HK B-17...C!!!!!!!! 7/2 Don't fear the (acrylic) reaper :)

[TKB 109]

Craig,

 

The fin came out beautiful! Really quality work --- Boeing standard.

 

How you turned a slab of acrylic into the the cabin roof is outstanding --- and that's in it's "work in progress" state!. When your finished, an area that potentially was going to be a delicate, flimsey area, will be just as solid as any injection molding, if not more.

 

Every major aspect of your C/D conversion have been attention getters, but the small details, like the dome being centerlined while the hatch is offset, are really going to add to this work of art. I'm assuming the dome hatch will be removable?.

 

"Back to the butchers?" Butcher! Sorry, Craig, more appropriate would be "work of a sugeon!" Wnat a recovery from a potential diaster. I don't put anything beyond you, but still --- you never cease to amaze me. I've said it many times before, but even your "gaffes" turn out to be productive; your "recovery rework"  just as interesting as your "error free" work.

 

It's been a lot of work, but with each step, you are  ever so surely capturing the elusive B-17 "face" --- not to mention everything aft!

 

 

Terry

 

[Out2gtcha 26,538]

WOWZERS!  That is some serious modeling effort there my friend. Well done! 

[SCRATCH BUILDER 300]

Thou are a braver man then I 

[brahman104 1,672]

On 1/14/2019 at 1:34 AM, Shawn M said:

fantastic work Craig!

 

Thanks Shawn!

 

On 1/14/2019 at 2:09 AM, BiggTim said:

Holy moly, that roof required as much work as a whole kit. I bow to you, sir.

 

Haha, going by that premise, I wonder whole many "OOB" kits in effort I will have done by the time I finish this!

 

On 1/14/2019 at 3:56 AM, JayW said:

Craig - what a tiger you have by the tail!   You know I love the machining.  This thing is really looking like a B-17 (early model).  I'd say the end result will be unique on the planet.

 

 

Thanks Jay! Still have a lot to learn on the machining side, but I really love working with acrylic!

 

On 1/14/2019 at 5:12 AM, dennismcc said:

God this is epic !!

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

Cheers, Dennis

 

On 1/14/2019 at 6:49 AM, airscale said:

Brilliant!

 

Looks absolutely perfect, really captures the look in the right way

 

no wonder you are happy

 

Peter

 

Hi Peter, as always an absolute pleasure to read your kind words! I've got a lot of catch up to play with your Mustang too! 

 

On 1/14/2019 at 7:26 AM, TorbenD said:

Wonderful... looking absolutely bob on!

 

Torben

 

 

Thanks Torben

 

On 1/14/2019 at 7:34 AM, richdlc said:

holy cow, awesome

 

Cheers Rich. You know how important that area is!

 

On 1/14/2019 at 9:11 AM, MarioS said:

Craig you amaze me with every page, every scroll of the mouse you are a Master

As much as I can't wait until this is finally finished I also do not wish it too soon as I am enjoying looking at every obstacle that you encounter and then solve them as though it wasn't an issue at all. 

 

Many thanks indeed Mario! I'd hardly call myself a master though! Have you seen how many times I rebuild stuff!!!! Hahaha

 

On 1/16/2019 at 12:43 AM, TKB said:

Craig,

 

The fin came out beautiful! Really quality work --- Boeing standard.

 

How you turned a slab of acrylic into the the cabin roof is outstanding --- and that's in it's "work in progress" state!. When your finished, an area that potentially was going to be a delicate, flimsey area, will be just as solid as any injection molding, if not more.

 

Every major aspect of your C/D conversion have been attention getters, but the small details, like the dome being centerlined while the hatch is offset, are really going to add to this work of art. I'm assuming the dome hatch will be removable?.

 

"Back to the butchers?" Butcher! Sorry, Craig, more appropriate would be "work of a sugeon!" Wnat a recovery from a potential diaster. I don't put anything beyond you, but still --- you never cease to amaze me. I've said it many times before, but even your "gaffes" turn out to be productive; your "recovery rework"  just as interesting as your "error free" work.

 

It's been a lot of work, but with each step, you are  ever so surely capturing the elusive B-17 "face" --- not to mention everything aft!

 

 

Terry

 

 

You always have such encouraging words Terry! Whatever term is used to describe what I'm doing here, I think it's finally starting to get somewhere!

