Skyking

Hiya Guy thanks for stopping in. I appreciate the comments. Here's some more flash for you so don your Ray-Ban's and have a look. :) Spent the last couple of days trimming out the interior walls with polished aluminum trim strips. I used the aluminum tape, embossed the rivets then cut them into 1/16" wide strips and applied directly to the wall panels. The real aircraft's aren't polished, but I wanted the contrast and I think the effect looks pretty good. I also test fit the seat rails and seats in place. I have to ain't the cushions and add the seat belts yet, then I'll install them. Next

Moving right along with trimming the interior, it's time to add all the fiddly bits and trim it out. Again for reference here's a shot of the actual bird: And the following will show how close I come to replicating it. I carpeted the floor with some left over Royal Blue velour from a cabinet job I did earlier this spring. It was much easier to use the self adhesive sheets than to sprinkle flocking material. Next to make was the polished aluminum covers that go over the bulkheads in the cabin. There's two big honkers right in the middle, and two smaller ones in the next station forw

Hiya Guy Thanks for stopping by. I'll try to keep the updates more frequent so your calander doesn't get stuck...lol. Hi Jim, thank you. Yes it's doubtful if I will have it done in time for Ohama, but Orlando is a definate as we have friends in Orlando we will be renting their house from for the week of the Nats, so you should see it there. Thanks for the comments on the mancave. It's my home within a home. Hi Matt. I will be using .010 clear styrene for the windows, dipped in Future. They will rest on the inside of the frames. There's a tiny lip all the way around the outside trim panel tha

Egad I can't believe it's been almost 9 months since I did anything with this turkey. Now that I've gotten the need to finish a couple of models out of my system, I can resume work on this project that has languished a bit. I got the seats under control, now on to my next headache, the cabin side windows. It would be really easy to make one or two and have them turn out OK, but in this case I need to make 7 that are consistent in shape, size and alignment. I fiddled around with plastic strip and sheet stock, but it was impossible to keep the window framing consistent from one window to the nex

Well it's been a while since I've done anything on this. Summer time is usually my woodworking and home improvement time, so most of the last 4 months has been spent converting this: Original Cave To this: New and Improved Certified Estrogen Free Zone Mancave. I built the custom cabinets for my display cases, along with built in units in the wall. I installed a suspended ceiling around the outter perimeter, with a raised ceiling in the center with halo lighting around the edge. I installed 3 inch LED Can Lights around the ceiling, plus all the display cases have built in lighting do

Hi mark that was my fear also Mark, and is what prompted me to try this. The "inside" of the chair that would be against the passenger's body is fairly smooth, so that'll be fine, but the outside definitely needed some help. I've since added a few more bits to it and dabbed some Mr. Surfacer and they are looking pretty good. It's only taken me about 2 hours for this one, maybe I can knock it down to 1 hour per seat for the rest..lol. Hey Guy, glad you stopped by And that's kind of the way I am leaning toward. If I can give the illusion of the strands overlapping each other through effec

Great progress Mark. It sure is a scheme you don't see a Mitchell in every day. Keep them coming. Cheers Mike

Great progress Mark. It sure is a scheme you don't see a Mitchell in every day. Keep them coming. Cheers Mike

Mark, Shawn, thanks for stopping by. Glad to have you following along. The last few days of modeling time have been spent on getting the wicker seats together for the Ford. In one of the previous posts I showed a picture of the PE set with the seats still on the carrier. In this update I'll show the steps I am using to make the raw seats before any paint work is done with them. The example you see here took me the better part of 3 hours to do, so they are pretty labor intensive, and I have four more to go... Yeehaw. Not. This first picture shows the PE blank before any folding was done. I

Hey Awan. Yep I'll be bringing it along. Will you be back in town for ROCON in Septemeber? It'll be at the Radison in front of RIT again this year. The date is the 19th. Cheers Mike

Hiya OM. These are 32nd scale OM so at least I'm not certifiable..lol. Actually the PE process made them a snap. My pleasure PropDuster. If it wasn't for some Old School modelers that took me under their wing when I was learning I wouldn't be able to glue two sticks of wood together. Everything you see me do is certainly within the realm of anyone on this board. Like I've said before, I often find scratchbuilding a subject easier than messing around with a poorly engineered or ill-fitting kit. Mark, Dave and Homes, thanks for following along. I do appreciate the support. Working on two

Great tutorial yet again Chuk. If you would humor a dumb question - do you use specific colors depending on what the base color is? Or do you just let it rip and grab a handful of random colors? Only reason I ask is I am a poor judge of color, and have no concept of complimentary colors. Painting has always been my Waterloo. Cheers Mike

