A6M2b Zero - Attack on Pearl Harbor - 1/32 Tamiya

[turbo]

That engine's looking great Alex! I quite like using 0.3mm copper wire for ignition leads. I find it is a good balance of being pliable whilst also holding it's shape.

 

 

A RAAF Buffalo will be awesome!!

[AlbertD]

That does look like a wonderful kit and you are sure doing it justice. Your workmanship and attention to detail is amazing.

[Johnny Cloud]

On 8/17/2020 at 1:29 AM, MikeMaben said:

    Is that you lieutenant ?     

 

 

Yes sir!

An old favorite.

[MikeMaben]

Me too 

[dennismcc]

Looks great Alex, the box art on the Buffalo kit is what inspired me to build my Nate, sadly for some reason the Buffalo that should have accompanied the Nate in the display cabinet did not get built, one day though it will.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Alex]

Threading on the aft cylinder bank...

 

 

Front view with all the plug wires now in place

 

 

And the opposite side

 

 

The four wires still sticking out the back are the ganged ignition wire conduits that run back to the magnetos on the aft part of the crankcase.  I have now double-checked that there is clearance for them to fit inboard of the engine mount and thus make it to where they need to go. 

 

Here's the engine mount just set in place to verify that it fits snugly and the wires all clear.

 

 

 

And with the rear cowl mounting ring installed. 

 

 

I spent some time thinking carefully about when in this sequence I should add the PE cowl flaps that come with the Eduard kit.  They look a million times better than the molded styrene that comes with the kit (learned this with my P-40).  But once in place they are delicate (also learned from the P-40), and for this kit they need to be put in place in careful register with the cowl itself.  These points argue for painting them off of the model and adding them late.  I had also considered trying to put them onto the rear cowl mounting ring unpainted and then paint it and them together before putting it on the engine, but the difficulty of doing a good dry fit to get them positioned accurately led me ultimately to go for the "add late" option.

 

Any suggestions for tricks to impart a uniform and gentle curve to PE parts would be appreciated.  Especially with these flaps, which are a double thickness once folded over, I'm worried about kinking them rather than curving them, especially since they will be so prominent on the final model.

 

Carburetor, magnetos, oil pump, etc that make up the back of the crankcase.

 

 

 

Photo suggests I could have cleaned some of the styrene parts up a little bit better before painting them.  Oh well.  The are small in reality, if not on the computer screen, and it will not be terribly visible.

 

Here's a shot of the same assembly following a coat of matte varnish.  Next step is to start adding wire "plumbing" to all of these parts, but I need a break from squinting for a while first.  Tomorrow.  Or maybe later tonight, who knows.

 

 

And the cylinder banks, also after a coat of matte varnish.  Always nice how that ties everything together and lends a bit more of a "scale" feel to it.

 

 

 

Finally, I masked off and re-sprayed the aotoke primer inside of the front of the fuselage to hit a number of areas that I missed when the fuselage was still in pieces, but which will be visible when the rear engine bay covers are removed from the finished model.

 

 

Before doing that I drilled out the holes in the little mounting blocks that said engine covers rest against (which would receive Dzus fasteners on the real airplane).  The Eduard kit provided PE replacements for them, but I thought they would look decent with the plastic just drilled out, and because their positions are so critical to the engine covers sitting cleanly and stably on the model, I was not tempted to try and saw them off and get the PE ones glued on in precisely the right spots.

 

I have also decided that it is going to be easier (and safer, from a breaking-stuff perspective) to paint the fuselage before permanently attaching the engine mount and engine.  So that may happen fairly soon here.

Edited August 22, 2020 by Alex

[turbo]

That engine looks awesome Alex!  Taking lots of notes on how you're going about it.

 

4 hours ago, Alex said:

Any suggestions for tricks to impart a uniform and gentle curve to PE parts would be appreciated.  Especially with these flaps, which are a double thickness once folded over, I'm worried about kinking them rather than curving them, especially since they will be so prominent on the final model.

 

 I usually try and find an object with a similar curvature such as the side of a wine bottle or tapered beer bottle (mainly because I have them close to hand while modelling!  but anything conical to give a range of curvatures is ideal) to use as a template and shape the PE part on that. If I screw it up, I just put it under my PE bending tool to flatten it out and start again. Tighter curves can be done with a pencil, bit of sprue, or cocktail stick, etc.

Edited August 23, 2020 by turbo

[Lothar]

Excellent progress - every finished bit and part looks awesome 

Lothar

[dennismcc]

That looks ever so good, very realistic.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Alex]

6 hours ago, Lothar said:

Excellent progress - every finished bit and part looks awesome 

Lothar

 

2 hours ago, dennismcc said:

That looks ever so good, very realistic.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

Thanks guys.  It’s a slow process but I’m provisionally pretty happy with how it is turning out.  Still nervous about a couple of key things that will be important for the final look of the model, but hopefully patience and forethought will let me muddle through those.

[Alex]

9 hours ago, turbo said:

That engine looks awesome Alex!  Taking lots of notes on how you're going about it.

 

 

 I usually try and find an object with a similar curvature such as the side of a wine bottle or tapered beer bottle (mainly because I have them close to hand while modelling!  but anything conical to give a range of curvatures is ideal) to use as a template and shape the PE part on that. If I screw it up, I just put it under my PE bending tool to flatten it out and start again. Tighter curves can be done with a pencil, bit of sprue, or cocktail stick, etc.

Makes sense!  I will go look for something with the approximate radius of the Zero cowling to use...

[Alex]

I've been avoiding working on the engine plumbing as it's the last area of uncertainty for me on this kit - need to take a break and do something simpler for a bit.  I finished the main gear legs but forgot to take photos; will show those later.  Then got to the cowling.  This is supplied by Tamiya on its own separate mini-sprue, and is clearly something they pulled out all the stops on in terms of thin and precise styrene injection molding.  It has to be to fit around a scale engine, since the sheet metal original was obviously much thinner still in scale.

 

The upper cowl piece included one of the few minor fiddles in the whole kit with getting the styrene glued up properly (most of it just falls together).  The aft end of the upper cowl, on my kit at least, was a little bit narrow at the cutouts for the gun troughs.  Not mis-proportioned, just cast in a way the the part didn't "flare" quite as much at the back as needed.  The result was that gluing in the gun trough piece itself was about 6 sequential steps involving very carefully directed gentle finger pressure to get the mating edges perfectly aligned, then gluing a small part of the seam and waiting without moving said fingers until the glue set up.  The pressures needed are far too small for any clamp I own.  Having a book to hand was helpful.

 

 

Once completed, the cowl halves fit the engine beautifully.  The lower half went on first try.  With the upper, shown below, there was initially some interference between the gun troughs and the PE heat shields/wire looms on top of the front top two cylinders.  I bent them a bit with tweezers and voila.

 

 

 

I'll probably paint the cowling this evening after work.  I'll need to figure out if I'm going to do anything to try and pull out the panel line and rivet detail on it.  Since it's black, that would need to be something like gray PLW.  Concerned that this might look hokey, however.  We'll see.

[Alex]

Main gear legs.  A nice aspect of this kit is that the wheel hubs rotate, such that it is impossible to get the flat/bulge spots on the tires in the wrong orientation (which I have obviously done before).

 

 

 

Note the multiple little placard stencils that Tamiya provides for the gear legs.  Every detail...

Edited August 25, 2020 by Alex

[turbo]

Looking very nice indeed Alex! I like the aotake tin!

[Brett M]

Very nice looking legs!