Guillow 1/28 B-17

[mattyfarm]

Back to little rubberbands and bits of balsa to put pressure on the styrene.

 

I'm going to used the same method for hatches, small panels, and windows. I think it will be easier with small pieces. I think I'll end up using a lot of strip styrene to hide some of the mistakes on the edges.

[Erwin]

Nice method on the controls.

[mattyfarm]

Thanks Erwin. It's really just a variation on the kit instructions to paste the paper templates to the model. I wonder if the paper would have been easier to manage.

 

Here are some more detail items being made from styrene. The fuselage door and nose hatch are done. I used 0.03mm styrene strip for the hinges, and 0.05mm clear styrene for windows.

 

...EDITED NOTE...I meant to write 0.03 INCH styrene (0.75mm) and 0.005 INCH (0.13mm, really thin...). The fumes and dust must be getting to me. Mistakes like that could cause you to crash on Mars!

 

Other windows are cut out, and the white edges of styrene are colored with an olive-colored marker. The removed sections are the squares on the blue tape; maybe they can be used for other panels, hatches, etc. Next, I will cut out the frames after attaching clear styrene windows to the inside surface.

Edited November 2, 2005 by mattyfarm

[mattyfarm]

Here's a shot of the details cut out of styrene according to the kit templates. The windows from the previous pic are on the blue tape on the right side of the photo. Clear styrene in is place, and the window edges are colored with the marker pen. The batwing-looking shapes are the "cheek windows".

[mattyfarm]

Here's all the styrene details, including wing root forms. The control surfaces are in place on the model. The smaller details should be easier to place than the control surfaces, and probably won't require as much corrective action.

[mattyfarm]

As I've mentioned, I'm not doing a lot of super-detailing. I figure wherever there's clear parts you can see into, I'll try to put in just enough detail to fool the (untrained) eye into thinking the plane is built up on the inside.

 

I took a photo of an illustration of the B-17 cockpit then reduced the size until it looked about right. I cut out the picture, mounted it on some sheet styrene, then hit it with some spray varnish to seal it up. I then dabbed Future onto the instrument dials.

 

When people look into the small windows around the cockpit, there should be enough detail to see on the instrument panel. This was a pretty simple "cop-out" alternative to scratch-building an instrument panel that will be difficult to see anyway.

[Jens]

wow it looks really great!!