Kahunaminor

How I'm intending to do it: 
1. Drill holes in external frames to mimic the fasteners
2. Sand the external frames and polish the canopy
3. Add internal frames with painted decal strips
4. Dip the canopy in Future
5. Fill the external holes with thick black paint to simulate the fasteners

Absolutely brilliant!
 
 

Stellar effort,
 
Thanks for sharing.
 
Regards,

Thanks Kevin!  
 
 
Jumping straight into this one... let's break the major cockpit components from their casting blocks and check fit.  I'm always more optimistic about fit if the kit cockpit includes separate sidewalls.  Why?  Because resin parts are usually thinner than plastic parts and that means getting a resin replacement to fit in the same space as a plastic part is theoretically much easier.  Another hopeful clue lies in the resin parts.  Note the four round pegs in the corners of the resin floor.

 

The fuselage interior has four holes for these pegs to fit.  At first, I was wondering about these and whether they needed to be removed to make room for the resin cockpit. Nope!

 

A quick check reveals that the resin floor clicks into place without even removing the thin casting block along the bottom of the part.

 

The five components of the resin cockpit are temporarily taped together.



 

As far as I can tell, the Aires resin cockpit is a drop-in fit without the need for modification of the kit parts!





 

..all done - they are bloody superb!
 

 

 

 
not long now
 
Peter

Good to see this back at the fore Kev,
I enjoy the journey.

Good to see this back at the fore Kev,
I enjoy the journey.

I would like to thank everyone for their sensitivity and support. I am leaving this rudeness behind and focusing on my Sea Fury again.

I'm taking a pause on my Folgore build to re-think my weathering so I'm jumping back onto the little Goblin for now.

The cockpit parts have been painted.  The basic strategy I used for this mostly black cockpit is using Mr Hobby RLM 66 Dark Grey for the overall cockpit color, Tamiya XF-69 Nato Black for the diamond-patterned padded areas and then straight black to highlight the instruments and other details. 



 

The instrument dials were from the kit decal sheet but individually punched out and placed.



 

The office reclining chair with armrests was painted Mr Hobby Aqueous Interior Green H-58 with black padding.  The scratchbuilt harnesses were painted with Tamiya Xf-57 Buff.





 

The cockpit components can now be put together.



 

Checking to see if the painted cockpit fits in the fuselage.



 

Before the cockpit halves can be glued together, I have to paint the engine intake and exhaust assemblies.  I was initially going to leave off the copper-colored intake vanes but I was curious how they fit and one thing led to another and so the 32 vanes are now in place.

 

Oooh….this looks interesting!

I'm busy laying down masks cut from Oramask 810 for the national insignia at the moment, so nothing much to see there.
Have decided though to go with RLM76 for the Måander pattern. Most of the literature I'm reading has that as the prevalent color, which would be more disruptive over the darker splinter colors. I'll overpaint the national insignia as well, just the aircraft and unit codes will be left alone.

I used the kit-supplied splinter mask page (last page of the instruction sheet that you can cut out and spray over) to create a version in Silhouette that I've since cut out on Oramask 810.




Made a couple of duplicates on the cut sheet just as not to waster too much material.
The splinter masks are up on Scale Model Paint Masks if anyone wants or needs them. Should be pretty easy to scale up or down...
https://www.scalemodelpaintmasks.com/index.php?/topic/3396-ju87dg-splinter-masks/#comment-5551

I also created the main markings for the scheme using the decal sheet as a guide. I have Maketar masks for the Hakenkreuz already, so didn't bother doing it in Silhouette

Yes, assembling the engine cowlings was very similar to building a house of cards.  I find it easier to attack it one glue joint at a time.
 
 
Thank you Iain!  The build is progressing quite smoothly.  While I question many of Italeri's design decisions with this kit, one thing I cannot fault them for is fit, which has been very very good.
 
I've separated the exhaust shroud from the PE fret and folded them.  I can't get the warped ends straight but that can be taken care of during the gluing stage.  First checking to see if they sit flush WITHOUT the AiP exhausts in place.

 

Sure enough, the AiP exhausts stick out far enough to interfere with the fit of the shrouds so adjustments will need to be made if I'm going to use these together.

 

It's the front exhaust piece that is causing the problems.  Removing it removes the problem... a possible key to a solution?

 

Verifying that I have the same thing happening on the other side.

 

More to come on that issue but for now a review of the cowling parts and air filter components that are now removable.  There are some engine parts that became dislodged during all of this fitting so I'll have to re-attach those bits eventually.

 

Time to check the fit of the Quickboost spinner.  I drilled a hole using my new mini-drill press but I made the mistake of not drilling the hole deep enough and sure enough, the second attempt wasn't quite perfect, resulting in a slightly oblong hole.  

 
 
Not to worry... a better option was to use magnets anyway so I just shifted gears.

 

And here is the Quickboost resin spinner on the fuselage. My research tells me that this is the most accurate of the options I have and I think it looks good too.  The Quickboost spinner comes with its own prop blades which have been temporarily fitted.







 

Shapeways has been revived as per this press release:
 
https://www.shapeways.com/presscorner/shapeways-comes-home-to-trusted-management-and-founding-visionaries
 
There is still some work to do but apparently seeking to restart the shop.

Great stuff John,
I may (eventually) steal that idea!
 
