brahman104

Good luck with it Tim! It'll be quite some time before I get to mine, but I'll be following yours with interest. For what it's worth, I agree with Dark Dull Green as you've said, if nothing else then I think just for the look. Cheers, Craig

Many thanks Brian! Thanks Terry! Yours and everyone else's ceaseless words of encouragement are what keeps a build like this going, especially after all this time! Well now, where did that last month go? Oh yeah that's right, I was in NZ for a week, then two days at home, then down to Avalon with work. Oh how times flies - literally!!!!! I finally had a quietish weekend (notwithstanding getting my house broken into and laptop stolen) and I really wanted to have a crack at covering the waist windows with aluminium. As these are riveted over the top of the existing skin, I can get them all ready to go now, then place them on at a later date (about June, 2035 at my rate!). This like many other aspects of this build, promised to be highly challenging, especially as there is a formed depression in the metal to meet the rear of the window, as well as the openings for the wind deflectors and the forward observation window. Have a look below at how the adventure unfolded...... First up was to cut the piece oversize and anneal if for forming the depression. I did this over the "inside" of the acrylic frame I had already made. The unfortunate by-product being that the metal was now very soft, so removing the three apertures for the windows was quite tricky and very time consuming.... Slowly, I began to make headway, but I really needed a solid support so I didn't unnecessarily distort the shape. I vac formed another piece of the fuselage section and taped the piece inside so as to keep the curvature.... Trying to get a nice shape to the front window was extremely difficult, and took a lot of filing then rechecking against the reference pics... I finally got there though, and with rivets applied (heaps of fun!) it was glued in place on the acrylic window sill.... A close up of the front showing the rivets to good effect. A little more shaping of the wind deflector port there and it's not looking too bad! Yet a bit more whittling and the previously shaped waist window fits nicely! Still got to line the windows with aluminium, but it does fit! Yay! I also redid the top cap on the tail cone to make it look a bit neater..... not entirely how they did it in real life but this piece is small!!!!! I promise I'll start the tail wheel soon! Cheers, Craig

Those pipes are EPIC!!!!! I can absolutely appreciate just how hard that must've been, but you've got to be happy with those results Peter... Craig

Well done Jay. I can definitely appreciate how hard it would've been to fabricate the panels with the lugs and cover them. No small feat there mate! Craig

Sweet work Jay! I don't know how you managed that flap leading edge so well. You are truely a master of styrene! Craig

Every little bit is a masterpiece. Can you stop being awesome? Even just for one day? Brilliant work my friend, and inspirational! I think I need to dust off my lathe too, although unfortunately mine doesn't produce magic like yours seems to. Your pace of completion is staggering, piece by piece! Craig

This has definitely been a build of innumerable firsts Terry, but at the end, what have I got to lose? If I stuff up a part, I make a new one and hopefully learn from the mistake and not repeat it! Hahaha Many thanks Peter! I remember all the "fun" you had with your Spit, but you DID nail it in the end! I feel I have come to an understanding with Acrylic, and it seems to be working for me, so I'd very much imagine that you'll be able to coax it to your will with your magician-like skills Acrylic definitely is the way to go my friend! Thanks Wolf! Great to hear from you! Hahaha, yes you're right! I'll have not very much of a HK B-17 that took an awful long time! But it will be worth it! I can't wait to get the fuselage all closed up, and get working on that beautiful aluminium finish! Mid-week mini update before things get hectic for about a month again! I thought you guys would be keen to see what the tail cone looks like with the rest of the tail in place (I know I was!) Not bad... line-up looks good, but how does it measure up with the rudder in play? Not too shabby at all! For those that are familiar, the tail cone does stick out a little further than the edge of the fin. For a while I was worried I was going to come up short! I'd love nothing more than to fit it to the fuselage now, but there's some hoops to jump through first.... Hoop 1. Polishing..... I think it was Torben who was asking about how I was going to polish the acrylic, the answer is SLOWLY and WET. Only done a little tonight on one half, but it seems to be working so far. Both inside faces had a fair amount of distortion due to imperfections in my hydrocal casts (Should have had a better finish on these!), but patient sanding with a 400 grit sanding stick, followed by progressive grades of 3M sanding sponges, up to microfine, seems to be going well. I haven't use any form of polish or micromesh yet, so it should look even better after that, if the one on the right is anything to go by! Hoop 2. The tailcone needs to be one piece prior to final fitment onto the fuselage. This can't happen without Step 1, so each side needs to be internally as flawless as I can make them, as I won't be able to get inside once they're joined together..... Hoop 3. Both fuselage halves need to be joined. Well hoop 3 is going to take a while to sort out for obvious reasons, but in the meantime there's plenty of polishing practice for me! Cheers, Craig

