1/32 IMCTH Zero Type 21 Fine Structure - 20/07 - Finished!

[John F Smith]

Thanks Harv and Peter,

 

I'm glad you are enjoying the build, and thank you for your kind comments.

[John F Smith]

Thanks very much to Loic, John, Mark, and Kev

 

Your support and encouragement keeps me going through the tough spots.

 

Many, Many thanks for your kind comments.

[John F Smith]

OK, when we left off, we had the cockpit portion of the fuselage structure assembled, but nothing installed in it yet.

 

Now we have some stuff installed, and some stuff ready to install.

 

Ran into a bit of a glitch yesterday when I was trying to remove some excess CA from the stainless steel of the structure with an X-acto knife and manage to break the glue joints along most of the left side, so I put it in the repair bay and it has been "curing" overnight before I resume work:

 

 

Along the way to the repair, I managed to get the machine gun ammo bin and guns installed as well as the completed Instrument panel:

 

 

Left Cockpit Side turned out well:

 

 

And the right side, too, I think.

 

 

 

Cockpit Floor is complete and ready to install:

 

 

 

Seat is complete as well:

 

 

 

Seatbelts, by the way, are sourced from HGW.  It's a really excellent product; laser cut and takes a wash well for a stain.

 

 

That's all for this report. 

 

Next time we should have all of the sub assemblies prepared for final assembly and we will be on the home stretch (finally!)

 

Hope you are enjoying it, and thanks for reading.

[Guest Peterpools]

John

Sure is looking good and glad you were able to make all the repairs.

Keep 'em coming

Peter

[Guest]

Nice update ! Looking good......Harv

[Hubert Boillot]

Outstanding work ! Keep it flowing.

 

Hubert

[John F Smith]

Thank you gentlemen for you kind comments.

 

I appreciate it very much.

[mywifehatesmodels]

Great work. That seat looks amazing!

[Out2gtcha]

Lovely!

[John F Smith]

Bad news, I'm afraid.  I had a bit of a disaster after my last update.

While trial fitting the cockpit floor, I lost my coordination and dropped the whole cockpit fuselage section about 3 ft onto a hardwood floor.

I will refrain from using any expletives to describe this experience.

One thing about this section of the fuselage is that it is VERY heavy with white metal, and very light on PE framework.  Accordingly, all of the PE bulkheads shattered away from their mountings on the side walls, the instrument panel, ammunition/machine gun mounts, and port side panel broke loose.  Here are a few photos of the aftermath:

  

  

  

And, I got to thinking, "I know it was a long fall onto a hard surface, but should those glue joints all really be that fragile?".  So, I did a small test with my CA and accelerator to test for strength and ended up feeling pretty disgusted.  I have heard for years that CA and accelerator have shelf life limitations, but, I've never had any problems so I really never gave it any thought.  Well, I should have, because that seems to have been part of the problem here.

Today, I replaced all of my CA and accelerator with what I might expect to use in a year and labeled the bottles with the month and year.  From now on, I will take note of those dates and rotate in new stock accordingly.

So, putting it all back together involved removing any CA residue from everything, and cleaning the parts thoroughly to get a good join free of paint, and debonder.  It's easier to do that job with everything apart than it is halfway glued together, so I just went ahead and broke down the whole thing into assemblies and spent the day today cleaning up CA, removing debonder, and washing the residue off with warm soapy water.  Tomorrow I can begin putting it back together again largely from sub-assemblies except for the PE which will be individual parts as you can see below:

  

To get the best joints possible, I completely removed any paint or glue that might be showing through the framework to the outside of the fuselage.  That's great, but some of those pieces should be black or IJN cockpit green on the outside, so I'm going to have to come up with a clever way to mask it so I can paint those areas after it's re-assembled.  I'm leaving the bulkheads in their natural stainless steel color to try to get some extra strength, because there is enough painted equipment in that part of the fuselage to meet the object of having the interior items "pop" when the build is complete.

