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1/32 A6M5 Zero - Meiji 1944


turbo

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I'm a latecomer Kirby and - as you'll see from the barrage of forum notifications - I've read through the build so far as well. Lovely work and all the extra details and modifications to the base kit will add up to something very special. I'm glad you're back onto it.

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Thanks very much Jeff, Ernest, Nick, and Zac, much appreciated!

 

So, revisiting the wheel wells here's a reference picture courtesy of Ryan @A6M that I posted earlier but needed to reacquaint myself with. The 2 diagrams on the left are A6M5 wheel wells. The biggest challenge here (which is obviously why I stopped where I did!) is the cabling for the landing gear position indicator switches which runs into a junction box before being relayed to the indicator lights in the cockpit. This reminded me why I made the increased thickness plastic strip - junction boxes!

 

 

wheel-wells.jpg

 

 

The junction boxes were fabricated by drilling holes to locate 0.3 mm copper wire then carefully sawing out the boxes from the stock plastic strip - fiddly work!

 

junction-boxes-web.jpg

 

The wire was then cut to length and installed as best I could to replicate the cabling in the reference diagrams. Probably a bit over-scale but anything smaller was going to be too much of a test for my dexterity!


wheel-well-plumbing-b-web.jpg


wheel-well-plumbing-c-web.jpg
 

I've gotta say, I'm glad that's out of the way. All in all, the operation of drilling out lightening holes and fitting PE and cabling was fiddly and time-consuming due to the confined spaces and fragility of the parts once some supporting kit structures were removed. I think it was worth it in the end though as the kit-supplied detail here is one of the rare weak points.

 

Now, a question for Ryan @A6M if he is floating about or anyone else who might know. Were any of the junction boxes or cabling different colours or was the whole lot just sprayed over with aotake?

 

Cheers, Kirby

 

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I built the 1/48 version just ti try and get some Mojo going, and that made me looak the 1/32 version. What I see here I will never be able to replicate, but the kit has shot up om my To Do list. Really very inspiring work and an example to us all. 

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5 hours ago, turbo said:

Thanks very much Jeff, Ernest, Nick, and Zac, much appreciated!

 

So, revisiting the wheel wells here's a reference picture courtesy of Ryan @A6M that I posted earlier but needed to reacquaint myself with. The 2 diagrams on the left are A6M5 wheel wells. The biggest challenge here (which is obviously why I stopped where I did!) is the cabling for the landing gear position indicator switches which runs into a junction box before being relayed to the indicator lights in the cockpit. This reminded me why I made the increased thickness plastic strip - junction boxes!

 

 

wheel-wells.jpg

 

 

The junction boxes were fabricated by drilling holes to locate 0.3 mm copper wire then carefully sawing out the boxes from the stock plastic strip - fiddly work!

 

junction-boxes-web.jpg

 

The wire was then cut to length and installed as best I could to replicate the cabling in the reference diagrams. Probably a bit over-scale but anything smaller was going to be too much of a test for my dexterity!


wheel-well-plumbing-b-web.jpg


wheel-well-plumbing-c-web.jpg
 

I've gotta say, I'm glad that's out of the way. All in all, the operation of drilling out lightening holes and fitting PE and cabling was fiddly and time-consuming due to the confined spaces and fragility of the parts once some supporting kit structures were removed. I think it was worth it in the end though as the kit-supplied detail here is one of the rare weak points.

 

Now, a question for Ryan @A6M if he is floating about or anyone else who might know. Were any of the junction boxes or cabling different colours or was the whole lot just sprayed over with aotake?

 

Cheers, Kirby

 

 

yes!!

 

he's back!!

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4 hours ago, Phil Smith said:

Superb work here - fascinating subject!

 

29 minutes ago, dodgem37 said:

Very nice.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

 

Thanks very much Phil and Mark, much appreciated!

 

2 hours ago, Gerhard said:

I built the 1/48 version just ti try and get some Mojo going, and that made me looak the 1/32 version. What I see here I will never be able to replicate, but the kit has shot up om my To Do list. Really very inspiring work and an example to us all. 

 

Thanks for the kind words Gerhard. You should definitely give it a go - the kit is great and up to Tamiya's usual standard (apart from the wheel wells maybe - they can give retractable undercarriage a miss next time!).

 

40 minutes ago, nmayhew said:

 

yes!!

 

he's back!!

 

It's great to be back on the bench Nick!  :beer4:

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks Spyros!

 

Soooo, after saying how glad I was to get the wheel well detailing out the way, I've just come to the belated conclusion I can't progress much further without improving the flap area. I find doing fiddly PE and detailing work can be a bit mojo-sapping, so I like to break it up with other tasks. In this case, unfortunately, I need to address the flaps before the wing halves can be joined and I've run out of other small jobs I can use to procrastinate!

 

The kit has moulded ribs on the upper half of the wing, which is better than nothing but can certainly be improved if the flaps are to be modelled in the deployed position.

 

wheel-wells-wing-a-web.jpg

 

Fortunately, the Eduard exterior PE set has quite an acceptable solution. The first step, however, was to grind off the kit structures using my trusty David Union tool. No need to tidy up with sanding as the PE will cover all this.

 

flaps_ground_web.jpg

 

Here's the Eduard PE replacement complete - I think it's a real improvement. The biggest challenge here was getting the ribs placed and glued into position. I found the best solution was to insert the kit metal axle part first then insert the ribs underneath it which helps keep them in place while you're doing the gluing with thin CA as well as making sure they're located properly.

 

flaps-PE-web.jpg

 

And here it is dry-fitted to the upper wing. I'll leave it to the last minute before painting and joining the wings to glue it permanently in place so I don't do my usual trick and break something!

 

flaps-fitted-web.jpg

Edging closer to being able to close the wings up and feel like I'm making some progress....

 

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On 1/13/2022 at 5:14 PM, LSP_Kevin said:

Nice work, Kirby! I vividly remember scratch-building these same flaps out of Evergreen sheet styrene for my Revell Zero build - which is getting on for 15 years ago now!

 

Kev

 

Ah, the good old days before we had all these nice AM replacements - kudos to you Kev! And thanks for the kind words Mark and Jeff.

 

So, just as I was feeling like I was making progress towards closing things up, I went to cut the flaps from the sprue and was confronted with this. Yep, six - count 'em - six bloody great ejector pin marks in each flap.


flaps-ejector-marks-web.jpg

 

And nope, they're not there on the real thing.

 

flaps-zero.jpg

 

It's not just the number of them, but the inconvenient location for filling and sanding. This isn't the first time on this kit there have been badly placed ejector pin marks - fortunately newer Tamiya 1/32 kits seem to be much better thought out. If I'd noticed this earlier I might have rethought the whole flaps down detailing idea...

 

Anyway, here we are now. I've decided the best filler for styrene wherever possible is...styrene! I cut sections of 1.6 mm styrene rod and placed them into the ejector pin marks. Tamiya Extra Thin was then run in, the plastic given a few seconds to soften, then pressed down with the butt end of a cocktail stick so that the molten plastic filled the mark.

 

flaps-ejector-marks-filled-web.jpg

 

I'll let this harden overnight then sand down with my David Union tool.

 

Cheers, Kirby

 

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