Thanks Peter! Clever use of the tool indeed! You still make it look so easy though Craig

Hahaha, another challenge laid down Terry? Sounds do-able with the .50 mounts though, should be fun! About the windows, my thinking is a slight lip on the interior that will hold the window in place - a slight concession from the real thing I know but I think it's the practical solution! I still have to shape the other side yet, and yes, include the wind deflectors! Thanks for the reminder! Yep, you are right! In fact I ended up selling most of the remainder of the kit as parts to another Gentleman in England a while ago, so I'm definitely committed to that! Very small update: Got some successful pulls on the left and right hand clear tailcone sections yesterday. They don't look like too much now but once they're shaped, they should be a pretty close representation of the original...... I suppose I'd better have some working LED bombing signals to go in there too! Pretty happy that they line up with the existing tail piece almost perfectly, considering I made that piece about 4 years ago! Cheers, Craig

Peter, I've been doing some much needed catch up on your build. You're really smashing ahead with this! I am curious though, how did you glue the styrene strip so straight on your PE strips to make those stringers? Did you have to brace it taught at either end? In any case, a tremendous result! Cheers, Craig

Thanks Kev, yep pretty lucky. There's plenty of places that went under! Thanks Brian! Thanks Shawn! I am really enjoying working with acrylic.

Thanks Torben! I used 0.8mm acrylic sheet. Probably the thickest you'd want to go for vac forming, as you have a window of literally seconds between the sheet being soft enough to form and it getting too hot it bubbles. I've timed it to 1 minute and 50 seconds from cold. At 1.52 the bubbles start! In regards to polishing it out, so would I!

Alrighty, after replying to 11 comments I think it was time to summarise the latest effort in a new post The latest little adventure in the journey has been aimed at trying to wrangle some acceptable looking transparent parts. Now, as you guys know, the early B-17's had some really interesting looking clear parts, prior to the introduction of power turrets on the E model. First of all, and perhaps more importantly, is that after lengthy discussions with Terry (TKB) about cowling shapes and always referring to this build as a C/D as I hadn't made up my mind, I finally decided that I will be making this a C model. The two mains reasons are a) cowl shape and no flaps (just to differentiate a little more from later models) and b) single .50 mounts in the radio room and bathtub, so there's more room to see the detail inside! Anyway you guys came for the pics, so here they are.... First of all, I made patterns in Hydrocal for vac forming an assortment of clear parts. What's the big rectangular one you might ask? hopefully, that will be become clear soon (pardon the pun....) First of all, I did the observer's dome. This came out looking pretty good, and best of all, a nice match to the hatch I'd already made in the laser cutter.. *disclaimer - I have yet to polish theses too Seeing I was on a win, next came the waist windows. This is where the rectangular piece came in - it is a representative piece of fuselage with the correct curvature at the waist window. I would form oversize pieces then patiently whittle them down to fit in the previously made holes in the fuselage. Then, I made the removable window separately, including its triangular shaped depression at the rear for the gun barrel. This was then traced onto the waist window and the excess carefully removed. This took most of the day to do, with many, many dry fits!!!!!! Till I finally had a very nice fit in the existing window Now the real trick. I also had to continue the relief on the back side of the existing window (although this is formed in aluminium on the real thing, so I didn't include it in the master shape. I had an idea that I could just vac-form and extra 2 removable windows and graft the triangle piece onto the rear. And so with much more careful "whittling" of the acrylic, I ended up with this.... And now for the "in-use" shots... Yes, they still need a lot of cleaning up, but for something I have been absolutely dreading doing for so long, it didn't really end up being that hard, just a lot of careful and laborious filing and sanding to get things to fit. Not completely there yet, but I'm chalking that up for the win!!!!! I think I'm finally starting to tame this beast!!! Craig p.s. Luckily the Townsville floods did not affect the house, or much more importantly, my workbench!!!!!!!!

Thanks Shawn! Haha, going by that premise, I wonder whole many "OOB" kits in effort I will have done by the time I finish this! Thanks Jay! Still have a lot to learn on the machining side, but I really love working with acrylic! Cheers, Dennis Hi Peter, as always an absolute pleasure to read your kind words! I've got a lot of catch up to play with your Mustang too! Thanks Torben Cheers Rich. You know how important that area is! Many thanks indeed Mario! I'd hardly call myself a master though! Have you seen how many times I rebuild stuff!!!! Hahaha You always have such encouraging words Terry! Whatever term is used to describe what I'm doing here, I think it's finally starting to get somewhere! Thank you Brian! I know you are no stranger to corrective surgery yourself Braver or more foolhardy? Hahahaha

Very nice! Always love a good helo build! I'll be following with interest! Craig