As a side note, if you are not already aware of it, Acetone is a really excellent debonder for CA.  Since I am working with all metal to metal joints here, I used the commercial grade stuff when I cleaned up and debonded these parts.  The commercial stuff is very, very "hot" and will remove the CA very rapidly.  I think I will look into diluting it (as in: what to use) and testing it on styrene and resin if I need to do some debunking in the future.  It's orders of magnitude less expensive when purchased in a liter can, than in those little bottles of debonder at the hobby store, and even diluted, I think would be much faster, as long as it can be done with harming the plastic or resin.  I'll report more on this in the Hints area of the forum when I learn more about it.

OK, that's it for now.  Should have another report pretty soon as things get put back together and we get the cockpit floor and seat mounted.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you are enjoying it (except for this disaster report, of course)

[Hubert Boillot]

Too bad for the mishap, but good to see you have things already under control...

 

I never had any good experience with CA glue, and yours is just another reason why I try to avoid it.

 

Once opened, CA will last a few weeks at best, and 6 months is a stretched limit. One way to prolong it, even when not opened, is to store it in the fridge, which dries the atmosphere inside, or in an airtight box with dessicant pellets. CA polymerisation is started by the ambient humidity (so blowing on it is not a bad way to accelerate ... and cheap ). The inside of my CA dry-storage box is white with CA fumes, which goes a long way to show that even carefully closed bottles, or even non-opened ones, have exchanges with the outside atmosphere.

 

With you on commercial acetone, but it is a non starter on styene, which it will melt. I unglued a resin Vector engine by dipping it in acetone, but in fairness, the details became "soft" in the end, although the parts were unglued.

 

On PE, one succesfull trial I did was to assemble the parts together, paste (lightly) the joints with soldering paste and when all is together, use a small hot-air gun to solder everything. Mine is a Proxxon one, with a one-inch muzzle. Of course, you have to pre-assemble everything together, as this is one-shot operation, but I like the results a lot more than standard soldering or CA gluing.

 

Hubert

[Guest]

Very good follow thru. Glad its not in the trash. Best of luck with it........Harv

[LSP_Kevin]

Oh no John! My heart was in my mouth when I read the opening sentence of your post, but it's great to see that you not only resolved to repair the damage, but have a good plan of action and that things are going well. Good on ya!

 

Kev

[John F Smith]

Kev, Harv.....Thanks for the encouragement and kind words.  I'll admit to having a sleepless night that is ending as I type this and I made all kinds of headway.... All of the PE is back together, and the MGs and ammo container  as well as oil tanks are in place.  Need to do the IP and the sidewalls and then I'll be back to where I was on this when the accident occurred.  

 

Hubert.....I concur with all of your sentiments about CA with one exception.  I do some wooden ship modeling and with an open grain wood like lime wood or basswood, CA really works pretty well.  And dampening the planks is the preferred method for accelerating the reaction.  I wish I could use any of the other methods you mentioned for building this or any of the other Fine Structure kits, but everything else is a "non-starter" mainly because the PE is stainless steel, not brass or nickel.  As a result, soldering is out of the question in any form, especially if one was trying to solder the white metal pieces in the kit to the stainless steel PE.

 

To all..... Another big lesson learned during the rebuild.  There is a tendency when working with CA to get stuck on using one viscosity for everything, and that's not always the best move.  These Fine Structure kits, for example, have a lot of places where the fit is poor, and you can't fill or sand because of the nature of the model.  So, the thing is to remember that a gap-filling CA (either Medium or Thick) might give some extra strength where it's needed.  I even use Gel CA when I'm gluing heavy parts.  Reminds me of the old days wielding a tube of "airplane glue".  

 

Using the right viscosity for the job is really making the rebuild much easier and I hope to get back to where I was before the accident by this evening.  I'm still hoping to finish this beast by the end date on the Group Build.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.

[Shawn M]

John, glad to hear youve rebounded and thank you for sharing the great infor regarding glues etc.

I've just purchased the tiny Jasmine 1/72 HO-229 pe kit.