 

On 1/16/2019 at 1:10 AM, Out2gtcha said:

WOWZERS!  That is some serious modeling effort there my friend. Well done! 

 

Thank you Brian! I know you are no stranger to corrective surgery yourself

 

On 1/16/2019 at 1:14 PM, SCRATCH BUILDER said:

Thou are a braver man then I 

 

Braver or more foolhardy? Hahahaha

 

 

[brahman104 1,672]

Alrighty, after replying to 11 comments I think it was time to summarise the latest effort in a new post

 

The latest little adventure in the journey has been aimed at trying to wrangle some acceptable looking transparent parts. Now, as you guys know, the early B-17's had some really interesting looking clear parts, prior to the introduction of power turrets on the E model.

 

First of all, and perhaps more importantly, is that after lengthy discussions with Terry (TKB) about cowling shapes and always referring to this build as a C/D as I hadn't made up my mind, I finally decided that I will be making this a C model. The two mains reasons are a) cowl shape and no flaps (just to differentiate a little more from later models) and b) single .50 mounts in the radio room and bathtub, so there's more room to see the detail inside!

 

Anyway you guys came for the pics, so here they are....

 

 

First of all, I made patterns in Hydrocal for vac forming an assortment of clear parts. What's the big rectangular one you might ask? hopefully, that will be become clear soon (pardon the pun....)

 

First of all, I did the observer's dome. This came out looking pretty good, and best of all, a nice match to the hatch I'd already made in the laser cutter.. *disclaimer - I have yet to polish theses too

 

 

 

 

 

Seeing I was on a win, next came the waist windows. This is where the rectangular piece came in - it is a representative piece of fuselage with the correct curvature at the waist window. I would form oversize pieces then patiently whittle them down to fit in the previously made holes in the fuselage.

 

 

Then, I made the removable window separately, including its triangular shaped depression at the rear for the gun barrel.

 

 

This was then traced onto the waist window and the excess carefully removed. This took most of the day to do, with many, many dry fits!!!!!!

 

 

 

Till I finally had a very nice fit in the existing window

 

 

Now the real trick. I also had to continue the relief on the back side of the existing window (although this is formed in aluminium on the real thing, so I didn't include it in the master shape. I had an idea that I could just vac-form and extra 2 removable windows and graft the triangle piece onto the rear.

 

And so with much more careful "whittling" of the acrylic, I ended up with this....

 

 

 

 

And now for the "in-use" shots...

 

 

 

 

Yes, they still need a lot of cleaning up, but for something I have been absolutely dreading doing for so long, it didn't really end up being that hard, just a lot of careful and laborious filing and sanding to get things to fit. Not completely there yet, but I'm chalking that up for the win!!!!!

 

I think I'm finally starting to tame this beast!!!

 

Craig

 

p.s. Luckily the Townsville floods did not affect the house, or much more importantly, my workbench!!!!!!!!

 

 

Edited February 4 by brahman104

[TorbenD 1,678]

Delightful! Mightily impressive work Craig

 

What plastic and thickness did you use to Vac the windows? Regarding polishing out, I’d love to see how you go about that when the time comes. 

 

Torben

[LSP_Kevin 24,754]

Superb work, Craig! Glad to hear you came out of the floods unscathed, too.

 

Kev

[Out2gtcha 26,538]

Inspired work for sure Craig!

[Shawn M 8,898]

wow, excellent work and problem solving, you're knocking this outta the park!

[brahman104 1,672]

19 hours ago, TorbenD said:

Delightful! Mightily impressive work Craig

 

What plastic and thickness did you use to Vac the windows? Regarding polishing out, I’d love to see how you go about that when the time comes. 

 

Torben

 

Thanks Torben!

 

I used 0.8mm acrylic sheet. Probably the thickest you'd want to go for vac forming, as you have a window of literally seconds between the sheet being soft enough to form and it getting too hot it bubbles. I've timed it to 1 minute and 50 seconds from cold. At 1.52 the bubbles start!

 

In regards to polishing it out, so would I! 

 

[brahman104 1,672]

19 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Superb work, Craig! Glad to hear you came out of the floods unscathed, too.

 

Kev

 

Thanks Kev, yep pretty lucky. There's plenty of places that went under!

