Hasegawa 1/32 Fw 190D-9 Late "Brown 4"

[Hoss FL]

Thanks again for your wonderful photos and step-by-step commentary. It's really helping me as I try to tackle this kit. And of course your work is spectacular!  

[Thunnus]

Thanks for the comments guys!  Tijuana orphanage visit last weekend and bass fishing this weekend so I won't be able to provide an update for a few days!  Will be back soon!

[Woody V]

Clever use of the sprue runner to paint the pipes. I've filed that one away for future reference.
Very impressive work going on here.... can't wait to see it finished.

[Thunnus]

Thanks guys!  Lots of real life interfering with my modeling mojo but at least it is positive stuff (fishing and mission trip to Tijuana).  But I was able to squeeze in a bit of work on Brown 4 recently.

 

The painted Revi16B gun sight will not be glued into place until it can be protected by the windscreen but here's what it looks like in place.

 

 

The same applies for the painted tail wheel.

 

 

The wings are completed.  I've chosen to keep the flap bays unpainted until later on in the build.

 

 

The fuselage is also finished. A few last bits of wiring have been added to busy up the rear engine as much as possible.

 

 

Pre-fitting the wings to the fuselage highlighted a few minor issues.  First, there is a slight step at the wing root.  I'll shave this area down prior to gluing the wings on.

 

 

A gap on the fuselage bottom will be addressed with a shim of thin sheet plastic.

 

 

Now it is time to glue the wings onto the fuselage.  To ensure a solid glue joint at the wing root, I am going to secure one side at a time using masking tape. After the cement along the port wing root is cured, I'll apply glue and tape to the starboard wing root.  The wing spar assembly should ensure the proper dihedral.

 

 

A look at the completed wheel well and rear engine area.  This will get covered up significantly when the central wing bottom part is attached.

 

[LSP_Kevin]

Super stuff, John!

 

Kev

[Thunnus]

Thank you Kevin!

 

Glue is now applied to the starboard wing root and tape is used to tilt the wing and compress the glue joint until it dries.

 

 

One more view of the exposed wheel well.  At this time, I've added small pieces of wiring to the open end of the small sections of brass tubing that I previously placed in the wheel well.

 

[Rockie Yarwood]

Superb! 

[JayW]

I am so unfamiliar with the FW190.  So I cannot comment on accuracy, except to say it looks so convincing and authentic.  You really have a magic touch that stands up to magnification.  Bravo!  

[duke_]

9 hours ago, Thunnus said:

Thank you Kevin!

 

Glue is now applied to the starboard wing root and tape is used to tilt the wing and compress the glue joint until it dries.

 

 

One more view of the exposed wheel well.  At this time, I've added small pieces of wiring to the open end of the small sections of brass tubing that I previously placed in the wheel well.

 

this build (also ) is exceptional John! it really helps me watching this step by step. . i have the same issue with the wing and fuselage joint.. what kind of glue you are using when you were forcing the wing to meet the wing root ?? plastic cement only?

[Antonio Argudo]

fabulous progress John,

lots of great Doras builds at the moment in LSP, can't wait to see the paint process, cheers

[Thunnus]

16 hours ago, JayW said:

I am so unfamiliar with the FW190.  So I cannot comment on accuracy, except to say it looks so convincing and authentic.  You really have a magic touch that stands up to magnification.  Bravo!  

Thank you Jay!  Unlike your builds, where you actually keep track of the plumbing, I'm just winging it, basically.  So no, it is not accurate.  But hopefully it looks somewhat realistic and authentic, which is my goal.

 

 

14 hours ago, duke_ said:

this build (also ) is exceptional John! it really helps me watching this step by step. . i have the same issue with the wing and fuselage joint.. what kind of glue you are using when you were forcing the wing to meet the wing root ?? plastic cement only?

Thank you Spyros!  Enjoying this group build of Doras!  I used Tamiya Extra Thin on the wing joints.  I thought there was enough plastic-to-plastic contact to give me a sufficiently strong bond.

 

 

13 hours ago, Antonio Argudo said:

fabulous progress John,

lots of great Doras builds at the moment in LSP, can't wait to see the paint process, cheers

Thank you Antonio!  Yes, it's great having multiple Dora builds at once.  Both Duke and Hoss FL are superlative builders and it's a challenge to keep up with the quality that they are presenting!