Regards,
Kent

Shapeways has been revived as per this press release:
 
https://www.shapeways.com/presscorner/shapeways-comes-home-to-trusted-management-and-founding-visionaries
 
There is still some work to do but apparently seeking to restart the shop.

Congrats on another exemplary build John. I always enjoy your work.
 
Regards,
Kent

After incessantly bugging them, Kitlinx has sent me UPS tracking info for the G.55.

Simply excellent Mal,
So much good stuff here. Your attention to detail (no doubt reinforced by your feline supervisor) merely makes the build shine. Thanks for sharing.
 
Regards,
Kent
 

Thanks guys!  Appreciate the comments!
 
The work continues on the K-4.  Lots of grunt work ahead. The cockpit is secured into place and the fuselage halves are glued together.


 

After the fuselage joints are cleaned up, I need to re-scribe the joint since 109's had panel lines here.  The glue joint is clearly visible and it is tempting to try and "freehand" the scriber along the joint but I always choose to use something like Dymo label tape as a guide to scribing these type of long straight lines.



 

Specific areas need specific attention and those are dealt with using different fillers like black CA glue, Apoxie Sculpt and Mr Surfacer.



 

A new pilot hatch has been made using sheet styrene and can be glued into place once the joint here has been finished.

 

Before the gun cowling is attached, I have to secure the gun barrels.  I use little blobs of Apoxie Sculpt as it allows me to push and pull the gun barrels into the correct position.



 

The central fuselage bottom piece is glued into place.

 

The rear joint of this connection is going to be biggest clean-up job so far as there is a combination of a gap and vertical step to deal with. The gap is shimmed with plastic card.

 

The vertical step is more complicated and will required multiple stages, the first of which is using Apoxie Sculpt to build up the lower level to be the same height as the upper layer.

 

Mr Surfacer is used to blend everything in.

 

The piece of sprue is glued into the rear tail wheel well opening.  It will be sanded down and re-shaped to match the fuselage contours.

 

Just to clarify the situation with the gun sights... here are the three versions I have.  The one on the left is V1 and you can see that the rear frame for the optical glass was lost in the casting process and some sort of mold line defect down the middle.  V2 is what I just received from Eagle Editions and it was more or less complete but had the blobby underside I complained about.  V3 is from EE D-9 cockpit set and it is the best copy I have.  You can see that the underside is much crisper than V2.
 

 

 
 
Am I going a little overboard?  Yeah, probably.  But if I think I can do better, I am compelled.

Thanks Kevin!  Yes, I'm pleased with the results and also armed with a little more knowledge.  I'll be confident enough to replicate more smaller parts if necessary.  One tiny example is the starboard side cockpit console for my future Fw190D-11 build.  If the the D-11 is similar to the D-13 and had a Ta-152H-style starboard console, I can copy the one from my Z-M Ta-152H-0 kit that I have in my stash.  I'm sure there are other situations where casting my own parts will come in handy.
 
Here are the cast parts sprayed with a primer compared to the kit parts.

 

 

Just to report back on this one... no, it's not dead but my motivation for model-building still needs a kick in pants.
 
 
Back in October when I got the brand new XVIe kit, I removed the mold seam from the canopy using fine sandpaper, Micromesh and Novus plastic polish. It was then dipped into Future.



 
 

The new canopy was masked and I did my first stage of post-shading using a very diluted mix of brown/black to highlight random panel lines and joints and create some streaking.



 
 
That's as far as I've gotten.  I know it is close to the finish line but there are some weathering things to be done like salt fading and chipping but I'm just not motivated to do any modeling for some reason.  Sorry guys... I'll try to get this one and others (109G-2 and the Folgore) cooking again.

Amazon delivered my VIII right on time, so I decided to try to actually make some progress since I had today off.   Still can't dive deep into the cockpit assembly, waiting for the LFD upgrade set to arrive.   That said, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step so I decided to start this build with the seat.    I went with Barracuda's very nice resin offering.  Just much better details and it also includes the leather back pad Which the Tamiya seat doesn't have.  Only extra work I did was to drill out the tubular socket lower seat mounting base.    I then decided to take a shot the very imposing Airscale Sutton Harness.    It's a fair amount of work but I do believe it looks much better than any PE set.   Kudo's to the person who said it makes life easier to keep the buckles on the PE fret, then thread the paper harness through the opening, glue it and then cut the part off.  Big time saver.   
 
First off, here's the real thing.   The seat itself is made from a phenolic resin, designed to save weight and conserve steel.   Note also the black leather back cushion.   Many of these seats seem to have strips of leather along the edges, the one here has sheet metal guards.   I went for the leather look.   
 
   
 
I used ModelMaster rust with a wash of Tamiya smoke for my seat.    The metal parts are Tamiya IJN Grey Green, which is a nice match for the ubiquitous Interior Green the RAF used on the real thing. 

 

 

 
That's all I've got for an update so far, thanks for looking in! 

I’m pleased to announce that work has commenced on our next title, Building the Hasegawa Ki-61 Tei Hien in 1/32 Scale, by KLP author John Kim. The book will not only include a step-by-step guide to John’s terrific build, but also some profile artwork by renowned artist and illustrator, Claes Sundin.
 

 

 
All going well, the book should be available by the end of the year. Stay tuned for more updates!
 
Kev