brahman104

Very nice! There's something so mesmerising about machined parts Love your work. Craig

Well if your first effort with the Revell one anything to go by, this one's going to be a stunner! Craig

Very nice Kent! Especially the figures Craig

Hey Perry, thanks so much for chipping in on the build . Thanks for the suggestion, although I'm not familiar with cigar boxes and that sounds like a pretty specialised product (perhaps not available in NZ, especially considering the current Government's stance on smoking in general.....) In any case, I'll keep it in mind for the future! Thanks again for the suggestion Perry.... wow, that post was quite a long time ago! Not sure if you've had a chance to read some of more recent activity on the build but I do use quite a lot of those wheels for my current work. I can't quite remember the context of that post now but I do think it was in trying to emboss rivets into very thin strips which would be very hard with one of those wheels. In any case, I've devised new processes to get around that issue as my experience has grown. Thanks again for chipping in, I hope you'll enjoy the rest of the build as well! Cheers, Craig

Thanks Terry! Yeah the whole experience was more than a little nerve wracking, but then I'm so used to hacking away big sections of this and rebuilding them I don't think anything scares me anymore! I still feel I got pretty lucky with the whole process, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out . Agreed, it may not be 100% but it'll certainly do it for me! Cheers, Craig

Looks great! Craig

Bravo Sir!!!! No wonder you are over the moon Jay! I doubt the real ones fit that well . Can't wait to see those cowl flaps on. Just one more epic sub-chapter in an incredibly epic build! Craig

Hi Chris, welcome to the saga! Thanks for looking in and commenting on the build, who doesn't love a B-17 right? Feel free to provide input from your experiences; I've learned a lot during this build, but still far from being an expert........ I hope you enjoy the rest of the journey; it's far from over yet! Craig

Thanks Jay! Glad that's over with, and very happy with the result! I think I got lucky this time and got away with it....... My experiences here and following your corsair has certainly shown me the value of good planning and mocking up. Definitely something to consider for any future project this complex. Oh yes, I'd imagine a 1/18 P-38 is probably almost the same size! Lucky I build slow Craig

Thanks Tom! Well if it passes your keen eyes than I must be on the right track! . It'll certainly be unique, that's for sure.... Ah yes the main gear bays....... I need to return to them soon. Thanks for the reminder Craig

Thanks very much for your kind words and unending encouragement on this build Peter! The rivets are still very much a skill in development (as is the metal work in general as I'm sure you'd agree!). It's definitely your work which inspires me to push my skills further Grumman Duck you say? Yes please! The raised rivets are perhaps a little less forgiving than the recessed ones, but I certainly can't imagine you shying away from a challenge like that! "I am seriously envious of what you will have on the shelf at the end of this!" But will you be envious of the size of the shelf I'll need to put it on? Well I think I've just about succeeded in my personal "mission impossible." I never would have dreamed when I made the bay those years ago that it would fight me this hard, but I guess that's what you get for not having the best forward plan It may not be perfect, but I've managed to hide the butchery of the bays, while preserving the operation of the doors. As you'll recall, this is what I had to try and hide... And on the inside.... To this..... And on the other side.... Due to the uneven grinding on this side, I ended up having to cut the "Z" cap into 3 pieces, but still not bad when you consider what it looked like before. For the record, the "Z" cap on this side alone took about 2 hours to get right........ a lot of nervous test fitting of a very delicate part! You can see where I still had to grind some relief into the cap....... that's how tight the fit is in there! And from the outside. This..... To this.... It may still be a little rough, but I'll take it! The battle of the bay is over. I still need to put a few more details inside, but I can now happily move onto something else (there's a right waist window that is screaming out for me to finish!). Till next time, Craig

I wish there was a standing ovation emoji! Those panels are just spectacular! Could you sand/fill the wrinkles once everything is dry, or is there too much risk of deforming the panel? In any case, brilliant work! Do you want to come and make my bomb bay doors fit better? Craig

Man this is incredible! Great work Craig

Lovely work Peter! The raised rivets look really neat . I certainly wouldn't call updates showing the skinning process "dry" at all! Always a pleasure to watch the progress. Craig

Thanks Gazza, it's actually a lot easier to photograph on an overcast day Couldn't agree more Jay! Although I'd definitely say you're winning looking at how everything is sitting together in one piece Thanks Matt! I had exactly the same thought about it; does look a bit fish-like without the rest of it. Probably need to do another mock up once the fuselage is more or less finished. Thanks Rockie!

Nice find! Does the gap at the front close easily or will it need some heavy clamp work to pull it together? Craig

Thanks so much Gazza. I'm impressed you're still following along after all this time! Progress on the bomb bay seems to have gone painfully slow, probably mostly due to the complexity of the task at hand. The doors finally received some love in the form of paint. May not be accurate at all, but the green did break up the otherwise ocean of silver. It worked well on the bomb bay ribs, and I think looks pretty nice on the doors too. It was a very slow process, and painted without masking as I wanted to test my freehand skills..... First of all, here's them ready for paint. And painted. I used some black panel line wash to impart a grubby look to it... The bomb bay was still lacking the hyd system and other details, so I got to work adding them. Here's the reservoir...... This is actually the second reservoir. The first one slipped when I was gluing it in the bay (working from upside down), fell through the #4 bulkhead door and disappeared somewhere inside the front end. Try as I might I simply couldn't find it, so wherever it is, it's in there for good! Mega frustrating, but at least you can't see it.... Here it is in place with some other details.... That done, I was back to the doors.... Got the outside covered too. The fit was pretty good all things considered, just a bit of a lip at the front, which I can't explain where it came from. Especially as I can't see inside the bays where they're closed to figure out the source of the interference. Looks a bit rougher than IRL, but the important thing to note here is the magnets work! The doors hold shut nicely against gravity.... Very happy! She now looks a lot more complete on the underside And not too shabby with them open either.... Starting to look a bit more business-like Next up, how do I hide this very ugly gap on both the inside and outside of the hinge area? After a bit of thought, I decided that two opposing L shaped pieces should do the trick. The first one covers the massive hole on the outside, while leaving recesses for the hinges to move in, like the real thing.... When the door is opened, it goes a long way to covering the inside gap too... I haven't made the second piece yet, but it'll actually be more of a "Z" shape, to join the L and cover the bottom of the truss. I think hope the metal should be thin enough to not cause any further clearance issues for the doors when closed, but we'll see once I've built it . That's a tomorrow problem! I'm definitely seeing an end to the work in the bomb bay area. It's been a hell of a lot of work (that I didn't anticipate), but I'm really glad I can open and close the doors to suit. I think I'll still build a ferry tank to go in there as well as some bombs, seeing as that was a pretty typical load during the early days. I may even get that tail on this year!!!! Cheers, Craig

Not that I can compare my build to yours at all Jay, but almost every time I work on it, there's always something that I did years ago which now changes or impacts what I'm doing now. Some things I can change, others I have to accept. I know your quest is for perfection as far as humanly possible and you've done everything humanly possible to achieve that in scale, so I know it sucks when you get little things like this that only show up when it's way too late to correct them. Regardless of the real world outcomes, I've just been looking at that close up shot. I'm not seeing a ground down rocker cover; I'm staring in absolute amazement that this is a SCRATCH BUILT 18 cylinder engine! You've come all this way and you've only had to grind back a rocker cover slightly? You Sir, have absolutely nailed modelling perfection! Craig

Nice Tim! I'm looking forward to following this one. Is this the gun position you're talking about? (Hopefully the link works) https://worldwar2database.com/gallery/wwii0005 Craig

Says no-one in the universe except you Jay.... . This whole project is a case study in precision engineering! Exceptional work on the cowl. Even if I'd made a pencil mark most of mine would have still ended up at a 45 degree angle or something. So good, and waiting for more! Craig

Tremendous Peter! It already looks 90% finished on that underneath shot! Nothing better than being up close and personal with the real deal..... Craig

Nice one Kent! Really looking forward to seeing you tackle the polished finish on this one Craig

I hear you Pat. I think I printed about 16 cowlings, and only just managed to get 4 that were passable. Tried every orientation/combination I could think of, but just couldn't get them as nice and repeatable as I would've liked. Which is why I'm super impressed at that tail section of yours! Good luck with the next attempt! Craig

MEGA COOL Pat! The first section turned out awesome! Super impressed you included the tail wheel trunnion in the print too...... how did you manage the supports for that? Craig

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