TimHepplestone

If anyone's currently embarking in a Vulcan bomber build I would highly recommend watchingâ€Guy Martin's Last Flight of the Vulcan. Currently available on Netflix. Now imagine those in1/32

Beautiful model and beautifully finished (no pun intended) I've also read of difficulties in building this kit. Can we please have a 1/32 kit from a mainstream manufacturer.

RIght, back to the model. Have the weekend off so hoping to spend some quality time at the bench.
1st up some resin exhaust shrouds arrived in the post yesterday- after being stuck in South African customs for 2 months! They were worth the wait though. Base coated tamiya dark iron then weathered with humbrol rust, iron oxide and smoke pigments. Finished with a black wash.
 

RIght, back to the model. Have the weekend off so hoping to spend some quality time at the bench.
1st up some resin exhaust shrouds arrived in the post yesterday- after being stuck in South African customs for 2 months! They were worth the wait though. Base coated tamiya dark iron then weathered with humbrol rust, iron oxide and smoke pigments. Finished with a black wash.
 

Fantastic

Sorry lads. Modelling has been slow. Have spent some time fighting with the glazing. I think I've got about a week of polishing ahead of me to fix my muck ups. In the meantime have been on holiday with the family in South Africa's Kruger National Park. In a small camp with no cell reception, wifi or tv. Sp pardon the non modelling content but here are a few of my mates over the last week....
 


 

 
 
Hopefully back to the Heinkel this week!!!

I've red about guys using very thin Tamiya smoke with a thouch of red/ brown to accentuate the delineation between grey/ green camo. Never been brave enough to try it myself though!!!

Sorry lads. Modelling has been slow. Have spent some time fighting with the glazing. I think I've got about a week of polishing ahead of me to fix my muck ups. In the meantime have been on holiday with the family in South Africa's Kruger National Park. In a small camp with no cell reception, wifi or tv. Sp pardon the non modelling content but here are a few of my mates over the last week....
 


 

 
 
Hopefully back to the Heinkel this week!!!

And this 'Tiger Meet' scheme is all wrong:
 

 
Richard

The paint on that has had a terrible reaction with the primer - just look at the wrinkles!
 
Richard

Sorry lads. Modelling has been slow. Have spent some time fighting with the glazing. I think I've got about a week of polishing ahead of me to fix my muck ups. In the meantime have been on holiday with the family in South Africa's Kruger National Park. In a small camp with no cell reception, wifi or tv. Sp pardon the non modelling content but here are a few of my mates over the last week....
 


 

 
 
Hopefully back to the Heinkel this week!!!

Sorry lads. Modelling has been slow. Have spent some time fighting with the glazing. I think I've got about a week of polishing ahead of me to fix my muck ups. In the meantime have been on holiday with the family in South Africa's Kruger National Park. In a small camp with no cell reception, wifi or tv. Sp pardon the non modelling content but here are a few of my mates over the last week....
 


 

 
 
Hopefully back to the Heinkel this week!!!

Stuck the wings and tailplane on. Just normal modelling but glad to report the fit is good. Realising not this is a very large chunk of plastic!! Once again the little 1/48 109 is there to provide a sense of size. 

Nice job on that control column. I also remember gong through a box of 11blades scraping flash of many of the parts . Especially engine wiring and plumbing. That and the fit of the engine cowlings were my only gripes on what is otherwise an awesome kit though.

Small update as work has interfered with bench time. Spent some time addressing an issue I had with the gondola. The kit gondola is incorrect for an 1940 H2 or H3 version. Fortunatly the kit contains a lot of sprues from the P version. So I ended up by building a hybrid version using a mix of parts from the P and H-6 version to approximate the reference pics. Lots of fettling and I'm sure Heinkel experts out there will point out the lack of accuracy but from 6 feet away it looks ok  
 

 
Thats the reference, and this is what I cobbled together compared to the kit instructions


Scratch build padding from milliput. I have some reference pics showing a rough and ready padded surface that the ventral gunner used. Apparently they refferred to it as the "Sterbebett" meaning deathbed ,as this was the bit fighters tended to open up on first. And I though my job was tough!!
 

 
Needs some gentle attention with a bit of filler. The kit gun barrels are miserable, and I will be replacing them with brass barrels which I've ordered from Hannants a month ago. Not Hannants fault but South African postal service if bleeding erratic at best. 

Sepecat Jaguar in desert pink gulf war colours.
 
Oh and a 1/32 Buccaneer

Might sound silly but I use a lazy Susan with lumps of polystyrene as a paint stand. But them I'm a Yorkshireman, which means deep pockets and short fingers.

Nice reference pics in the engine. Thanks for poasting. Cockpit looking brilliant

Stuck the wings and tailplane on. Just normal modelling but glad to report the fit is good. Realising not this is a very large chunk of plastic!! Once again the little 1/48 109 is there to provide a sense of size. 

While I was at it I added a bit of detail to the cockpit. Some airscale placards and some extra wiring to the control column and rudder pedals.


