1/32 Hasegawa N1K2-J Shiden Kai 343-45

[Thunnus]

5 hours ago, Alex said:

Beautiful job on the main gear legs!  What size brass tubing did you use?

 

Thank you!  I don't remember the exact size.  I used lead wire for the brake line that was 0.020" in diameter and I just found the appropriate brass tubing that would accommodate the wire.

 

I recently purchased a couple David Union tools from Troy here at LSP.

 

What I was initially interested in was the sander.  But when he also mentioned a small router with an RPM range that was slow enough not to melt plastic, I thought it was time to replace my clunky, plastic-melting Chicago Tools rotary tool.  You can check out the specifics of these David Union tools over on the Vendor Board.

 

Check out the size difference between the new router and old!

 

Fits in the hand very nicely!

 

The important thing is its RPM range of 1,500 to 12,500 RPM.  The slowest my Chicago Tools' spins at is 6,500 RPM and at that speed, any sustained contact with a grinding tool will melt styrene plastic.  I've verified that I can use the D300 router with all of the tools that fit my old rotary tool without melting plastic, which is a huge plus.  I performed a little test on how these two tools might help me in the future.

 

As an example, here is a raised injector pin mark.  It was previously doused with sprue goo when I was monkeying around with the stuff on my Ta152H build.  Hopefully, it is cured by now!

 

Using a round grinding head (from a set of grinding tools I bought off EBay a while ago) on the D300, I carefully remove the raised feature, being careful not to gouge the surrounding plastic.  Notice the dry sanding dust and no remnants of melted plastic.

 

Now I switch to the D400 loaded with 400 grit sandpaper and sand down the area to a flat surface. What's nice about the D400 is that it has perfectly mechanical motion. That combined with the flat plastic surface of the tool, gives you great uniformity in the sanding motion. Using my old sandpaper-held-with-fingers technique, the finger will naturally deform over the whatever your sanding and that tends to scoop out the surrounding plastic as well as the raised surface you are trying to remove. The bump gets removed but there is often a subtly uneven surface that results. Using a mechanical sander greatly improves surface uniformity.

 

I probably should've used the 600 grit on the D400 because I had to clean up the sanding marks with finer sandpaper.  You can see the remnants of the injector pin mark but is it in color only... the surface is nice and flat.

 

To verify how flat, I've shot the repair area with Mr Primer Surfacer 1000.

 

 

 

Usually my injector pin mark removals have very subtle surface irregularities that are hidden from certain angles but visible from others.  I think the D400 will give me an incremental but noticeable improvement in my surface repair work.  We'll test the D400 out again on the Shiden Kai's wing insert panel.

[Troy Molitor]

The Jedi-master has some new tools!   Thanks for the mention John.  Is that a future Macchi build I see?  Perhaps more of a Macchi mule.

 

[Thunnus]

4 hours ago, Troy Molitor said:

The Jedi-master has some new tools!   Thanks for the mention John.  Is that a future Macchi build I see?  Perhaps more of a Macchi mule.

 

 

 

You're welcome, Troy!  I always appreciate a good tool or two!  The wing part is from a 1/48 G.55 build that I completed years ago.  It came with extra wings and fuselage halves for some reason.

 

The insert panel joints were further refined using the D400 sander.  I changed the sanding paper to 600 grit.  I'm not going to apply another primer coat at this stage since there is still riveting to do and I don't want to build up too many paint layers.

 

I decided to take a look at the engine to decide what kind of work I'll be doing here.  It's a fairly complete representation except the cylinder banks are hollow on the rearward facing side.

 

The exhaust ends are not exactly "hollow" but recessed as dimples.

 

I used the D300 router to deepen the recesses a little bit.

 

I spied a cutting head that came with the D300 and thought it might be useful to deepen the exhaust openings.  I tested it out on a piece of plastic and decided not to risk damaging the exhausts.  This tool isn't really made for the side-to-side motion necessary to hollow out elliptical openings.

 

Doesn't look much better but the exhaust openings ARE deeper.  Tipped with black paint, they should look the part.

 

Here are the unmodified engine components stuck together using Blue Tack.  The stubs on the wiring harness are very small but I think I can use a micro drill bit to hollow out them out to accept wires.

[Wolf Buddee]

Wow John,

 

You’re a machine! How many kits do you have on the go? Nonetheless each one you build is amazing! Keep ‘em comin’ 

 

Cheers,

Wolf

[dodgem37]

Good show, John.

 

A spot of liquid glue will smooth things out.  Just sayin'.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[Thunnus]

15 hours ago, Wolf Buddee said:

Wow John,

 

You’re a machine! How many kits do you have on the go? Nonetheless each one you build is amazing! Keep ‘em comin’ 

 

Cheers,

Wolf

 

Right now I've got three in-progress builds.  The D-13 is on hold.  I needed a break from consecutive Luftwaffe subjects so I threw this one in the queue to break the monotony.  Both the Shiden Kai and D-13 will be riveted and I'm still waiting on some new riveting tools that have been stuck in postal hell since early May.  That's one of the reasons I've jumped back onto the G-14.

 

 

14 hours ago, dodgem37 said:

Good show, John.

 

A spot of liquid glue will smooth things out.  Just sayin'.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

 

Yup!  I usually brush some Tamiya Extra Thin onto these bored out areas to melt all of the stray styrene remnants.

