FINISHED - Civilian Restored B-25 - Maid in the Shade

[Guest]

Crew looks fantastic!!....Harv

[red Dog]

Thank you Harvey. Crew isn't my strongest point and i always struggle to have them with naural poses.

 

Some details before calling this one finished:

 

The rear gun cover was made from aluminium foil. Earlier in the build I considered the Grey matter figure part which is a much better than the kit's part which is really bad imho.

But Maid in the shade has a real flat canvas so even the GMF part wouldn't cut it.

Making the part was very simple, just cut aluminium foil, paint in beige and done. The extra zipper was also made with aluminium foil. It's a bit too wide, but that will do.

The guns are brass guns from Master. they are actually coming from the B-17 set. I will never use anything else than these brass gun. they are way better than the plastics ones and much easier to use than the photoetch gun you have to assemble.

They were not painted, simply burnished with the AK metal burnishing fluid.

 

 

 

Maid in the shades features modern radio and navigation systems and the antennas are different, so they needed to be scratched.

Quick and dirty work on the top fuselage in front of the (modern as well) anti collision light

 

 

The horizontal stabilizers have 4 small blister blue lights. These were made with the Templates eduard PE fret provide. There are a lot of them on the eduard PE and I always keep these.

just heat a bit of transparent sprue and press it in the Template while hot to get a nice nav light.

There are actually 2 more on the vertical tail, but they are left transparent.

Note also the new red handle to release the tail gunner canopy and I'm pretty happy with the tonal differences between the fabric covered controls and the metal parts of the tail and trim tabs

 

 

The main wheels got some detail painting. Can you guess that there are actually 2 wires descending from the wings to the base for the engine rotation in there?

 

 

The B-25 is done, i just need to finish the base before posting more pictures.

 

Here is a teaser

Edited July 20, 2016 by red Dog

[LSP_Kevin]

I don't have enough wow for this one!

 

Kev

[Shawn M]

looks real to me, well done!

[Spaced Marine]

Wow. Just wow.

[red Dog]

Here are the final pictures:

 

 

engines off

 

engines on

 

 

 

 

The base has three switches. One for the left engine, one for the right engine and one for all the lights.

 

the separate switches for the engines allow to have different starting engine configurations

 

[red Dog]

Some details:

 

custom decals printed on regular inkjet decal paper with a white mask applied before decal. It's the worst of the two, the other side actually came out much better

 

 

The led in the top turret compartment illuminates the cockpit as well

 

the converted carburetor intake

 

top view of the cockpit and bomber compartment

 

the modified exhaust on the outboard of the engines

 

AMS propeller

 

the light Inside the waist compartment saves a bit the invisible details Inside the fuselage

[dodgem37]

Great!  Just great.  Everything about this build thread has been the best.  A real learning experience.

 

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Mark

[red Dog]

Thanks Mark

 

It has been quite an experience to me too.

I learned that putting electronic in a model clearly increases the chances of the model finishing on the shelf of doom

I made a lot of bad decisions on this one and I reached the limit of my workbench space with such a large model.

 

Looking back at the build here are the major mistakes I did:

- Weathering was too strong for a restored warbird and I had to try to correct this

- I coated the full model with flat varnish from Vallejo. I relized my mistakes when the model was really too dull. I corrected with an extra coat of semi gloss varnish (X22)

- I forgot to put a led into the bomber nose (Nothing I could do to correct this one

- Placing the transparent wingtips lights adapted for the fiberoptics revealed to be a nightmare, I should have better planned this

- Throughout the whole build I was really concerned about the alclad semi matt aluminium I chosed. It is only at the very last stage of the build that I became convinced that it was the right choice.

- I screwed up the right propeller attachment on the motor. As a consequence the prop doesn't fit correctly on the motor axle and I had to inverse prop rotation. If I made the engine rotate in the correct direction, the prop would slice forward and get out of the motor axle. By inversing polarity on the motor, the prop slice backward and remains perfectly on the engine axle - I count on the fact that not a lot of uviewers would know the correct direction of the prop

- I hit the nose gun by accident and the ammo belt transferred the hit to the ammo boxes inside the nose. Unfortunately they came unglued and fell on the floor. I'm still looking at how to fix this without reopening the whole nose, which I really rather not do

- I almsot broke the whole model trying to make the wing slide in place. I finally decided to sand a bit the inner wings to allow better wing positionning.

Edited July 24, 2016 by red Dog

[Iain]

That's come out beautifully - stunning result!!

 

Iain

[BiggTim]

I gotta say, that is probably the best B-25 I've seen yet! Just outstanding in every way. Very well done, sir!

[chuck540z3]

Very, VERY nice build! The details are awesome in every way.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[stusbke]

YEah baby yeah........

 

another great build my friend...hoping to see this one in the flesh at some point this year....

 

Cheers

Frederick Jacobs

[MikeMaben]

Impressive finish RD, love the lights and action

Real nice work.

[ClumsyDude]

This is a properly awesome project. Great work!

 

Jim