1:18 Scale B-17G Flying Fortress Forward Fuselage

[patricksparks]

53 minutes ago, JayW said:

Pat - so many questions.  How did you come up with the perforations on the radio face?  Also, how did you make those realistic looking padded tube clamps?

Hi Jay, the perforations were printed into the part, at the time when I was drawing I figured that they would end up printing as recesses, much to my suprise they came out as through holes !!! I think my front wall thickness is about .020 maybe .025 the whole box is hollow and I put no back in it as it would'nt be seen.

The tube clamps are printed, bought some soft aluminum wire to simulate all the oxygen lines and based my clamp drawing with the bushing and screw head as one part basing the I.D. of the clamp to fit the wire.

Looking forward to some more P-51 updates !!!

Pat

[JeepsGunsTanks]

Isn't that crewman going to get lonely without the waist and tail gunners??

[scvrobeson]

3 hours ago, JeepsGunsTanks said:

Isn't that crewman going to get lonely without the waist and tail gunners??

 

Needs at least a bombardier to keep him company up there

 

 

 

Matt 

[Azgaron]

Very interesting build! Excellent work so far!

 

Håkan

 

[F1Boomer]

Feeling properly humbled by this.

[patricksparks]

Glued the fuselage halves together, finished up the inside of the nose compartment other than some of the Bombardier's station which I needed to leave off until I finish exterior work around that area. Started to do some "Tin Knocking" .005 hardened aluminum sheet glued with cantact cement. Embossing rivet heads from the backside of the panels before their applied...

 

Pat

 

[JayW]

I know it is impossible to do the entire airplane - but man, it gets alot of us thinking.  Magical!

[JeepsGunsTanks]

Jay's P-51 is really going to need something to escort...  It's like a full B-17 was meant to be!

[patricksparks]

Not a lot of progress on the B-17, I managed to get quite a bit of the right side fuselage covered with aluminum, had to stop some to sort things out that had to be done or corrected before I could keep skinning. The process is slower than doing flushhead rivets and butted flush panels do to the fact that the individual panels on the B-17 are overlapped, you have to start the panels from the rear and the bottom of the fuselage and apply the panels like roof shingles, one row of panels from the bottom up, next row bottom up overlapping the front edge of the previous row, rinse wash repeat.... And beacause the rivets are raised you have to do all the panels backwards when applying the rivets, it makes for alot of mistakes when you get distracted for any reason...

On another note I pulled out my 1:18 scale P-51B conversion project and used it for a paint mule(sort of, took great care doing it) this was to sort out how I would apply paint to the bare metal of the B-17, it worked out great , which makes me alot more relaxed when I get to the finish of the big bird..

 

Pat

 

[geedubelyer]

Neat.

 

Another thread on LSP detailed the opportunity to but a large scale B-17 fuselage in sections. 

I think the deposit was like $800 for the first section or something .......

 

Just sayin'