[Troy Molitor]

The build is looking good as usual John.  I purchased the mid-wing George off another LSP mate last year and have another one built up back in the 90’s.  Still like the lines of the George kits. I’d really like to see a mainstream REX someday.  Fingers crossed.  

[Thunnus]

Yeah, the N1K is a cool airframe.  And I've always liked how the Germans and Japanese added spinners to their radial engine props, unlike the Americans.  It just looks cooler, IMO!

[Thunnus]

I was curious about the fit of the tail stabilizers so I glued them together.  And I made a big boo-boo...

 

 

My sloppy carelessness really pissed me off.  But now I'm determined... instead of just fixing the glue blob and getting it back to even, I want to make the horizontal stabilizer BETTER than before.

Edited June 28, 2020 by Thunnus

[Wackyracer]

So frustrating when this happens, I think we've all been there and done it.

 

These thin glues wick to the strangest of places when your sure your holding it in a safe place.

 

Only yesterday I was oh so careful not to lose a tiny piece for the spitfire, that I managed to do just that in 2 minutes flat out of the tweezers. 20 mins later I'd found it and started back only to do the same thing seconds later! 30 mins later it was back for a second time and finished off inside a plastic bag to restrict its flight. 1 hours time for 5 mins work!!!! 

[dodgem37]

Ouch!

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[PeterOlsen]

Naaaaaaaah , that’ll be fine under a coat of paint ! ...........  

 

Yeah I hate it when that happens ! I accidentally did the same thing on my Tamina F-14. Just have to remind yourself that it’s fixable.

Are you thinking of going dropped elevators ?

Cheers,

Pete

[Rocat]

Good progress and nice info and tips, thank you.

[Thunnus]

Ok, so it's time to face up to our mistakes.  Mistakes happen and as a modeler, I always try to approach mistakes as a challenge or opportunity rather than a setback.  At least this prevents me from throwing the kit in the garbage can!  My objective is to wipe out any traces of the mistake so that it is invisible to the viewer.  Or if that is not possible, at least reduce the error so that it no longer calls attention to itself.

 

One of the operating characteristics of Tamiya Extra Thin liquid cement is its capillary action.  It's a very useful trait that can be a great advantage when gluing parts together.  You can wick together some pretty impressive joins with minimal clean-up using this stuff.  However, that capillary action needs special attention.  You have to be extra careful when working around tape masks and clear parts, for example.  

 

In this case, I was trying to get the joints to close between the stabilizer halves.  At some point, excess glue seeped onto one of my finger pads and caused some damage.  I immediately set the piece aside.  Best not to do anything until you let the glue dry.  Looking at it now, it's actually not that bad.  Through the ridges of the finger print, you can still make out all of the recessed and raised detail.

 

There was also a secondary blob on the same stabilizer.  It was on a flat area with no detail affected so this should be an easier fix.

 

Since I now have the tool on hand, I used the D400 sander to grind out the blob.

 

After the surface was level, I used a finer sandpaper to finish it off.  That took a couple of minutes.

 

On to the bigger one.  Instead of just getting a piece of sandpaper and trying to rub out the whole thing at once, I took a look at it and decided to attack this systematically.  A logical division is between the metal stabilizer and the fabric covered control surface.  

 

Concentrating only on the metal stabilizer portion, I sand this area smooth.  Just enough to remove the mistake while trying to preserve as much of the recessed panel lines and rivets as possible.

 

Shifting over to the fabric portion, we are trying to sand between the raised stitching details.  I thought the piston action of the D400 with a very narrow head would be ideal for this but the narrowest head was too wide.

 

Instead, I used a piece of fresh sandpaper, crisply folded in half.  This gives me enough rigidity to use the thin edge of the folded end as a precise sanding tool.

 

Using this piece of sandpaper in a "cutting" motion as well as a sideways "wiping" motion, I was able to smooth out the glue blob between the fabric stitching strips.

 

The whole area was then smoothed with my finest grade of sandpaper and buffed out with a piece of cloth. For all intents and purposed, good as new.  The reward for being systematic and careful was that I didn't even have to restore any detail.

 

So we're back to even.  Remember that I mentioned that I wanted the stabilizer to be even better than original?  I knew in advance that the piece was going to be riveted so that was going to be accomplished eventually.  But working on the stabilizer and comparing with the photos of the restored aircraft, I noticed the tab actuators could be refined.

 

So I did some minor cutting and fished out a small piece from the PE spares box and came up with a little more detail.  It has not been permanently attached at this point as I'm worried about it getting knocked during the remainder of construction.  So, with the repairs complete and even without the riveting, I do consider the stabilizer now better than original!

Edited January 10, 2023 by Thunnus

[Thunnus]

While I'm on the tail assembly, I thought I'd add a couple more enhancements.  The antenna mast is just a pip of plastic molded onto one side of the tail fin.  It's too small to drill a hole into so I wanted something more definitive to accommodate the future aerial wire.

 

Using a spare piece of photoetch, I gouged out a furrow on the inside of the tail fin so that the PE piece would not inhibit the two halves from mating together flush and glued the piece in.

 

Similar to the actuators on the horizontal stabilizers, there was an opportunity to refine the actuators on the vertical fin.

 

Not a 100% accurate but it adds a little refinement to this area.  I've glued the small brass bits into place, hoping they are secure and will not get bumped off during the long construction process.

 

The tail assembly, not yet glued together...

Edited June 29, 2020 by Thunnus