1to1scale Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 I believe I may have been one of the very first few people with one of the Hobby Boss B-24J, because I happened to be in the right place at the right time. I happened to meet the local IPMS president a few weeks before, we spoke about the flock of P-40’s I was building, a week later he messaged me that he had an extra P-40F he ordered, and wanted to know if I wanted one. I did, so myself and another guy met him at his house to pick up our orders, only to see a stack of 8 B-24’s he ordered, he mentioned he had an extra B-24. At the time I knew I had one on order from Hannants, so I declined, but as fate would have it, the other guy took it, a few days later, he traded me a few kits I had. Oh yeah, a week later, my other B-24 arrived! When I originally started this build, I planned to do a 100% OTB build, but as I started playing with plastic, I decided there are some things I could scratch build and some things I need to scratch build. Without question, the front turret is a total disaster, nothing about it was correct except that it had two guns. I decided to order some supplies, an old Mattel Vac-u-form, PETG, and some casting resin and RTV. I am going to make a new front turret. More details to follow. The rear turret has much better internals, but still needs a new vac shell, since it also has a seam line in the wrong spot. I actually started this build the Thursday before Christmas, but that mostly involved cutting parts off sprues and sanding. I spent a few hours fitting bulkheads and floors before I started gluing the cockpit together last weekend. Except for the front cockpit area, all the parts are just dryfit together. Keep in mind, you will need to do some sanding around the outside of the bulkheads for the fuselage to close without filler, but if you do, it will. Of course...I could not leave it stock, I pulled out my collection of styrene and started making formers. Unfortunately, I now have some new reference material, and I decided I need to go back and correct some details behind the cockpit and the rearmost bulkhead. This is how you get 300g of weight in the front. 3/16 lead wire, the compartment under the floor hold 154g, the one in front hold 160g, so total of 314g. I later determined that you could probably get all 300 in the floor if you used lead sheet, and packed it in every square corner, there are a lot of voids using lead wire. Unfortunately, most places can be seen from various openings, hatches, and windows. The area in front of the pilots feet is not visible, but the false wall I built on the other side maybe visible from the bombardiers window. If I could get a replacement sprue, I might do this area over again with lead sheeting. So far, this is what I have done, definately under 25% rule applies. More to come. Hartmann52, Wackyracer, LSP_Kevin and 14 others 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckD Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 Awesome. Following. That turret is the only fault with the kit that is bad enough to hesitate on buying it. If someone an aftermarket replacement is available by the time I'm done with my B-17, I'll likely snag the -24 then. Out2gtcha 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennismcc Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 Most impressive, will be watching with interest. Cheers Dennis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn M Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 watching closely Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richardchapman5 Posted January 4, 2019 Share Posted January 4, 2019 Looking forward to your build Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Ray Posted January 5, 2019 Share Posted January 5, 2019 Will love seeing what you do with this one! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel460 Posted January 5, 2019 Share Posted January 5, 2019 Great start, very nice work. Dan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fvdm Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 Great start on a wonderful kit. I will sit back and enjoy this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iain Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 Great to see another Liberator - you're quite a way ahead of me! Useful to see how the internal floors/bulkheads go together... Iain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottsGT Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 How's the contractors doing on the home addition to house this monster? You going to use the plastic gear inners or order the brass ones being made? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now