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HK B-17...C 5/4 sweating the metal


brahman104

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12 hours ago, JayW said:

Gonna be a show winner Craig.  How much painting?  Is it not going to be mostly NMF?  

As long as the show doesn't include either your Corsair or Peter's Kittyhawk ;)........ Yeah pretty simple on the painting front.... a few colours here and there, but hopefully enough to break up the shine a little....... pretty much what you see in my Avatar. Not strictly correct for a C but it looks too good not to do! :)

 

 

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Thanks Matt! The fin really makes a difference doesn't it? I've got to agree with you; although for years I never liked the look of the early ones - Now I love them...... go figure!.... I think I've developed a love for a lot of pre-war/early war designs while doing this project, something about the clean lines, but the BMF definitely looks nice too! :) 

 

Craig

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Today's challenge? The tricky little fillet that goes around the vertical stab. As most of you would have seen on Peter's epic P40 build the other day, the process is pretty much the same, only a lot smaller. I totally get why he prefers 1/18! :frantic:

 

Roughing out the shape. It actually took me about 4 attempts to even determine the starting shape for marking out, actually much more of a V than you'd think....

 

27/8

 

Choosing the right start point to "flow" the metal out from is critical, and I failed in my first attempt. I ended up having too many folds that I sanded through the base metal trying to get rid of them.... back to the drawing board!

 

27/8

 

Looking better second time around. Very hard to get the very small hammer that I was using into the lower forward edge, but I got there in the end.

 

27/8

 

Now into the sanding to iron out the wrinkles. This is the part where you learn if you've pushed the material too far! 

 

27/8

 

Looks like I got away with it this time :). Now just a case of trimming the edges. This is actually a fairly tricky operation, as the material is quite soft and doesn't snap quite as well as the unannealed stuff...

 

 

27/8

 

Very delicate when removed in preparation for contact cement. I gently pried it apart so I could stick one side first without fear of inadvertently tacking the other side inthe wrong spot.

 

27/8

 

And there she is!

 

27/8

 

27/8

 

The "rivet" pattern is pure guesswork. I use inverted commas for rivet as I'd say in real life some or most or all of these could actually be screws for easy removal/access of the fin. I'm sure there's a drawing somewhere that'd tell me, but I'm going to move on ;).

 

The lighting is brutal on photos of shiny surfaces and will show up every......single.......bump. It does look a little rough here, but it's actually pretty good. Especially when you remember that used to be a flat piece of litho!

 

I'm trying to smooth out my 3D printed rudder now in preparation for finally getting some paint on it. Better not rush that step!

 

I'd imagine that the horizontal stab fillets are going to be just as fun, perhaps even more so! :fight:

 

Cheers,

 

Craig

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by brahman104
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  • brahman104 changed the title to HK B-17...C 24/7 27/8 Fillet o'fish

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