you for showing the "in-progress" shots in the lathe/mill. Always informative to see how parts are created Keep it up! Craig

Go Jay!!! Awesome to hear you looking at paint options and methods, a sure sign things are moving along! I've been thinking about those issues ahead for me, and as I can't get MRP paint here in NZ, I'm trying SMS which will hopefully work (and they have their own etch primer as well). Really excited to see what's next on this epic journey! Craig

Small update. Still chipping away slowly at the bomb bay mechanism. It's been a real challenge to make this work, and I've still got a long way to go to dress everything back up to the way it was, but at least it's functioning now! First up was to find somewhere to put the magnets which hold the doors shut. They still need to be hidden with some kind of creative looking bracket, but you can see them in the middle of the centre bomb racks.... You don't realise how how you take using tweezers for granted until you use magnets and realise they stick to them a lot more than where you want them to go! For such a simple task, this took a lot of effort to fix them in place! I then rebuilt the door rib detail with a steel strip along the inboard face to give the magnets something to cling to, other than my tweezers....... Man there is some horrible ejector pin marks to try and eliminate..... still working on those! And success!!!! Both doors remain closed, but are easy enough to pop open again. Not sure how much heavier they'll get once they're skinned and painted, so I may need another set of magnets, but for now they work It's hard to describe the amount of effort it took to make the above photo possible! The actuators have been soaking in the burnishing solution. While burnishing the brass solved one problem with not having to paint them, it presented another with the shaft surface becoming quite rough, making the movement though the actuators not as smooth as I would have liked, but it can be done with care. I'll still call that a win for its complexity! I'll still have to do some painting of them, but it least the fluid covered most of the parts. As you can see then doors and hinge areas still need a lot of work to make them presentable, but the fact that the bomb doors can now be positioned either open or closed as required is a huge step forward! Hopefully I'll have these all sorted soon and I can get onto running some more details in the bay, such as the hydraulic system and some electrical "shields." That's all for now team, but rest assured there's always something happening! Craig

Your attention to detail is incredible Sean! I know what you mean about rivet line references.... they're almost never correct or at best, contradictory. Craig