 
Actually looking at the pics I need to tidy up the wire on the control column a little. I'm sure the Germans arranged their wiring a lot neater than that...

Stuck the wings and tailplane on. Just normal modelling but glad to report the fit is good. Realising not this is a very large chunk of plastic!! Once again the little 1/48 109 is there to provide a sense of size. 

Stuck the wings and tailplane on. Just normal modelling but glad to report the fit is good. Realising not this is a very large chunk of plastic!! Once again the little 1/48 109 is there to provide a sense of size. 

Stuck the wings and tailplane on. Just normal modelling but glad to report the fit is good. Realising not this is a very large chunk of plastic!! Once again the little 1/48 109 is there to provide a sense of size. 

Lovely job on the paint. Really like the OD. I'm with Torben here and would like to know how you achieved that. Post shading with a lightened OD colour?

Enough with the fuselage for a while.  Here is a feature of the 21st Century Toys P-47 that doesn't do it justice - its landing gear:
 

 
The kit has retractable landing gear, but with the heavy gauge plastic wing skins, the only way to fit the tires in is to skinny them up.  These tires are just over half the width they should be if they were to scale.  The diameter is close.  The gear strut itself is also full of inaccuracies as one would expect.  The folks at 21CT (in the day) did try to emulate the 3 deg kink in the lower strut - good for them.
 
Well, those of you who know me will not be surprised that I intend to give this thing entirely new landing gear, as realistic as I can make them.  For this model, I will salvage none of what you see here, instead scratch building everything.  To do this I make heavy use of my Unimat mini-lathe which can be set up as a drill press or end mill.  I did this for my other 1/18 efforts, as some of you know.
 
So what I will do in the near term is build the tires and wheels and possibly the lower struts - all big involved projects.  Then I will go back to the fuselage and finish it.  But for the LG, I will try something I have never done before - diamond treads for the tires.  That will require an elaborate jig that fixes the angular position of a modelling saw relative to the tire, and also controls the depth of cut.  I started a thread on LSP a couple years ago, looking for ideas on this, and got some good ones.  That combined with some of my own imagineering gave me a good idea how to get it done.  We shall see soon.  If it doesn't work, I will lathe-turn a new tire (which takes all day BTW) and use the block tread that I know how to do.  It will be a disappointment, but not the end of the world by any means.
 
Let me show you the first tire.  I used 2.0 inch diameter clear acrylic for the material, rough sawed to about .75 inch wide, to make a tire that is 1.861 inch diameter and 0.556 inch wide accepting a 1.00 inch diameter wheel.  In real life that is a 33.50 inch diameter, 10.0 inch wide tire, and an 18.0 inch diameter wheel (rim diameter). 
 
So bear with me.  Here is a pic of the raw cut piece clamped in the three jaws of the lathe chuck:
 

 
I have faced off the near side and drilled a starter hole so as to begin the turning of the inner diameter and its shallow counter bore (for the wheel rim), which when done looks like this:
 

 
I wanted to get the inner diameters just right so the wheels fit well.  To do that I lathe-turned a mock wheel out of brass that helps assure the right diameters within a few thousandths, and importantly the proper depth of that counterbore you see.  Here is the mock wheel machined part:
 

 
Note the big pile of brass shavings (heavy, and expensive) - I saw-cut the raw material too thick, which greatly increased machine time, and exasperation level of the lathe operator.  Not sure it was worth it.
 
Then came the true outer diameter of the tire (1.861 inch):
 

 
Lotsa shavings everywhere that must periodically get cleaned up.  Otherwise the work area gets buried!  Then comes rotating the head of the lathe so I can make angled cuts (not all lathes can do this; I love this feature).  These cuts, of course, begin to give the tire its shape.  It requires large scale layouts and some planning on which cut to do first, etc.  It can be a challenge especially large angles.  Here:
 

 
Once one side is completed, the part must be flipped 180 deg, rechucked on the ID, and machined the same way.  Here it is part way through the process:
 

 
And here is the end product (a full day's work):
 

 
And primed:
 

 
There is a prominent ridge, you will notice.  The other ridges have been sanded fairly smooth.  Well that ridge is there to help me when I start to cut the diagonal grooves that will give me the diamond tread.  I will cut to the ridge and no further (at least that's how it's supposed to work).  Once the grooves are cut, I will rechuck the tire on the lathe and cut and sand away the ridge.
 
Hope the step-by-step was not too boring - I have forced my followers through it before.  But for any new followers, it may be informative.  BTW, for those of you who don't know already, I got this lathe a few years ago based on work done by Paul Budzik who is pretty famous in modeling circles.  He makes tires and wheels too.  It is a great tool for all sorts of things.  But it wasn't cheap - and the electric motor breaks down from time to time, taking money to get fixed.  Also, cutting bars must be reground to keep the cutting edges sharp.  So if you want to get one, prepare to pay.
 
Next step, of course, is to fabricate and assemble the diamond tread jig, and try it out.  I am very pumped.  Stay tuned!