Assembly/painting conundrum...

[thierry laurent]

Hi,

 

The Silver Wings Bulldog has a modelling challenge for which I do not know what is the best approach to solve it. I was totally puzzled when I looked at the instructions.

 

If you look at the picture hereunder, you can see the fuselage had nose extensions going through the cylinders of the engine. The Silver Wings kits has a cut right in the middle of such extensions. The rear section of each extension is cast with each fuselage half whereas the front one is part of a crown-shaped part you need to position on the engine after having added it on the front fuselage.

 

 

Here's the problem: the fuselage has a shiny metal look. Normally you should paint the fuselage, add the painted engine, paint the nose "crown", add it over the engine and finally add the propeller. However, if you do that you're getting a nasty seam to fill and paint between each combination of the two sections whereas the nose is assembled. I considered cutting the extensions front section out of the crown and glue them first on the fuselage but in that case you cannot anymore add the engine! I also considered sawing the two halves of each extension from the fuselage halves and the "crown" part to glue them together and add them later. However, they are structurally required to assemble correctly the nose! So, it looks there is no obvious way to change the assembly steps.

 

Hence, I guess you should mask everything except such extensions, find a way to fill and sand the seam between the cylinders without damaging anything and spray a little bit of Chrome paint on them... This looks like a total nightmare! I'm not surprised the assembled kit I saw still had that seam...

 

I generally find ways to solve such issues quite easily but here, frankly,  I'm puzzled!!!

 

Any idea to use an easier approach?

 

Thierry

[ScottsGT]

I’d do my best to pre-fit the parts and then do it like you suggested.   Tape off at fuselage and paint each individual panel or use Bare Metal Foil? 

[thierry laurent]

Indeed but this means masking the full engine with all the cylinders, the fuselage and the 'crown' plus all the gaps ...

[mozart]

I don’t have an answer Thierry but it’s an intriguing question! I’m going to look at my kit tomorrow to see if anything suggests itself……but don’t hold your breath! 

[europapete]

hhmmmm.........will look tomorrow also.

BTW, that "crown" is the exhaust manifold. 

Edited April 24, 2022 by europapete

[europapete]

Hi Thierry and Max, what do you both think of this idea. On page 3 of the instructions you see the exhaust manifold and the supporting ring. It is this ring which, on the model, supports the manifold to the front of the engine. This means that the tabs in question can be cut off the manifold and fuselarge and either glue the tab halves together, erradicate the seam and refit after the engine/manifold assembly is fitted, or in my view, preferably make new tabs out of thin plastic sheet and fit those. In real life the tabs were just fairings and did not support anything.  Regards, Pete in RI.

[mozart]

That makes sense to me Pete, though the case isn’t quite as extreme, I had a similar issue on my Stieglitz and that’s exactly what I did (and it was a better fit afterwards!). 

[dmthamade]

Makes my head hurt reading that and looking at the pic. Got nothing for you, good luck.

 

Don

[dmthamade]

Curiosity made me look at a good amount of builds on line, all of them showed these parts with a seam in the middle, seems like no one had an idea to fill the line. I can see by the instructions how important these parts are to fit, odd way for the manufacturer to do this, but maybe no other way. I think i would dryfit the crap out of this, and assemble it the way the kit maker intended. Filling and sanding could be done, but would require LOTS of patience, steel steady hands, no coffee. Any other way looks like a lot of scratch building to support engine at the rear and ring at front. Looking at the instructions and parts, it could be done, patience steady hands and time should get you there.

 

Don

[thierry laurent]

5 hours ago, europapete said:

Hi Thierry and Max, what do you both think of this idea. On page 3 of the instructions you see the exhaust manifold and the supporting ring. It is this ring which, on the model, supports the manifold to the front of the engine. This means that the tabs in question can be cut off the manifold and fuselarge and either glue the tab halves together, erradicate the seam and refit after the engine/manifold assembly is fitted, or in my view, preferably make new tabs out of thin plastic sheet and fit those. In real life the tabs were just fairings and did not support anything.  Regards, Pete in RI.

I need to have a closer look at that. I considered that as well. It looks there is unfortunately no perfect solution.

[thierry laurent]

4 minutes ago, dmthamade said:

Curiosity made me look at a good amount of builds on line, all of them showed these parts with a seam in the middle, seems like no one had an idea to fill the line. I can see by the instructions how important these parts are to fit, odd way for the manufacturer to do this, but maybe no other way. I think i would dryfit the crap out of this, and assemble it the way the kit maker intended. Filling and sanding could be done, but would require LOTS of patience, steel steady hands, no coffee. Any other way looks like a lot of scratch building to support engine at the rear and ring at front. Looking at the instructions and parts, it could be done, patience steady hands and time should get you there.

 

Don

I saw the same and this is what annoyed me. It looks other modellers did not see the issue until it was too late to find a way to solve it. This was precisely what I wanted to avoid.

[europapete]

It actualy tells you to fill the seams in the instructions. 

[thierry laurent]

6 hours ago, europapete said:

It actualy tells you to fill the seams in the instructions. 

Indeed. The 'what' is there but not the 'how' or 'when'!

[LSP_Kevin]

I've recently bought this kit, so I'll be interested in a solution myself!

 

Kev

[europapete]

Had another thought last night. ( I know, thinking is bad for my health) How about dry fitting just the engine block to the bulkhead, dry fitting the manifold, checking the alignment of the cylinder holes of the block to the holes in the fuselage to see if any shims behind the block are needed. Then paint and fit just the engine block/crankcase, fit the exhaust manifold and clean up the seams on the tabs and paint the cowl area. Then fit the pre-painted cylinders through the holes into the engine block and add the rest of the engine parts.