 

18 hours ago, Out2gtcha said:

Inspired work for sure Craig!

 

Thanks Brian!

 

16 hours ago, Shawn M said:

wow, excellent work and problem solving, you're knocking this outta the park!

 

Thanks Shawn! I am really enjoying working with acrylic.

[Gazzas 5,011]

Delightful, indeed!  Love your work, Mate!  Those blisters and oval windows came out sweetly!

 

Gaz

[TKB 109]

Craig,

 

 C or D --- rough choice. Your reasoning for going with the C does indeed have it's merits.

 

You work in acrylic (well, any material really) like a scultor works in marble --- your usual astonding work! The dome came out great as did the waist windows --- especially how you incorporated the aft depressions! She's really starting to take on personality!

Just curious. Once you finesse your final fit and skin the waist gun area, what are your plans to prevent the removable portion from slipping into the interior? Slight matching bevels along the inside perimeter of the fuselage frame and removable portion?

 

With all your interior work, making the waist windows removable was a gimme. You do know,  you've now committed yourself to making the early type "vee" swivel gun mounts "functional", so you can swing the .50s in and out of postion.

 

Just a heads up --- don't forget about those wind deflectors between the opening and the front window portion. Just don't want you to have to deal with an "aw, ?@#%" moment!

 

This build is pretty hard to categorize. The basic wings, to a degree, will be HK. The entire fuselage, except for the HK  bomb bay "shell", is scratchbuilt, so you could hardly call it a conversion. Throw in all the different types of material being used. When finished, I'd have to call her a hybrid --- paralleling Swoose herself!

 

Always look forward to your updates, but they are always cliffhangers --- "What's next!"

 

 

Terry

 

 

[TKB 109]

Craig,

 

Forgot to include earlier.

 

When she's finished and displayed, you'll need a disclaimer accompanying her;

 

"Blink at your own risk --- you may miss the HK!"

 

Terry

[brahman104 1,672]

3 hours ago, TKB said:

Craig,

 

 C or D --- rough choice. Your reasoning for going with the C does indeed have it's merits.

 

You work in acrylic (well, any material really) like a scultor works in marble --- your usual astonding work! The dome came out great as did the waist windows --- especially how you incorporated the aft depressions! She's really starting to take on personality!

Just curious. Once you finesse your final fit and skin the waist gun area, what are your plans to prevent the removable portion from slipping into the interior? Slight matching bevels along the inside perimeter of the fuselage frame and removable portion?

 

With all your interior work, making the waist windows removable was a gimme. You do know,  you've now committed yourself to making the early type "vee" swivel gun mounts "functional", so you can swing the .50s in and out of postion.

 

Just a heads up --- don't forget about those wind deflectors between the opening and the front window portion. Just don't want you to have to deal with an "aw, ?@#%" moment!

 

This build is pretty hard to categorize. The basic wings, to a degree, will be HK. The entire fuselage, except for the HK  bomb bay "shell", is scratchbuilt, so you could hardly call it a conversion. Throw in all the different types of material being used. When finished, I'd have to call her a hybrid --- paralleling Swoose herself!

 

Always look forward to your updates, but they are always cliffhangers --- "What's next!"

 

 

Terry

 

 

 

Hahaha, another challenge laid down Terry? Sounds do-able with the .50 mounts though, should be fun! About the windows, my thinking is a slight lip on the interior that will hold the window in place - a slight concession from the real thing I know but I think it's the practical solution! I still have to shape the other side yet, and yes, include the wind deflectors! Thanks for the reminder!

 

2 hours ago, TKB said:

Craig,

 

Forgot to include earlier.

 

When she's finished and displayed, you'll need a disclaimer accompanying her;

 

"Blink at your own risk --- you may miss the HK!"

 

Terry

 

Yep, you are right! In fact I ended up selling most of the remainder of the kit as parts to another Gentleman in England a while ago, so I'm definitely committed to that!

 

Very small update:

 

Got some successful pulls on the left and right hand clear tailcone sections yesterday. They don't look like too much now but once they're shaped, they should be a pretty close representation of the original...... I suppose I'd better have some working LED bombing signals to go in there too!

 

 

 

Pretty happy that they line up with the existing tail piece almost perfectly, considering I made that piece about 4 years ago!

 

Cheers,

 

Craig