brahman104

For someone that hates cockpits, you're sure doing a lovely job! Craig

Wow!!! How did you make those little toggle switches next to the gunsight? Amazing stuff! Craig

Hi Oliver, yeah I'm pretty sure it was me at fault. All part of the journey! Thanks Shawn. Yeah I'm not that worried about it. I have more resin coming, life is good! Lots of other little bits and pieces to keep me going in the meantime

Thanks Tom! I reckon I should've just built a real one..... I'd probably finish it quicker! Thanks very much mate! I'm really enjoying it. So, resin printing..... seems I've still got a lot to learn!!! Having just moved, I didn't have a huge amount of resin, and I wasn't too sure how good the stuff I did have was. In any case, it seems that orientation and supports are even more important than with FDM printing. This is how my nacelle turned out.... You can see a big line where for some reason it slipped or shifted during the print process, not terrible except for this..... This is what happens when you don't pay enough attention to the orientation and supports........ I took me about an hour to remove to the point of what you see here, and going to take a whole heap more time to clean this up! Want to see it get worse? I knew I was pushing my luck, but I tried to quickly set up the other side to print. I think this was definitely a case of the resin being no good.... Exactly the same drawing, just mirrored...... As I said, this is entirely operator error. It does go to show you how finicky resin printing is! Anyway there's more resin on the way now, so I'll have another go when it gets here. Luckily it's not going to hold up the build at this point. On a positive note, I've been steadily grinding away and test fitting the nose halves to the fuselage. Looking good!! In the last one you can see a significant "step" in the sides. I thought about trying to correct that but I think it will be easier and stronger in the long run to blend them later. There's definitely going to be some heavy filling and sanding once I permanently attach them, but that's life! Here's what I've had to grind away so far on the inside..... I'm trying to get as much of the messy grinding and fitting work done prior to attaching the sides back on now, including painting. I'm even considering the cockpit/nose glass at this point as it might become too difficult to fit later! Cheers, Craig

Very interesting! You know I never even noticed those floorboards you are talking about, nor that the rear seats were lower than the front. I think mine are pretty much level, but I'll keep them that way as I've done enough damage to the forward section as it stands! Looking great Pat, and great research too. There's some very interesting photos getting posted here, especially the one of the B-17E interior with the remote turret.... that'll come in handy in the future! Keep up the good work. Craig

Back again, I spent an entire day just drawing the aperture where the turbocharger lives under the nacelle, along with establishing a mounting "flange" to increase the strength of the join once the finished part is back in the wing. Here's what I had to add. Looks pretty easy, but there's some very tricky curves and angles in there.... Even though I was reasonably confident that I had nailed the dimensional stuff right, I still did a trial print before committing to resin, just to be sure.... Looks pretty good to me! Of course there's heaps of other details that could be added to the drawing, but as I'm going to skin this with litho anyway there was kind of no point. There's also little air inlets and things around the cowl but I'm also keeping in generic enough to reuse on the E/F. The resin print will go on tomorrow morning. Hopefully it goes according to plan! Cheers, Craig

The rib detail looks fantastic! If I had have had a resin printer when I did mine, this definitely would've been the way to go! Looks like you'll have this done in no time..... probably before I finish mine! Craig

Great start Pat! I can't wait to see your approach to the project. Many, many ways to skin the cat so to speak! At least you have a good idea of what doesn't work from me . Glad you've started a thread for this. Good luck! Craig

Well you made that look easy! I'll have to give your method a go when it comes to my tail surfaces. Thanks for the tip! Craig

Well at least you're well practiced in building large under-fuselage radiators! Can't wait to se what you do with this one. Craig

I'm not normally one for 109 builds but seeing the job you did on your corsair I'm definitely following this one! Craig

Wow! Those bags and the little details you are adding here are super impressive, and really adding a sense of life to the build! Great stuff! Craig

Great to see you back on this one Tom! I'm sure you've watched this before but I only just came across it this morning. The first thing I noticed was the rear fuselage having flat sides, just as you pointed out!!! It's quite interesting how one plane was available as either a nose wheel OR tail dragger! Can't wait to see more! Craig

Beautiful work as always Wolf! Sorry to hear about the work situation but it's good to see you're making good use of your time and continuing to amaze the rest of us with your talents. Crsaig

A bit more progress to show. I've had some solid bench time lately so I've been able to concentrate on getting things right, and trial a few other innovations as you'll see shortly..... First of all, the cleanup on the nose continues. I'm taking my time to clean up as much as I can now with the two halves together, before they separate again and rejoin their respective fuselage sides. Getting the observer's top hatch to sit nicely has been quite time consuming, but definitely worth it to do now! I also added a bit of a styrene "shim" to the front to make the nose cone fit a little better. And a good scene of carnage for you You'll recall my efforts to adjust the height of the outboard nacelle from a while ago.... While this approach had merit, I would still have to correct the profile for each side, and considering I have two other B-17 projects to do eventually, I wanted a more repeatable, predictable solution..... A bit of a gamble, but I decided on a full remove and replace option. Hopefully, this would give me a much easier solution (as I would only have to draw one side, once). This turned out to really tax my brain, as working out a decent reference point, plus trying to make sure the kit's wing profiles were captured was some of the most challenging work I've done on this kit. Simple, easy to read drawings of the outboard nacelles are a little tricky to find, but I used my good old eyeball once again to make something that while maybe not 100% correct, still looked better than the kit option..... It started with removing a big chunk of wing: I used the kit's rivet lines and rear spar location as my datums for top and bottom (hopefully HK got them the same both sides!) Once I had my hole, I then traced profiles of each face to be replicated.... After a lot of mental gymnastics in Rhino, I made a simple profile mockup to make sure I'd got things right.... Not completely refined or complete yet, but I can't believe I pretty much got it right! I've still got to add a lot of detail and then the final product will once again be in resin, but I feel it's a quantum leap forward in regards to my original approach.... I do apologise in that it is very difficult to portray in a photograph what it actually looks like in real life, but the important thing is that the "thrust line" of the engine is now lower than the leading edge of the wing, exactly as it should be. In all, I only have to tweak the inside aft edge of the inboard profile just a little to get it to line up with the wing profile when viewed from the front... if that makes sense? Anyway, this is a huge step forward once again, and I'm looking forward to showing you a finished nacelle printed in resin hopefully in the near future! Cheers, Craig