1/18 Scale Blue Box F4U-1A Corsair Modification

[brahman104]

Love the skinning Jay! You've really taken to it well. Doesn't it look so much better than the huge troughs on the kit's exterior?   

 

I agree with you, it's hard work and takes ages, but the results are worth it. 

 

Can't wait to see that fuselage joined to the wing!

 

Craig

[JayW]

5 hours ago, airscale said:

the other is get some 0000 wire wool so once the panel is finished & detailed, a gentle rub with wire wool deburrs everything and gives a great finish for painting - this can also be done on the model

 

Peter - I am actually doing that already.  And guess what?  I notice the magnets on the panel flange were picking up what seemed to be all manner of debris, and when I went to brush it off, it didn't come off.  It moved, but would not come off.  Wonder why....  Wow it was not easy getting all those tiny steel wool particles off the magnets.  I still have some skinning to do adjacent to magnets, further forward.  So I am going to have to think on it.  Cover them with something....  

[JayW]

4 hours ago, brahman104 said:

Can't wait to see that fuselage joined to the wing!

Me neither Craig.  It's driving me batty.  How long has it been since I advertised to the LSP world that I was almost ready to join them?  But you know what?  The end product is going to be a large unwieldy subassembly with gear legs sticking out in the breeze, and gear doors ready to catch a cuff or a stray finger, and break off.  I cannot accept that.  I worked too hard on them.  So if I can do something to the individual components apart, I am going to do it.  And as long as I discover things to do, I will continue to delay it even it it drives me batty!  

 

The engine accessory compartment is going to have to be done with fuselage and wing already joined - the engine mount truss attaches to both wing and fuselage.   It will be a weeks if not months long project.  The chances are great I will break something.  I have thought about a guard of some kind, but no brilliant ideas have come yet.

[JayW]

5 hours ago, airscale said:

if you are not already, always make holes before cutting out panels - it's so much easier when you have a lot of area to work with

 

I'll say!  That big hole for the round panel on the centerline of the top panel is a prime example.  I was afraid the dremmel was going to grab hard and tear the panel in half, or deform it enough to ruin it.  I however managed to persevere.

[Phil Smith]

Brilliant craftsmanship!

[JayW]

Hello LSP'ers.  Today I can announce that after long last, I have joined the forward fuselage to the wing center section, allowing me to finish off the cockpit (minus seat, armor plate, and control stick).  I now have a large unwieldy sub-assembly that roughly corresponds to this actual subassembly for the F4U-1A:

 

 

That shot is taken out of the F4U parts catalogue.  The top line reads part number 10225 "Front & Center Section Assem. - Fuselage".  Vought/Sikorsky drawings are actually set up to depict actual as-built assembly sequences, which is not unique for government-contracted items like warplanes.   

 

And (drum roll please) here is my 10225 assembly:

 

 

Now my sleep will improve.  No longer do I have to contend with rudder pedals sticking up like little TV antennas begging to be broken off (indeed just prior to joining, I broke one off partially and had to repair).  No longer do I have to worry about rudder cables hanging out getting caught on anything and everything. 

 

What you see there is a series of hard fought victories.  I will show you some pics of the deep dark cockpit, which was a sequencing nightmare, as I have mentioned ad nauseum, because the interior structure was comprised of three separate parts, with boundaries.  Boundaries that cockpit components often did not recognize.  Not only that but the Corsair has no floor, exposing the bilge area to view, requiring me to make alot of parts that would be hidden by a floor if it only had one!  Hence the sequencing issues.  That sequencing ended up working well I am happy to say.   And the rudder cables - I always figured there was little chance threading them through where they had to go and where they had to attach to.  And failure only meant that the fishing line "cables", which are hard to find in there anyway, just would not be in there.  But fear not!  My plan for the rudder cables worked as well.  

 

First though - in order for me to join those two large components (fuselage and wing), I had to finish skinning the fuselage.  Last post, the aft LH and RH panels were still not done.  Now they are done.  But surprise - when it came to gluing them down, problems arose that I did not have with the other panels.  Apparently, compound curvature is sneaking into the fuselage contour, and sheet metal does not like compound curvature.  It was very tough to get those panels to lie down onto the surface without gapping.  I began with the LH side innocently enough, with a piece of heat treated shim stock just like before, but then had to really man-handle the panel, burnishing and burnishing to try to get it to lie flat.  Thank goodness I did this step before joining fuselage to wing.  In the end I declared war and CA'd the curved edges, and lived with some "wrinkling".  It can be seen easily in this Imgur "huge thumbnail" (the aft edge of the aft panel):

 

 

The forward edge of that panel has some wrinkling too (a bit less).  

