Fvdm

let's proceed
 
- I made plywood pieces for a fuselage using sheet plastic, painted it in wood with oil paints
 





 
 
- for seat-belts decided to use HGW once for Pfalz D.III, yes plane are not same but seat-belts are similar


 
- painted inner sides of fuselage in light blue, after that added camo with olive oil paint using a dry brush, when oil dried (after 3 days) I covered it again with main very thin paint. In doing so, we can see outside camo inside the cockpit.






 
- glued "plywood" parts


 
- cut a lot a pieces of medical needle 0.6mm diameter




 
 
- put almost all fuselage parts together












 
To be continued ...
 
 
 
 

thank you all
 
bit more off paint fun
sorry for the crappy pics its done with the cellphone but you will get the idee
 

 

 
that will be it for today
i hope to paint more tommorow
 
Mark

Besides the fact that the console was too wide, I am told that neither CE seats were installed on the C2 helicopter during the blackhawk down mission. (Not too crashworthy) so I went on and redid a new console, but kept the panel. Since no seats were on the helo, I added some handles made from lead wire and tamiya tape and then added Micromark resin louver decals for the console vents.
Just waiting on some Anyz resin knobs to arrive so they can be added to the panel.

 

 
 

 
That's all till tomorrow night!
Tim

We've finally reached the end of the road on this one!  The aerial is not yet attached but that is the only thing remaining.  I've showed the boarding ladder in the retracted position.  Because it is tricky putting her on her back once the aerial is on, I took some finished shots with the DSLR.  After the aerial is done, I'll take some more pics with the good camera.

 
Because of her impressive wing span, I'm going to expand the white background.  I've been using the back of an old poster but it's just not big enough for the Tank fighter.

first paint on
 

 

 
Mark

thanks
the wings are one
 

 
Mark

To close today’s saga with a positive ending. As a result of my woes, and to make the touch ups that much more straightforward, my daughter has just purchased (with wife help) a H&S Infinity CR Plus brush, with 0.15mm nozzle for that close in detail work. An early and very welcome Fathers Day gift. 
Feeling all warm n fuzzy now.

Well calling the build done.  P-47 Oh Johnnie
 
Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and suggestions along the way.  Also thanks for putting up with my sporadic posts.
 

 
Cheers - Jeff

After many hours of careful study, placement, swearing profusely, and replacement, I finally managed to get some work done on this bad boy. 
 This is freshly peeled, there’s a few minor touch ups required, paint bleeds etc, but damn! I reckon this turned out pretty spectacular too. 
 
 
Now all I gotta do is repeat the whole process for the underside 

On her legs. Lights, gunsight and a few paint adjustments to come
 

I can't believe I missed that.   I wonder if it was misprinted or if something shifted while it was settling in?  I think I'm going to have to live with it I think if I try pulling it up I'll write off the underlying decal.  

Making forward progress - that's the important thing Anthony...
 
Would be really good to have another one being built too - I've got nothing to compare notes with at the moment! 
 
About to go an make Zzzzeeeds - but finished off this evening looking at the interior section and formulating a plan of action for the next stages...
 
Internal sections aligned with the freshly removed forward door:
 

 

 

 

 
Blue skies!
 
Iain
 
 

Today's pictures following primary decal application.  Also added some details such as intake trunk top, fuselage ground handling handles, permanently affixed rudder and elevators, engine and rigged tail wires.  As described above, trying to figure out how I'm going to add red centers to national insignia.













 

Fantastic build Jef. I love it. The umbrella you are missing is on the wing of Goofy's plane. Maybe you can give it a try removing it? Nice correction by the way.

tank you all
more work done
te cockpit is in and the fit is great only a bit off sanding to do
 

 

 

 
also didt filling sanding and a test wit paint to see iff i did my job good
still needs a bit off work but looks already good to me
 

 
Mark

Ok. Some work on the windscreen. After about 8 attempts to form a windscreen by heat shrinking a plastic soda bottle I got one that actually was pretty good. So it has been cut to size and epoxied into place. Next is an application, or 2, of Bondo. Much sanding in my future. I have also added a rear deck to the cockpit. It will be sanded to size.
 