 

Here is the wing join after an initial going over with the a rotary tool to reduce the lip.

 

 

White Milliput is used for the initial putty application.  Instead of smoothing it out with water like I normally do, I elected to use the tip of a toothpick like a spatula to apply.  Smoothing it out with water tends to push the putty down into the gap even below the surface level of the plastic and I didn't want to push the putty that deep here.

 

 

Milliput takes a long time to do dry so I futzed around with the Henri Daehne prop in the meantime.  I've decided to glue together the hub components first for painting and then attach the prop blades last.  

 

 

Here is the hub all glued together.  Remember... there is a small magnet hiding under the front tip of the hub to hold the spinner cap in place.

 

 

I wanted to mask off the glue contact area on the backplate.  The donut-shaped mask can be fashioned in a number of ways but I chose to use the Silhouette Portrait cutter for this.  I scanned the backplate part and imported the photo into AutoCAD.  I've found that scanned photos import into AutoCAD at a 1:1 scale.  So I don't have to measure the part and scale it accordingly in CAD... one less scaling exercise to deal with.  Once it is imported, it's very easy to draw shapes onto the photo.  The red circles represent the mask that I want to produce.  A box is drawn around the mask using 1" or 0.5" increments.  You need to do this because the mask will need to be re-sized correctly after it is imported into the Silhouette Software.

 

 

The scanned photo is removed and the drawing is saved as a DXF file and then opened in the Silhouette software.  I drew a 0.5" x 0.5" box around the mask so it is re-sized to that dimension in the Silhouette software.  Now you just put a piece of masking material onto the cutting board and send the job to the Portrait cutter.

 

 

I used a sheet of yellow Tamiya masking material for this particular mask.

 

 

There are different ways to produce masks using a craft cutter like the Portrait and this is just one of them.  I know that not everyone has access or is familiar with a CAD program but since I am, producing custom cut masks is relatively easy.  I thought showing this might de-mystify some of ambiguities of using craft cutters.

[Troy Molitor]

Some really nice work going on here John.  Welcome back.  

[JayW]

Whaaaaa???   I tell ya - the ingenuity I find from some of you modelers on this site just astounds me.  One of my weaknesses as a designer is not enough out-of-the-box thinking.  I get most of my ideas from others who already thought of them.  Anyway - producing that paint mask in teh way you did is pretty darned ingenious.  

 

AutoCad - I take it you have a home version of it, whatever that might be?  I have Rhino 7, which does some things great, some things not so great (my pet peeve being corners and fillets where it is pitifully bad).  Plus - the cost of ownership was not bad as opposed to some others with stiff yearly or bi-yearly fees for continued usage.  I'd like to know what you think of it.

[Thunnus]

Thanks guys!

 

On 8/28/2022 at 6:00 AM, JayW said:

Whaaaaa???   I tell ya - the ingenuity I find from some of you modelers on this site just astounds me.  One of my weaknesses as a designer is not enough out-of-the-box thinking.  I get most of my ideas from others who already thought of them.  Anyway - producing that paint mask in teh way you did is pretty darned ingenious.  

 

AutoCad - I take it you have a home version of it, whatever that might be?  I have Rhino 7, which does some things great, some things not so great (my pet peeve being corners and fillets where it is pitifully bad).  Plus - the cost of ownership was not bad as opposed to some others with stiff yearly or bi-yearly fees for continued usage.  I'd like to know what you think of it.

 

I'm rocking an outdated version of AutoCAD Lite.  Don't know anything about Rhino but if you can draw lines and arcs, it should work!

 

Slowly addressing the wing root gaps.  After the White Milliput, I applied and sanded progressively thinner coats of Mr Surfacer 1000 (three applications total). I'm restricting my primer coats to the joints only because the primer tends to clog the rivet holes.

 

 

Here is my stab as establishing the wood base for the prop blades.  Reddish brown base streaked with darker oils to simulate wood grain.  

 

 

The wood grain is applied to the backs only as the tips will be weathered enough to make out the grain (hopefully).  The fronts will feature very light spot chipping only.

 

[Hoss FL]

Nice clean wing roots, John. Your clear explanations for each step are over the top. Thank you! Looking forward to next steps on the build. 

 

- Jim