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Doyusha N1K2-J "George"


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  • 1 month later...

Well, long time no update! The only thing I've done on this build since my last post was paint the propeller. However, I did manage to finish his little brother:

 

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It's the Hasegawa 1/48 kit. I guess now that it's finished I have no excuses for not working on this one!

 

Kev

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  • 2 weeks later...

OK, time for another update. Having finished Little George, I managed to come down with the flu for a couple of weeks, so Big George has languished in neglect on the sidelines. Until today.

 

Previously I had been concerned that the amount I had removed from the kit's engine mount was not enough to compensate for the extra length of the Hasegawa Frank engine I'm using. Sure enough, after doing my best to accurately measure it all up, I determined that the entire assembly would be 5mm too long. The question was, from where to remove it? In the end I decided to take it off the cockpit tub itself, since there's plenty of unused space up front. I carefully cut off the mounting plate for the engine mount from the front of the cockpit. I then removed 5mm from the area immediately behind it, leaving a further 5mm or so of dead space. I made 4 spacers of 5mm depth from plastic sheet, in order to form a frame of sorts to fix the engine mounting plate back on to.

 

Unfortunately the old craftsman's adage of "measure twice, cut once" never seems to work out for me, generally translating to "measure once, cut myself twice". So, in that spirit, I managed to get the whole thing just that bit wonky, but I won't know if I actually got away with it until the entire assembly is in place (no taping that wobbly mess together!). Anyway, here's the final result:

 

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Ah, it's all character building. I've also managed to paint the prop:

 

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Next stop, another attempt at a scratch built seat...

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Kev

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Another quick update, partly to keep myself motivated and return some momentum to this build. I've scratch-built a seat out of drink can aluminium, but it's only a fair representation:

 

post-3071-1246362664.jpg

 

As you can see, it's not a great job, but it's a much better seat than the kit one, and should look OK once painted up and draped in seat belts. I really suck at working with aluminium, but I see other members put it to incredible use, so I persist...

 

I've also scratch-built a mounting frame for the seat on the rear wall of the cockpit:

 

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I have no idea how I'm going to get the seat fixed in there yet...

 

Kev

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Hi Kev,

 

looking good and an interesting build.

 

One thing I discovered during my (lame) first attempt at producing a seat out of beer can alu (see the Ki-86 thread) is that you need to anneal the piece of alu to take out the springiness from the can forming...Of course, when annealing the sheet, you burn the varnish that is inside and outside of the can...and you need to sand it to recover an alu look ! :)

 

Looking forward to more on your build.

 

HUbert.

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[...] you need to anneal the piece of alu to take out the springiness from the can forming...

 

Now why didn't I think of that! I've made several attempts at making seats using this stuff, and it never occurred to me to anneal it! Thank you Hubert!

 

By the way, how did you anneal it? Just hold it over a candle for a few minutes?

 

Kev

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Well, I got the seat fitted, but it's left me with a couple of minor issues.

 

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The first is that I'm going to have to get paint in behind it somehow. I guess if the airbrush can't see it, the eye probably won't either. The second issue is that, due to my agricultural approach to scratch building, the rudder pedals are now way too far from the seat. The pilot would have to be all legs, which makes an ironic change from the pilot that comes with the kit!

 

The next and last major challenge for the cockpit is organising an instrument panel.

 

Kev

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