 
Here is the completed fuel bay on top of the fuselage.
 

 
Dan

Finally finished the wings other than thinning down the ailerons which will be easy compared to what was already done. I have moved onto the interior which is quite a few parts, for the most part all fits good except for a couple of the small bulkheads in the tail and the cockpit bulkhead, floor and instrument panel need to be reduced in width a little for the fuselage to close up.
 


 
Also put the Eduard cockpit set in .
 
 

 
I wanted to make the engines look a little better, I had purchased HK models B-17 engine sprues a while ago when this B-24 kit first came out, figured I would use the props and tires, hopefully the engines... Well I was able to take the cylinder rings and cut 2 cylinders off cutting center between the adjacent cylinders , then I sawed a notch in between the remaining 7 cylinders about half way through the ring and then gently bent them all until I had a smaller ring and glued the joint where the other 2 cylinders had occupied. Worked well and I did the same with the push rods. Unfortunately I haven't been to work still, I could draw a new crank case in 3D really quickly that would look more like it should and print them.. I also have Harold's AMS propeller governors that I added.
 

Hi there everyone
 
I hope everyone is safe and healthy and coping with this lock down business!
 
Time for an update!
 
So I have made some progress on the tail unit but before showing you the photos I thought I would share the other problem that I have with this project!....always problems! ....serves me right for starting this journey!
If you didn't know ...I live in S.E Bulgaria and I will eventually need to transport this finished B17 across to UK first and then eventually ship it across to California in the States where I am pleased to say that I have had interest from the The Miniature Engineering Craftsmanship Museum in Carlsbad (not far from L.A) and have decided to donate it to them. This in turn will of course cause a few headaches!
This is a very large and extremely delicate B17G I am building and it will need careful consideration on how to ship it.I used to do commissions for people and have shipped models to Europe by shipping companies...I would pack the model and hand it over to them and they would  charge the earth with no guarantees that it would arrive safely!.... So this time I am going to try another way of shipping. I am going to try and put it on a flight with me and because it is too big to go as hand luggage , I had to think of it going in the hold in a large suitcase!....which then set the alarm bells going off as I imagined the baggage handlers tossing the case all over the shop!.....and so I did an experiment.
I took the front section which as you know is complete and measured the length and height and chose a large enough suit case to use. I then built a MDF box and suspended the model in the box using polystyrene ...screwed the lid on and placed the box inside the suitcase. I then took it out in my garden and threw the case all over the lawn....kicked it and dropped it from a height as if I was a baggage handler!   .............let me tell you that after 7 years of building the front section it was a very difficult thing to do!
I eventually opened the box ( with a hang mans noose at the ready ) to see what damaged was caused!........absolutely no damage at all!....phew! what a relief! ......I will be trying that experiment again at a later date ...this time being even more brutal!
Here is the box with the front section packed in....with the lid off of course.......
 

 

 
If the model arrives safely in the UK then I will be happy for the next trip to USA a little later!
 
So on with the progress I have made with the tail section.....here is part of the tail.....
 

 

 

 

 
....and the next part added up to the rudder position....
 

 
So this tail section will have to be designed so that it can be taken on and off as it will be far too big to fit into the built box for the suitcase.....so to that end here is a photo of the location holes I have designed for some pegs that will slot into them to hold the tail in place......
 

 
...and here are the pegs on the tail unit that will slot in.....
 

 
and here I am slotting the unit in place.
 

 

 
Once again I have joined the two halves together to see if all looks ok........
 

 

 

 

 
I have to say that I am finding this tail unit very challenging and it's coming together at a snails pace!
 
Next up will be the Rudder construction.... so until then ..look after yourselves and happy modelling!
 
Cheers
 
Fozzy

upgrades













 
 
 
 

Hi guys
 
Firstly I want to say that I hope everyone is staying safe out there whilst living in these difficult times.
I have been away for a while as I have been building the smaller stuff!....but I'm back with the big boys now!!
 