Oh sure... you rag on me for working on other things besides the Trimotor and look what you do... you do the very same thing. I have a hard time believing you can build anything out of the box Guy. You must have added a widget or a gizmo someplace. Looking forward to seeing more work on this one. Cheers Mike

Hi Mark, Al and Holmes, Thank you as always for your comments. I appreciate them. I'll be getting some modeling time in this weekend and should be able to post some pictures. My planned work this weekend is cuting out the passenger windows on the fuselage and starting the interior work so I can get this buttoned up. Stay tuned. Cheers Mike

Interesting build Mark, one of the more attractive military Mitchell schemes I think I've seen. Looking at the one picture of the nose it looks like you got it spot on. I would suggest you have these pictures handy as a reference if you ever show the model before you present it. Having gone through the "experts gauntlet" once before for building an accurate replica of an inaccurate display airplane, it'll save you a lot of explaining. Looking forward to more progress. Cheers Mike

Thank you all for the comments, and for the expressions of condolances for my Dad, I really appreciate them. It's still hard to believe he's gone. Last night I was bored and anxious to get started on this again, so I played around a little with the passenger door hinges just to get back into the swing of things. When I laid out the artwork I tried to keep the tolerances on these as tight as possible, but without being too tight so that they would bind. I made several extra sets to practice with and to also cover my backside if I should bugger one or two up. Closed position Open posit

Hiya Guy, Thanks for breathing some life back into this one..lol. You must be psychic or something, because the day you posted this reply, This came in the mail: 'Tis the custom Photo Etch I've been waiting for ( for almost 5 months *ahem*) but I have to say the wait, albeit a bit frustrating, was worth it, as Fred has pulled of his usual mastery of the etching solutions and these are darn near perfect. What you see are the wicker seats for the passenger compartment, the side window frames, a window template to cut my windows out with, and some assorted odds and ends detail stuff. I can no

HI Mark, Nice to see you going on this one again. I'll be following along and taking notes. Cheers Mike

Excellent progress as always Guy. Does that hydraulic tubing you installed meet A/N Spec? I'd hate to see a hydraulic leak ruin all that nice paint work. It was also a hydraulic leak that took down the first prototype 'cat during testing. We want this bird to last a long time. Cheers Mike

Hey Pete, Now THAT is a vauform machine. That's about the size of the one at Ekl Plastics in Binghamton that did some work for me years ago. It's so cool to watch an industrial machine at work. They make it look so effortless. These look like they pulled very well. Did you make extras just in case? If I might offer a suggestion, that's going to be a pretty big model. What I would so is have a resin duplicate made of your master so that you can cut it up and leave inside the shells for support and strength. I've done that on the NC4 and my Trimotor, and it makes handeling those thin shells so

Hey Guy, Dude you are not well...lol. Great illustrated reference on you formed the hooks, and it's a good thing because I could not read your chicken scratching.. . At least it's nice to know someone else in thw=e world has hand writting as bad as mine. Your attention to detail always impresses me. I'd have never given the cooling fan a second thought, but there it is on yours. It's what seperates you from the rest of us mere mortals. Keep those updates coming. Cheers Mike

Great work Barney. Sir Harry Woodman would be proud. You can use some thin CA to "harden" the balsa wingtips. It'll finish and paint just like plastic after. This is really shaping up nicely. Cheers Mike

Fantastic work Pete. The screw heads are the bees knees. Just one question, did you add any additional ribs in the rudders? I was looking at the picture of the framework in your hand with just the top and bottom ribs. Is the brass thick enough to hold its shape without "oilcanning" and forming a depression? Why cover the brass to begin with? I can see using the aluminum on the plastic covered surfaces, but the brass should be adequate no? I'm not nit-picking, but asking for my own ejimicational purposes. You are really knocking this one out of the park. By the way I hope you and the family f

The last few days have been spent adding more details to the nacelles. They are quite a busy little assembly, and I want to get all of the small items added before painting. I had to add an oil filler cap for the oil tanks, as well as the oil cooler intake and exhaust scoops that are present on both sides. The scoops on the right side of each nacelle face forward, and the scoops on the left exhaust the cooling air and face aft. I also had to add the carb intake and plumbing. These came with the engines, but were pretty crude with huge dimples in the intakes. I filled these with CA and filed t

Thanks for the comments guys, I appreciate you following along. The eagle eyed among you will notice a change in the nacelle configuration now from what it was in the previous post. One of the hazards of working upside down, is that you can quickly forget things are upside down and make a part right side up and when you install it, it's upside down. Confused? Good. So was I..:wub:. I did that with the main support pylon. It wasn't a big deal, I just had to sand the angled end flat, add some replacement Renshape and sand the end to shape and I was good as new. One of the challenging thin