Jim Barry

Great work, Jay.

Looking great!

I'm late too. (I do not read the GB threads, my fault). Being a scratch builder I certainly cheer you on and see a lot of talent here for sure! I love the subject!

Lots of great progress. Congrats on fitting the engine in. Getting very real here.

Oh yeah, the beer is the best part! You noticed. It's really great in a lot of ways but being disconnected to the house is a love/hate thing. Some convenience like 24 hour heated space is lost and it seems I run back to house fairly often (like for more beer!).

This is my space. It's been a "tiny house" work-in-progress for about 4 years. The large 7'x4' central table works well for how I like to work.

Had a good day but not a lot of time. Sanding fuselage nose now and while I like the work, I hate wearing goggles and a respirator. I've been evaluating the props and going back and forth on them, but today I rejected them and decided to edit the 3D file, correct the flaws and reprint. I had just a bit too much twist at the tip and a pitch angle that was probably below the minimum though I'm not entirely certain what the minimum is exactly. Also needed to give a little more airfoil shape to it. My penalty for my inaccuracy: $28. I kind of knew it was a hasty first effort and while no one could ever tell, really, I just learned way too much about prop design this week to let it go. It's rather amazing in Fusion how you can go back in time, fix just the one blade's core design and after accepting the changes it then propagates the changes in time (for instance making copy around the axis and then making the mirrored prop). No need to fix 6 blades. While some filler was drying I decided to start a black wash on the engine. Good start. More to come!

Schweet!

Some really great scratch reports going on out there from classic forum contributors . Loving the early dev of Peter's P-51C interior and Martin's B-17 ball turret. It's helping my motivation to keep working and learning. Also reading Kevin's digital publication of Peter's #80 Spitfire project and enjoying that quite a bit when not mumbling to myself "I'm not worthy" The props came back today. Feeling like a little Grumman factory here. They cheered me up on an otherwise very busy day at work that made me very grumpy.

Cool products in Model Monkey's shop especially if you like ship models . I just found it last week. Wow!

And now back to 3D. The cowls just arrived in the mail. I like them. I like them a lot.

Nice work on the engine!

Progress on making the fuselage and much of the plane is emerging. I have made a cut out for the cockpit. I think I'll likely sculpt this part with big lump of sculpey and vacuform the fuselage walls from that mold . This is kind of what I did with the Fury. With the Bearcat, I made the fuselage cockpit walls with 3D parts but it was a lot of work for what it was worth. Just a little history tidbit. The plane first flew in Feb 1941 and was permanently destroyed 3 months later in a crash. A mayfly of an aircraft, really. I'm very happy with my choice to model this. I just feel so damn sorry for it.

Beautiful. Well done. Love the Grumman stuff!

Nice to see photobucket has "returned" my content to our threads. I hated to see my early journey into scratch building so lost without those pictures.