Well it is time to get down and finally attempt to finish this Mammoth B17G project. Some of you may know that I started this 7 years ago with a few breaks in between sections to build other stuff.
As a recap :  I was originally going to just scratch build the nose section but kind of got hood winked in carrying on down the length of the fuselage! .....so I then built the Bomb bay....followed by the radio room and ball turret section and now it is time to finish this off with the tail section. Just to let you all know that I will not be building the wings and the 4 engines that go with it!
 
I got together some old post photos from the start of this project and thought I would show you of how I got to this point today!
 
This first photo shows the completed fuselage up to the ball turret position.....
 

 
Here is a shot of the cockpit.......
 

 
...and the bomb bay looking from the radio room through to the cockpit....
 

 
Here is the radio operators table in the radio room.....
 

 
...and finally the ball turret in place on the hanging harness.....
 

 
So my aim has always been through out this project to display as much of the internal detail as possible as I have always been fascinated with the Flying Fortress!.....so to that end I have tried to construct the whole fuselage with the top removed. This over the years has given me many headaches and will continue to I'm sure ... because I didn't want to take away the shape of the B17!... For example my next problem will be how to display the detail with that ruddy great dorsal Fin attached?......well I have an idea which I will show you as we get on with the build.
The other problem I have is how to ship it back to the UK from here?....I have made a bespoke box out of MDF but I am getting ahead of my self!....lets put that to one side at the moment and get this last section underway!
 
So here we go then..the first of many photos and posts that I will have to make!!
 
I am going to make the fuselage out of balsa wood as I did with the the front sections....so after digging out the scale plans that I scaled up to 1:20 I cut out all the formers I would need.
 

 
The bottom half was built up first ...then the top half .....here they are temporarily joined.
 

 

 
A few years ago I started strengthening the fuselage by filling in between the stringers with scrap pieces of Balsa wood. All you have to do then is sand down carefully to the formers and stringers to get the ...hopefully.... correct shape. Here is the bottom half.....
 

 
Here is the top half just  placed in position.....
 

 
So here the scrap balsa was filled in the gaps and sanded. You can see that I have left an area open at the top so you will be able to see down into the detail......
 

 

 
Now I turned my attention to the dorsal fin which runs along the top of the fuselage which eventually turns into the tail fin.At this stage I am only building so far back and will complete it by somehow attaching the tail fin at a later stage...there is method in my madness as you will see later!
 

 
Once I had filled the gaps with balsa ,I glued the dorsal fin on top of the fuselage and as you can see there is still enough open space to eventually look at all the detail.
 

 
I thought I would clamp the front section onto this to see what it might look like......JEEZ!.....It's about 3 feet 5 inches long!! 
 

 

 

 

 
Well that's as far as I have got with this so far!
 
I do hope some of you will come along with me for the ride on this final stage of this project...would appreciate the support!
 
Until the next post.....thanks for looking in and stay safe guys!
 
Fozzy
 

Oops. Sorry to see this. I feel for you

Two minutes after my previous post, my wife asked me to come down. She absolutely had to move the workbench on which the Skywarrior was drying. Talk about reappearing cracks... 
 

Steve (Crossofiron) made them himself and graciously let me order a set.
 
Decided to finish off the nose cap, rivets added inside, a few more things to add in there still....

 
Rivet and screw detail added to the aluminum nose skins


There was often a doped fabric strip put on the lower half of the nose cap joining it to the fuselage.  So this detail night be completely lost anyway as I am thinking of masking certain areas where some of the fabric strips and tapes are slightly more visible with Mr Surfacer and then buffing them down to just show a hint of them at certain angles....
 
Looking at this last photo I realized I forgot to add the 6 round head screws to the circular cover on the nose tip, a few small archer rivets should sort that.
 
Oh and although I have a wash in here to see any mistakes and see what I have done, I wont be doing it on the final paintjob as they were virtually invisible in real life under paint.  I just want a hint of them visible....Oh and I see I forgot to add something else....
 
Thanks for looking in as always on this painfully slow build

Hey dudes-
was wondering how this was gonna go- props to the Live Resin guys for sculpting a figure prior to this kits release that fits!
  
 
 
...that boot print on the floor was a test in a spot I know won’t be visible..in case I didn’t like it-
 
 

 
cheers
 
Pete