Hasegawa Nakajima Ki-44 Tojo

[Greif8]

Steady on Gary!  I am sure you'll get up to speed quickly with the riviting.

 

Ernest

[Gazzas]

Trying to find barrels for the Otsu version Ho-301 barrels was a bust.  Web searches brought up everything from the Scharnhorst to HO scale railroad modelling.  So, I had to make my own.

 

What I used here 1.5mm brass tube encased in two pieces per gun (one tapered by using my Dremel as a lathe) of 2.5mm copper tube.  Further encased in bored-out sprue to which have been added 4 Meng bolt heads.

 

Dry fitted into the wing, some filling and fettling will be required one the correct angle is achieved. 

 

Far from perfect.  But the things we have to do when the plane we want to model is a bit different from what's in the box.

 

And I didn't feel like riveting today.  So I worked on one of my pet peeves:  Overmodelled and out of scale cloth control surface detail.  I sanded all of mine off.

 

 

 

More riveting to follow!  Happy modelling, and happy holiday season!

Edited December 18, 2022 by Gazzas

[MikeMaben]

Hey I like those cannons. Those'll look good when painted up. 

Going very slow along the guide helps my riveting ... somewhat

...and like Bevan said, practice practice practice.

[Skyraider3D]

Really nice work on those 40 mm wing cannon!

 

I like your idea to backdate the kit to a Ki-44-II Otsu, however I must warn you: the machines you show in the NHK clip are from the 87th Sentai, which was sent to Burma for a brief period in 1943. The cannon were found to be unsatisfactory and were removed from the aircraft and a second pair of 12.7 mm machine guns installed in their place. The cannon's base housing remained however. I have illustrated one of these machines, which was camouflaged in the field with a broom(!), for Nicholas Millman's Osprey book on Ki-44 aces, as shown below. You can see the remnants of the 40 mm Ho-401 installation, but inside the cylindrical base was another Ho-103 12.7 mm machine gun.

 

Please note that the droptanks of the Ki-44 were blue-grey (and from about 1944 Yellow-Green #7 just like the main late-war JAAF camouflage paint), but never yellow as so often shown.

[Greif8]

I think your scratchbuilt cannons look quite nice Gary; and as Mike said they will look even better once painted.

 

Ernest

[Gazzas]

15 hours ago, Skyraider3D said:

Really nice work on those 40 mm wing cannon!

 

I like your idea to backdate the kit to a Ki-44-II Otsu, however I must warn you: the machines you show in the NHK clip are from the 87th Sentai, which was sent to Burma for a brief period in 1943. The cannon were found to be unsatisfactory and were removed from the aircraft and a second pair of 12.7 mm machine guns installed in their place. The cannon's base housing remained however. I have illustrated one of these machines, which was camouflaged in the field with a broom(!), for Nicholas Millman's Osprey book on Ki-44 aces, as shown below. You can see the remnants of the 40 mm Ho-401 installation, but inside the cylindrical base was another Ho-103 12.7 mm machine gun.

 

Please note that the droptanks of the Ki-44 were blue-grey (and from about 1944 Yellow-Green #7 just like the main late-war JAAF camouflage paint), but never yellow as so often shown.

Thank you for the info.  It fills in some gaps of the very gap-ridden history of this aircraft.

 

 I’ll stick with the cannon since I put so much time into making them.  Also, I’ve seen the base fairing with the Ho-103 in it, and I believe that it would be very difficult to model cleanly, given how thin the wall of the fairing would have to be.

 

worst comes to worst, I’ll be modelling a different machine or dating mine to a time before the conversion.  Or modelling a representative machine.

 

 It’s so much more difficult when you don’t have a personality or a name to tie to your model.   Most Ki-44 photos have the smallest of captions.

[Skyraider3D]

17 hours ago, Gazzas said:

I’ll stick with the cannon since I put so much time into making them.

Yes definitely do!

I'd just go with the scheme as it is. I'm not sure if they removed the cannon before or after they applied the field camo. It's amazingly hard to find good references of these cannon-armed Tojos. If you want to look for other camouflaged machines, the 85th and 246th Sentais are your best bets. I'm sure the 9th Sentai had some cannon birds too (as did most Tojo units), but decent photos are very hard to find.

[TimW]

So far, so good!   I'm still working on the cockpit area.

 

Tim W

[Alain Gadbois]

Excellent work on the guns.

The 87th markings on the tail are some if my favorites. I think they represent the wave that protected Japan from the Chinese invasion.

 

Alain

[mc65]

what a beautiful aircraft... I'm follow you on this project!

'bout riveting, apart the obvious help of dymo or straight rules, I found the mental state decisive: no rush, but a sort of Zen inner peace that is not always easy to achieve. I found it more rewarding to practice this than rolling miles of rivets with rosie!

 

 

[Gazzas]

16 hours ago, TimW said:

So far, so good!   I'm still working on the cockpit area.

 

Tim W

heh...   haven't even touched my cockpit yet.  A heavy workweek plus X-mas preparations have sapped my mojo for the week.  Hopefully the long Christmas weekend will see me finishing the riveting and getting into the cockpit.  I had to get the guns done before I could decide which version I would be doing.

[TimW]

9 hours ago, Gazzas said:

heh...   haven't even touched my cockpit yet.  A heavy workweek plus X-mas preparations have sapped my mojo for the week.  Hopefully the long Christmas weekend will see me finishing the riveting and getting into the cockpit.  I had to get the guns done before I could decide which version I would be doing.

Right there with ya.  I got the Yahu instruments installed, painted the cockpit and seat, got the seatbelts on, then...hit a wall.  Christmas prep, some idiocy at work and my 18 year old nitwit son have pretty much killed my extra energy...but I'm off next week!

 

Cheers,

 

Tim W.

[Greif8]

I hope you get some quiet and quality time at the bench over Christmas Gary.  

 

Ernest

[Gazzas]

I just received some sprue shots from Rick Griewski.  Seems, my guns are nowhere close.  I will have to reconfigure.  To reconfigure, I will need some bigger stock to start.  Poop

[Gazzas]

Been trying to accomplish as much riveting as possible before joining halves...  And I don't want any situations where the lines don't meet where they should on the dorsum of the machine.

 

 

I know there isn't much to see.  But I think I have found a method that works for me.  I press a large blob of Blutack onto my cutting mat, then press the piece to be worked on top of it, in an orientation that works for me.  Then I measure and mark with a No.2 pencil. 

 

 

Then I lay some 3m blue masking tape along the line and use that as the guide for my riveting wheel.

 

 

There have been mistakes, some of which I fixed, and some will be left to ride.  I couldn't get my riveting wheel into the flare near the wing root for the transverse lines and double-lines.  So, I had to use my beading tool, and the results are not enthralling.  I'm curious to see how it will all appear under foil.