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Greif8

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Everything posted by Greif8

  1. Sorry for the screw up Tim! In my defense I have been following a lot of builds and got confused. Ernest
  2. Outstanding work and clever solutions Mike! I admire you preserverence in correcting the fit issue. Like you I build in sequence and almost never have more than one build active at one time. I like to concentrate on the task at hand as it were. I look forward to following along when you restart the build. Ernest
  3. Thank you Dennis! Hopefully everything that I have either modified or scratchbuilt will look ok when it gets primed and painted. Keeping my fingers crossed! Ernest
  4. I was never able to get consistently good results using Montex type masks had the habit of slightly pulling up at the edge as you describe above, or the shrank in storage making them unusable. I use kabuki tape type masks exclusively now. Ernest
  5. Brilliant work John! Your solution for the fastners was quite clever. Ernest
  6. Pretty cool logo on the beer Jim. Living in Bavaria makes me a bit of a beer connoisseur I guess, and I like to find out about different beers. Ernest
  7. I feel your pain John, I never could get Vallejo acrylics to work well either. I ended up selling every bottle I had. Ernest
  8. I continued to work on improving some of the small parts today; and again spent a lot of time thinking through possible solutions and working on them. I again used some brass rod and tube that I had on hand to fashion a (hopefully) better pitot tube. I used the kit part as a guide for both length and circumference and cut the brass tube to the correct length. I cut the rod a bit longer for stability once I inserted and glued it into the tube. Below is a comparision of the kit part with the pitot tube I made. I beveled the end of the tube that the rod was inserted into as I thought that looked better. I also rounded the end of the rod to look a bit more like most pitot tubes I have seen. I drilled out the hole in the leading edge of the wing to fit the tube into. Test fitting showed the fit to be very good and the junction of the scratchbuilt part and wing looks like it will do the job. Below is an overall shot with the pitot tube test fit in place. I also spent a considerable amount of time thinking about and looking into ways to replace the kit Ho-103 machine gun barrels. They are badly aligned, the muzzles are not really accurate and they are somewhat over sized as well. I tried various solutions to scratch build two barrels but none of them turned out satisfactorially. In the end, I cheated and used a couple of extra Master Models .50 caliber barrels. The Ho-103 was a close copy of the M2 .50 cal. and looking at the actual barrels in pictures I finally realized that they look very close to the Master U.S. .50 cal. barrels. So I modified a couple of spares to fit and called it good. Though not 100% perfect, they look darn close to the barrels I looked at in photos, and they look better than the kit parts for sure.
  9. I am an American. My mother was German and I live in Germany in a small village. One of our neighbors are from Poland and over the years they have taught me a fair amount of Polish. I travel to Poland 3-4 times a year to take groups of U.S. military personnel to look at battlefields in your country, so it was a good idea to gain at least basic skills in the Polish language. I can do ok speaking, but my reading and writing is probably only 2nd or 3rd grade level. Życzę miłego tygodnia i jeszcze raz powtarzam, Twój samolot jest piękny. Ernest
  10. Brilliant solution and work on the insulators and antenna wire overall man! I think your solution looks quite convincing. Ernest
  11. Nice progress Michael! The wheel wells look quite good. Ernest
  12. Mine to Gary, lots to mess up if you don't watch what you are doing. If the wing fit was as good as the fit of the fuselage halves I probably would have only spent 15-30 minutes cleaning them up. Ernest
  13. Spent a good deal of time modifying some of the kit parts today, as well as working on the wing/fuselage joints. Lots of time measuring, cutting, sanding and polishing. Looking at what I got done today it sure does not look like I accomplished much, but progress is progress I suppose! The joints of the wings and fuselage took a bit of work to get cleaned up, but the end result looks ok, for now - we'll see what it looks like under primer. After spending what seemed like hours and left me feeling like I was waxing and polishing Mr. Miyagi's car I finally got the wing joints decent and turned to the next little issue - the weapons. The kit parts were all very badly misaligned; so much so that getting any of them sanded into decent shape was pretty hopeless. What to do??? After thinking the problem through I decided to modify the cannons, replacing all but a small piece with some brass rod and tube. First I cut some old brass tube to the correct length using the kit part as a guide. Next I cleaned up and beveled the muzzle. Then I cut a piece of brass rod sized to fit in the tube and cut off the kit barrel from the umm - mounting collar and drilled that out. The rod was glued into the tube and the "collar" was fit over and glued to the rod and the assembly(s) were set aside for fitting into place later. I then spent a fair amount of time drilling and routing out the ends of the exhausts; afterwhich, I added weld beads using some stretched sprue. While I did not achieve absolute perfection the end result looks much better. The two pictures below contrast the difference the modified part makes for the final result. I still need to do some minor cleaning up of the modified exhausts, but they look better than the part before modification.
  14. Pech gehabt! I have already pre-ordered and paid €119 to MBK. It is an expensive kit to be sure. Ernest
  15. Good subject for a build and very nice work to start off with! Ernest
  16. Bardzo piękne PrzemoL! (Man I hope I spelled that right, I can speak Polish ok, but I struggle reading and writing it. ) You did a great job weathering the aircraft and the cockpit looks outstanding as well. Great build all around. Ernest
  17. Nice start denders, the cockpit looks like it is pretty good. Ernest
  18. Thank you for the detailed discription of how you made the water Chuck. Ernest
  19. Awesome job Chuck! The ship looks spot on and the muzzle blast looks very good. Your water depiction is exceptionally well done. You got the right hues and the wave action caused by the ship's movement through the water looks exactly as it should, as does the wake. May I ask how you replicated the water? I built this kit a few years ago also in a battle scene, though mine is a nighttime scene showing the opening phase of what was known as "The First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal". Though I was ( and still am) satisified with how the water turned out in my diorama, I think you got the look of the transverse waves and wake more accurate then I managed. Ernest
  20. "Hobbie, I'm hit!" Great work Alain, and I echo what others have said about the 3D parts being great upgrades. The Battle of Hoth is one of my favorite scenes from the movies and extremely well done; it still holds up today more than 40 years after it was filmed. Ernest
  21. The dragon looks really nice Brian and I think the wall is awesome. If I could talk my wife into it I would do a Viking motif. Perhaps when my children have moved out and I can co-opt one of their bedrooms to turn into a model display room. I have some friends that are into fantasy type gaming that use miniatures and I have painted my share of dragons, much smaller than yours, and other figures. It certainly is a change of pace from military subjects. Have fun with the build! Ernest
  22. I can't take credit for the dimples Gary, the panels came that way. To be honest I did not notice the dimples until you pointed them out. That would be a pretty tough thing to replicate unless the plastic was very soft. I am not brave enough to try it, that's for sure! Ernest
  23. Nice progress Chuck, and I agree with Gaz - there is sure a lot of detailed parts in the kit! I have the He-219 kit and it also has a ton of parts. Ernest
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