 

So for the RH sided, I switched to annealed material (Peter will cringe when he reads this), knowing that breathing on it wrong will leave a mark.  It was hoped that after some minor burnishing the softer material would stretch over that compound curvature and not wrinkle.  Well, after great care I got it installed, and after rigorous (not minor) burnishing it ended up wrinkled some too!!!!  WTF!  But not as badly - I do not have a specific pic of it, but it can be seen in the first pic of this post.  Had it gone down more smoothly, I would have torn off the LH panel and done it over again with annealed material.  But no - not enough improvement to do that.  I will convince myself that real aircraft had pillowing and wrinkling too....

 

You know, I am not finished skinning this section - I still have to do the belly.  I wonder how I am going to do this heavy handed stuff with the gear doors and struts sticking up.  I must be careful and patient as a heart surgeon....  

 

OK - here are some shots of the cockpit semi-finished.  Note the long awaited foot troughs are now installed under the rudder pedals.  And all remaining un-terminated systems runs are terminated where they are supposed to be.  Yay!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hundreds upon hundreds of parts....  Try as I might, I cannot get good focus on all the cockpit stuff.  Sorry, a photographer I am not.  Soon I will get that control stick (with pee funnel) in there.  The seat comes later, maybe much later - when the aft fuselage is done.  But for now, it is on to the firewall.  Then I believe skinning the underside where the sun don't shine.  All in preparation for work in the engine accessories compartment - a very big deal.  Somehow- this must be done without breaking off the landing gear.  Take care and thanks for tuning in!

 

 

Edited February 23, 2022 by JayW

[brahman104]

Well done Jay!!!!!!!

 

I can imagine the pride and relief of achieving this milestone. I think you're being too harsh on yourself..... the panels look amazing to me . The photos look great too, although I know they never portray what you can see for real, and they never seem to be able to capture all the countless hours you've put into this so far, but that's what the 48 pages of the build log is for!

 

I hope you're taking a moment or two to marvel at your own work, like the rest of us....

 

Cheers,

 

Craig

[LSP_Kevin]

Seriously brilliant stuff, Jay! Congrats on taking this build to the next stage (and level).

 

Kev

[Out2gtcha]

Bloody amazing! True work of art and replication being born here.  Cant wait to see more Jay! 

[chuck540z3]

Looks REAL Jay, and there’s no higher compliment than that.  Incredible!

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[Oldbaldguy]

Not likely Vought had the same wrinkly edge problems you’re having with these compound curve panels.  Where you have to beat your panels into submission on the model, the 1:1 panels would have been preformed in dies and a perfect fit, needing only to be clecoed then riveted.  You are having to build a Corsair the hard way, which makes the model even more incredible.

[geedubelyer]

This is genuinely tremendous. 

[Citadelgrad]

Jay, this was already incredible, but your willingness to just say "Metal clad this thing that I have worked so long to get to this point?   OK, challenge accepted.  

 

The "experiments" with aluminum cans are, themselves, staggeringly realistic. 

 

This is a master class not only in technique, but in willingness to accept unforseen challenges.   

[JayW]

50 minutes ago, Citadelgrad said:

but in willingness to accept unforseen challenges.   

 

I hear you loud and clear.  It is putting a project one has put his heart and soul in, and subjected it to risks one had not intended to subject it to. 

 

But you know, the decision to try skinning this thing was kind of easy.  I had three choices - one was to do nothing, two was to fill in with putty and rescribe, and three was to skin it.  Doing nothing, I got a strong impression, would have disappointed a whole lot of folks watching this build.  And frankly it would have disappointed me too.  But so far on my 1/18 projects I have left the surfaces pretty much well enough alone.  And consequently the surfaces and paint jobs are the low points of all those projects.  To fill in the trenches and pock marks, and do over, I know from experience, is something I am exceptionally bad at.  I have tried it on several occasions with icky results.  Some modelers here are wizards at it; I am not.  So that was a no-go.  Then Peter began needling me about skinning ("ah come on - you can do it, go for it....").  He is a master at it as you know.  So I looked at some of his tutorials, received more advise through e-mails, bought a mule to practice on, got some material and tools, practiced, and from there it became pretty clear what to do.  I had to accept however that this already marathon length project was just going to get longer.  Yikes.  

 

I am not out of the woods.  Not by any means.  This has forced my hand and now I am faced with doing fillet fairings, and other compound curvature panels.   For instance, what the heck am I going to do with the Corsair's narrow little tail cone???   Almost all other fighters have full length rudders and no tail cone.  Not the Corsair...  And what I worry about also is the center wing, which I finished prior to making this decision.  It would have been a whole lot easier to skin those wing panels prior to gear door and gear strut installations!   The flaps too - would be sooo much easier if they were not there.  So I am not sure yet to what extent I am going to skin the center wing.  

 

Thanks for the kind comments Bill.

[Oldbaldguy]

Center section?  It’s just plastic and another solvable problem to wrap your skills around.   Grit your teeth, hunker down and skin it!  Think of how much fun we’re going to have watching you do it.  And you could build up fabric covered surfaces instead of the plastic ones and make a bunch of little bullets for the guns and……..