VintageEagle

I hope no.2 is a Me 262, but probably not considering that Revell may bring another single-seater Me 262 soon....

The two photos are linked from the www. Therefore, I can't circle the panels I am referring to. But here's a photo of the sprue. The small access door can be seen just under the attachment slot of the vertical stabilizer. If you compare with the photos of the actual aricraft above, you will notice that it can only be found on the Fw 190 A-8 at the Imperial War Museum, but not the S-8 (and neither on the NASM F-8).

Hello everyone, While working on the riveting of my Revell 1/32 Fw 190 F-8 I noticed that the kit has an access panel on each side of the fuselage below the horizontal stabilizer. I could not find it on any real Fw 190 F/A-8 with the exception of the former Imperial War Museum Fw 190. However, that one came from a Mistel and had some additional fittings that were not standard on F/A-8s. I wonder if these panels were only added on the Mistel aircraft or if they were only added by certain factories or what else the reason was. Anyhow, I'm going to fill these panel lines on my model. Has anybody else studied this while working on a Revell Fw 190? Cheers, Roger WITH access panel: Imperial War Museum Mistel Fw 190 A-8: WITHOUT access panel: Fw 190 S-8 Hendon:

Thank you Thierry, Rick, Jay, Gaz for all your helpful comments. I ordered a Hasegawa scribing template that offers similar shapes. At least in one direction I get guidance. I just need to get the spacing right (which should't be a big issue) and that should do the trick for me as a still unexperienced riveter. I'm halfway through the riveting of the first fuselage half. The second will be much faster as I spent most of the time in figuring out where the rivets should go. Cheers, Roger

Hello everyone, I am looking for a template to add rivets around the standard Luftwaffe access hatches. I have the MDC template, but it only offers few size variations that don't fit all hatches on my Fw 190. The other templates I found are mainly used for scribing and don't have the saw-tooth pattern that helps align the needle for adding the rivets in a uniform manner. How have you applied rivets around such hatches on Luftwaffe aircraft? Thanks, Roger

Thank you both. I actually have an almost identical set as the one in your photo. Still, the smallest diameter looked too big for a 7mm 1/1 scale rivet (=0.22mm in 1/32). I did one fuselage half with this beading tool, but was not happy with the overall look. I then tried the riveter wheel and the overall look is much more realistic to my eyes. It is also much faster (but still a very tedious job) than the beading tool. Yesterday, to my dismay, I realized that I added too many horizontal rivet lines to the left fuselage half (5 instead of 4). Oh well, it was a good excercise. I tried to order a replacement fuselage half from Revell, but if it works it will probably take several weeks to arrive. I then continued with the right fuselage half and this time all went perfectly and I am very pleased with the result. I am getting better at this method of adding rivets :-) So, I'll continue and will post good photos once both fuselage halves are done. Stay tuned :-) Roger

Thank you for your kind feedback and the info on the green seatbelts! After studying many photos of the rivet patterns, I decided to go with the 0.75mm wheel as it seems more accurate than the 1.00mm. I first spent some time to draw the rivet lines onto the fuselage using a pencil. Then I started adding the rivets. It was my first attempt (apart from some "dry runs" on a spare fuselage). I am quite happy with the result so far, but I made one small mistake underneath the main fuselage access hatch. The rivet line is a bit too close to the hatch, but most likely nobody will ever notice and I am not sure if I would do more damage than good if I tried to correct it by filling the holes with glue, sanding them and adding new rivets (what's your experience?). A few small details like the rivets around the jacking hole, some more rivets in the corners around the fuselage hatch, etc. are yet to be added. I'll continue first with the forward fuselage and stabilizer. Then the starboard side is next. After that I can work on closing the fuselage including the cockpit. Do you recommend to sand the surface after riveting? Or is it better to leave it as is and to polish the fuselage after painting for some realistic wear effect? Sorry for the bad pictures. I just had my smart phone at hand and wanted to give a quite view of where I am. Cheers, Roger

It's been a long time since my last update. Here's what happened: RADU's RIVETER...: I wanted to go with Radu's riveter wheel after I found that the beading tool's rivets were too large in diameter. I studied the rivet pattern of the Fw 190 in detail and found that the ideal distance between two rivets should be around 0.85mm. ... BUT ONLY 0.75 and 1.00MM WHEELS, BUT NO 0.85MM...: However, there are only 0.75 and 1.00mm rivet wheels available from Radu's store. I then found a saw blade that had approx. 0.85mm between the individual teeths, but that meant I would have to go with the beading tool. ... THEREFORE TRIED THE MDC BEADING TOOL...: I ordered the 1/48 scale tool from MDC and used the smaller of the two diameter beading tools that come with the 1/48 scale package. I rivetted the whole port fuselage, but found that the rivets still looked to big. ... BUT STILL NOT HAPPY...: That discouraged me so much that I had to pause for a while. Then summer came and I rather spent my free time outside. With days getting a bit cooler again now, I resumed work, but tried the riveter again. After a little bit of practise my rivet lines got much more straight than after my first trials. ... AND BACK TO THE RIVETER - BUT IS 0.75 or 1.00MM BETTER? Since I don't have an 0.85mm wheel, but only a 0.75mm or 1.00mm wheel, which one would you chose? I am not sure which one would give the more realistic look overall. I tend towards the 1mm wheel as the distance will be so small that going smaller will be hardly noticeable. Cheers, Roger

Absolutely lovely work so far! Did you do the riveting yourself? What tool did you use?

M E 2 6 2 . . . what else? 🤫

OK, I checked my archive and found two photos that show the backside of that cover. On one it looks as if it was indeed made out of two parts, but there is no strut behind the joint line to which the two panels could have been riveted to. It looks as if the two parts are only held together by the perpendicular struts. So, I think you are right, there is a panel line, but much less prominent and probably without rivets (as can also be seen in the Hendon photo you posted). Cheers, Roger

John, sorry if I am being late, but are you sure about the vertical panel line on the engine cover in front of the air inlet scoop? I think there was no line. Cheers Roger

Gaz, Early production Me 262 didn’t require them, but often had blocked canons because the cartridge ejection chutes were too narrow. Messerschmitt then designed new, wider chutes at the end of 1944. They wanted them to fit without the need of bulges, but due to a design error they became necessary. First bulges were just hammered into existing panels, later the bulges were riveted as seperate parts already at production level. Trumpeter’s version is this last one, which doesn’t fit to all produced Me 262s. Cheers Roger

Thank you all for your help and ideas. I liked the idea with the saw blade and found that RBProductions 'Rapid-Cut' saw blade has exactly 12 teeth per cm. I have ordered one and will see how the results look like. The 'Buck-Saw' has much longer blades at 24 teeth per cm. So, theoretically this would work as well using just every second tooth. But I don't know if the spacing of the teeth is too small for the beading tool I use for riveting. Will know soon...

Hello, I wanted to start riveting my Revell Fw 190 F-8 using the MDC riveting bead tool and template. But they only provide one template with a certain tooth distance. Their 1/48 template has a too small tooth distance (ca 0.75mm) and the 1/32 too large (ca 1mm). I would probably need something in between that if I compare with wartime photos. Is there any other template available other than the MDC that offers tooth distances of ca 0.8-0.9mm? I don’t feel confident enough to do it free hand. Thanks Roger