In With a Hasegawa Ki-61 I

[Gazzas]

Ernest...   there is a Ki-61 walkaround video somewhere... 

 

There are plenty of pics of the real thing if you need them for your surface prep.  The Tony is my other favorite Japanese plane.

 

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[Greif8]

Thank you much for the info Gary.  I am currently doing some triming and filling and a lot of plastic polishing.

 

Ernest

[Greif8]

Made some progress on the build, though it is a lot of fairly mundane filling and sanding/surface prep.

 

I put a very thin shim under the cannon covers to insure the sat flush on the wing.  As you can see there are gaps that I will need to fill' not unexpected and pretty easily dealt with.  You can also see where I filled in a short row of rivets and a seam; this was called for in the instructions.  I expect everything to look ok once I am finished filling and smoothing here.

 

The tail plane joins were pretty good and only needed a very small amount of putty.  I'll smooth all this out and see how it looks above and below, but I don't expect any issues in this area.

 

The joins between the upper and lower wing leading edges where it meets the fuselage show that some work will be required to get a good fit in this area, especially the port wing.  The white square is where I filled a spot that was called for by the instructions for the version of the aircraft that I am building.

 

Test fitting the wings show the bottom join on both sides is pretty good.  Only a small amount of pressure will be required to get a nice fit.

 

The upper side of the starboard wing also looks like it will fit pretty well; slight pressure showed the joint to look good, perhaps a very small amount of putty will be required in the middle area.

 

However, the port wing had some significant fit issues that needed to be taken care of.

  

After some shaving and sanding of inner surfaces the fit is much better.

 

Once I have completed cleaning up all the seams and surfaces I'll post how it all turned out.  My goal is to a good enough job that I won't have to do a lot of additional sanding/polishing once I have sprayed the primer coat.

 

Ernest

[Gazzas]

10 hours ago, Greif8 said:

 

 

 

 

Ernest,

    Did you make those subtle dimples around the gun panel access screws?  If so...  very nice!  That's one of those features I want to add to models.

[Greif8]

10 hours ago, Gazzas said:

 

Ernest,

    Did you make those subtle dimples around the gun panel access screws?  If so...  very nice!  That's one of those features I want to add to models.

 

I can't take credit for the dimples Gary, the panels came that way.  To be honest I did not notice the dimples until you pointed them out.  That would be a pretty tough thing to replicate unless the plastic was very soft.  I am not brave enough to try it, that's for sure!

 

Ernest

[Greif8]

Spent a good deal of time modifying some of the kit parts today, as well as working on the wing/fuselage joints.  Lots of time measuring, cutting, sanding and polishing.  Looking at what I got done today it sure does not look like I accomplished much, but progress is progress I suppose!

 

The joints of the wings and fuselage took a bit of work to get cleaned up, but the end result looks ok, for now - we'll see what it looks like under primer.

 

After spending what seemed like hours and left me feeling like I was waxing and polishing Mr. Miyagi's car I finally got the wing joints decent and turned to the next little issue - the weapons.  The kit parts were all very badly misaligned; so much so that getting any of them sanded into  decent shape was pretty hopeless.  What to do???  After thinking the problem through I decided to modify the cannons, replacing all but a small piece with some brass rod and tube.

 

First I cut some old brass tube to the correct length using the kit part as a guide. 

 

Next I cleaned up and beveled the muzzle.

 

Then I cut a piece of brass rod sized to fit in the tube and cut off the kit barrel from the umm - mounting collar and drilled that out.

 

The rod was glued into the tube and the "collar" was fit over and glued to the rod and the assembly(s) were set aside for fitting into place later.

 

I then spent a fair amount of time drilling and routing out the ends of the exhausts; afterwhich, I added weld beads using some stretched sprue.  While I did not achieve absolute perfection the end result looks much better.  The two pictures below contrast the difference the modified part makes for the final result.  I still need to do some minor cleaning up of the modified exhausts, but they look better than the part before modification.

 

 

Edited December 11, 2022 by Greif8

[Gazzas]

Some nice improvements, Ernest!  Sanding wing roots is one of my least favorite games to play.

[Greif8]

5 hours ago, Gazzas said:

Some nice improvements, Ernest!  Sanding wing roots is one of my least favorite games to play.

 

Mine to Gary, lots to mess up if you don't watch what you are doing.  If the wing fit was as good as the fit of the fuselage halves I probably would have only spent 15-30 minutes cleaning them up.

 

Ernest

[Greif8]

I continued to work on improving some of the small parts today; and again spent a lot of time thinking through possible solutions and working on them.  

 

I again used some brass rod and tube that I had on hand to fashion a (hopefully) better pitot tube.  I used the kit part as a guide for both length and circumference and cut the brass tube to the correct length.  I cut the rod a bit longer for stability once I inserted and glued it into the tube. 

 

Below is a comparision of the kit part with the pitot tube I made.

 

I beveled the end of the tube that the rod was inserted into as I thought that looked better.  I also rounded the end of the rod to look a bit more like most pitot tubes I have seen.

 

I drilled out the hole in the leading edge of the wing to fit the tube into.  Test fitting showed the fit to be very good and the junction of the scratchbuilt part and wing looks like it will do the job.

 

Below is an overall shot with the pitot tube test fit in place. 

 

I also spent a considerable amount of time thinking about and looking into ways to replace the kit Ho-103 machine gun barrels.  They are badly aligned, the muzzles are not really accurate and they are somewhat over sized as well.  I tried various solutions to scratch build two barrels but none of them turned out satisfactorially.  In the end, I cheated and used a couple of extra Master Models .50 caliber barrels.  The Ho-103 was a close copy of the M2 .50 cal. and looking at the actual barrels in pictures I finally realized that they look very close to the Master U.S. .50 cal. barrels.  So I modified a couple of spares to fit and called it good.  Though not 100% perfect, they look darn close to the barrels I looked at in photos, and they look better than the kit parts for sure.

  

Edited December 12, 2022 by Greif8

[LSP_Kevin]

Very nice work on that pitot tube, Ernest! Even if it wasn't appreciably better than the kit part (which it is), it would be appreciably stronger, which matters when it comes to delicate breakables like this.

 

Great job!

 

Kev

[Uncarina]

Just saw your work here, and you’ve made excellent progress! Fitting the wings to the fuselage is so often tricky but you are paying due diligence. I’m looking forward to see more!

 

Cheers,  Tom

[Gazzas]

That is a nice looking Pitot tube, Ernest.  

[Alain Gadbois]

Excellent work on the exhausts, and the other bits that make a visible difference!

 

Alain

[Greif8]

9 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Very nice work on that pitot tube, Ernest! Even if it wasn't appreciably better than the kit part (which it is), it would be appreciably stronger, which matters when it comes to delicate breakables like this.

 

Great job!

 

Kev

 

5 hours ago, Uncarina said:

Just saw your work here, and you’ve made excellent progress! Fitting the wings to the fuselage is so often tricky but you are paying due diligence. I’m looking forward to see more!

 

Cheers,  Tom

 

5 hours ago, Gazzas said:

That is a nice looking Pitot tube, Ernest.  

 

4 hours ago, Alain Gadbois said:

Excellent work on the exhausts, and the other bits that make a visible difference!

 

Alain

 

Thank you for the kind words friends.  

[dennismcc]

Coming along nicely, I like the little touches they make all the difference, the Ki-61 is one of my favourites as it is so different from other WW2 Japanese aircraft, I can remember building one in 1/72 when I ws a nipper.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis