TBD-1a Devastator

[Aggressor Supporter]

My God! It might as well be real!

[HOLMES]

Mike you are working on this like the Master that you are..I am s SO pleased the Dullcoat worked a treat....

Oh MY I am SO impressed with your left console...and the seats ....

I am so looking forward to seeing it when it is finished and I can wait....

HOLMES...

Edited October 15, 2008 by HOLMES

[HOLMES]

Mike

I know you have been busy on your other projetcs( the Ship!) but I was just wondering { }if you had any more pics

or any more progres on the Devastator....I think I have gotten withdrawl symptoms....

So if you have more piccies please post them soon,Thank you

HOLMES. :wub:

[Skyking]

I know you have been busy on your other projects( the Ship!) but I was just wondering { }if you had any more pics or any more progress on the Devastator

Hi Holmes,

Yes you're right, all of my attention was set on the Sara for the last month or so. I am off work for 2 weeks of vacation for the US Turkey-day next week, so I should be able to make some progress. Thanks for bumping this thread up near the top again too. It made it easy to find. I thought I was going to be digging back 15 pages for it. :lol:

I decided now would be the time to begin the fixture for fitting the floats, before I had a complete airplane. To make the jig I used two pieces of 3/4 inch MDF sandwiched together to make a block 1.5 inches thick, screwed and glued to a piece of 1/2" plywood. This I ran through my table saw with a 3/4" dado blade set to 5/8" deep, and made two passes, 2.5 inches apart on center. These are the "troughs" that the floats will sit in. To hold the floats in place and to conform to the "vee" on the float bottoms, first I coated an extra set of floats in mold release. I then mixed up some plastic auto body filler (bondo) and slathered that into the groove. Before the bondo cured, I pressed my floats in place, measured them to make sure they were parallel side to side and top to bottom, and level with the board surface. After about a 30 minute cure, the floats popped out and I had two nice form fitting cradles to hold the floats firmly in place.

After the bondo cured I have two form fitting cradles to hold the floats in place.

Here's the floats sitting in place. They won't budge, so it'll make cutting the struts a lot easier. It'll also make a good transport base to carry the finished model around in after.

One of the disadvantages of this build is there is absolutely no drawings to be found of an actual TBD-1a, so all I have to go by is a profile (which is someone else's interpretation of pictures) and a handful of pictures. This goes against the "rivet counter" in me, and I have to accept the fact that I may be pretty close on my dimensions, or I could be off as much as three or four scale inches in either direction. It's just the way it is and I have to live with it. I'd rather accept it than let that hinder me from building the model though, as I think it's a pretty unique subject.

Here's a shot of the model sitting on various blocks and sticks to get an "eyeball" on the height and stagger on the floats. The profile is from Osprey's Devastator book that I enlarged to roughly 48th scale. Being someone else's interpretation of pictures I can only hope they got it close, because I am basing my dimensions on their work. It looks pretty close though so I'm happy with it.

Top view showing float spacing and orientation of the airframe sitting on the floats. As much as I love the old Monogram kits, the one part I really don't care for is the fit. There is a 1/16" gap between the fuselage and wing root on both sides. I'll fill it with .040 plastic and CA glue as a filler. The jury is still out on whether the wings will be folded or extended. I'm leaning toward folded, as I think it looks neat.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers

Mike

[agelos2005]

nice work so far mate!!!

[geedubelyer]

<->...........The jury is still out on whether the wings will be folded or extended. I'm leaning toward folded, as I think it looks neat.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers

Mike

Classy work Mike.

Your woodworking skill pays dividends with the jig assembly. If that does n't hold the model still for the cutting of the struts, nothing will ;)

Going back to 12/04/08 and the first photo you posted, I'm inclined to agree that the Devastator looks very neat with the wings folded.

Good to see you back at this one, I'm looking forward to the next installment.

[HOLMES]

I am glad I was a tad bolshy and asked for progrss because Mike this is looking so very impressive.. The jig nd the floats look great..

I m sure that they will hold the model perfectly .

BTW you are welcome...I will keep coming back to see how far you have gotten..

HOLMES ;)

Edited November 22, 2008 by HOLMES

[ron]

Great stuff

[Skyking]

Thanks guys, appreciate the feedback. Guy I have decided to fold the wings, mainly for two reasons, to reduce the overall size of the model so it'll fit in my display case easier, and second, because it looks cool. Not to mention I'll have less issues with dihedral, alignment, etc. (OK I admit I'm lazy) Plus it gives me more "stuff" to detail out for the wing fold, an added plus.

One of the biggest challenges in this kit is the corrugations on the wing, mainly when it comes time to sand and fill the joint in between them without destroying them. I devised a tool to aid that, and I'll let you all be the judge on if it was successful or not.

The first thing I did was to clip off all the alignment pins on the top and bottoms of the wing halves, and then sanded the mating surfaces to they were dead flat and smooth.. I wanted to place priority on the corrugations lining up, not the trail edge or wing tip alignment. Fortunately, the mold cutters at Monogram did a good job in keeping the spacing consistent, they all lined up nicely. Once I was satisfied with the alignment of the corrugations, I glued the lead edges together only at this point, leaving the trail edges dry for later adjustment. I let these set for about a week to make sure the glue solvents had completely evaporated.

The next step was to measure the distance between the corrugations using my calipers, which turned out to be .050" of an inch.

I then cut two pieces of .020 and one piece of .010 plastic and laminated them with super glue, clamping them together so there were no air voids in between. I sanded the edges dead flat and straight, then on one edge I glued 220 grit sandpaper, and on the other 400 grit. I trimmed the sandpaper flush with the edges, and I now had a sanding tool that would sit between the corrugations and use the ridges as a guide. I first sanded with the 220, then did final blending and sanding with the 400. One the flat area in between was smooth, I used the edge to true up the corrugations so they were uniform in thickness all the way around the lead edge.

A quick shot of primer gave the results you see here.

I'm pretty happy with the results, and it didn't take that long to do it. It actually took longer to make the sanding stick than it did to perform the sanding. I hope this is useful info for those of you that have been contemplating building the Devastator. It's not quite as painful as it appears.

Cheers

Mike

[geedubelyer]

Hi Mike,

What a terrific result. The banding flows around the leading edge of the wing seamlessly. I'd wager that that small attention to detail will make a huge difference to the look of the finished article. Well worth the effort.

I'm pleased to hear that you've opted for the folded wing version. That first photo that you posted looks marvellous. With the wings folded the Devastator looks purposeful and menacing, even streamlined perhaps.

The fact that it'll leave more room in the cabinet for future builds is icing on the cake (paricularly if they happen to be 1/32nd scale..... )

I'm itching to see more soon.

[HOLMES]

Impressive Mike...Looks really great/cannot wait for the finish line.

[Chappie]

Impressive work as usual. My vote was for wing folding. I have never seen a Devastator on floats until seeing this project. I love following your builds of non-mainstream aircraft.

Chappie

[chukw]

Brilliant problem-solving, Mike- glad to see you back at the bench. I'm really curious to see how she'll look rescribed and riveted- cheers!

chuk

[Skyking]

Hiya Guy, Chappie, thanks for stopping by.

I'm pleased to hear that you've opted for the folded wing version.

and

My vote was for wing folding.

Wellllllllll.... that was what I opted for however in practical terms I just couldn't get the wingfold to look "right" The kit tabs for the hinges were too big and clunky, and without massive rebuilding of the outter wing panels, along with the risk of damaging corrugations, I decided it just wasn't what I wanted to do. Not to mention to make scale appearing attachment points would have made the wings very flimsy and subject to damage or outright breaking off. So I decided to leave them extended. I think just the fact it's the floatplane version will be enough of a wow factor without having to fold the wings also. I'll leave that for my next Dev in the future. ( I have 20 of these in the stash )

Thanks Chuk. Glad to have you following. Your Helldiver looks fan-fricken-tastic. The rescribing and riveting will definitely be interesting. I've got a scrap fuselage I'm going to practice on before committing to this one.

I did have a major "aww _________ (Insert choice of expletive here)" when I was rescribing the control surface joints with my scriber.

As I was drawing the tool through the joint it slipped and scribed a gouge across the upper surface of the right wing, damaging a bunch or corrugations. I thought I was going to have to use a wing panel from another kit, but with gentle sanding with my sanding tool and judicious use of Mr. Surfacer, I was able to fill the gouge and restore the corrugation ribs. In the picture here you see the repaired section almost done. A little more sanding and cleaning up the ridges and it'll be almost impossible to tell.

My handy dandy little sanding thingie works pretty good at fixing booboo's as well. Hope it's the last one though.

Cheers

Mike

[Aggressor Supporter]

Keep it up!

[HOLMES]

Mike... Great work so far....

[Skyking]

OK. It's official. I'm an idiot... or a klutz, whichever is more approprate. :D I had just gotten the wings glued to the fuselage Saturday evening and all was going well. I began filling the gaps with thick Superglue to fill some of the monsterous seams, when it happened. I'm not sure if I was holding it too gingerly or just not paying attention, but it just tumbled out of my hands, hit my chair, did a cartwheel and landed right wingtip first onto the cement floor.

The impact snapped off the right wingtip, taking the front hinge pin and sending it to oblivion, and putting a major crack across the bottom of the inner wing panel, effectively wiping out all the corrugations on that side.

Needless to say I was pretty disgusted, and about ready to toss the whole thing into the trash, but I excercised my 24 hour rule, shut the lights off, went upstairs and had a beer, and waited till the next day.

Sunday afternoon after the Giants/Redskins game (Go Giants!) I went back downstairs and surveyed the damage. The wing is obviously trashed, with no chance of repair. The fuselage however, came out unscathed. Even the interior bits were still in place with nothing missing. The wing broke clean from the fuselage, right on the kit parting lines, so no damage there. OK I thought, maybe this isn't so bad after all, so I opened up another kit, swiped the wings out of it, and proceeded to remake the wing. This time I made a few changes from the first one, and in my opinion, this one turned out better than the previous, so it was all good in the end. Instead of glueing the top and bottom inner and outter panels together, then trying to make them line up on the hinge line, I glued the upper outter and inners together first, then taped the lower inner and outters in place and checked for alignment. There was a big gap between the lower outter and inner panels with the corrugations lined up, so a shim of .010 was glued to the root of the outter panels, and sanded to shape. This filled the gap perfectly, and I was able to glue the bottoms to the tops, and everything is nice and straight and with much tighter gaps between the inner and outter panels. I can use my handy dandy sanding thingie to restore the currugations later. I also sheeted over the landing gear wells, and installed a new fuel tank access panel. These were removed when I sanded off the kit landing gear mounts. I also rescribed missing panel lines, laid out my strut locations on the wings, and constructed the assembly jig.

Here's a shot of the bottom of the new wing. The shim is clearly visible, as are the .005 replacement panels over the landing gear and fuel tanks. I've also opted to put the Torpedo in place, as all of the pictures i have show them mounted. I'll also drop the flaps, so the flap wells will have to be detailed out.

Sitting in the jig. I've got my alignment marks for wing positioning on the jig, and strut locations marked out on the floats as well. The wing is at the correct height, so I can start cutting struts. I have to devise a way of making the rather large "cuffs" on the tops and bottoms of the float struts. They not only flair out front and rear, but also side to side. I'm thinking of squishing Milliput into place on the bottoms of the struts, then sanding them to shape after it cures, but if anyone has any ideas, I'm open to easier suggestions.

Even though the wing breaking at first appeared to be a major setback, it was really a blessing in disguise, as I'm much happier with the results I have now. Thanks for following along, and the comments received so far.

Cheers

Mike

Edited December 1, 2008 by Skyking

[Chappie]

Awesome save, Mike! I like your 24 hour rule, if I had done that with some of my tragedies I might have a couple more models on the shelf.

Chappie

[Aggressor Supporter]

Good to hear it is working out there. Would have hate to see this one go in the trash.

[dekon70]

Great looking aircraft. I don't know if you know this or even care but it was base at Quonset Point Naval Air Station and was used to test torpedos for the Newport Torpedo Station Air Detail. They said it probably dropped more torpedos for tests than all her sisters did in combat during WW II. It was last seen on the Quonset A&R scrap line on July 23, 1943.

[Skyking]

Thanks everyone for the comments. I've been flogging the floats, sanding them and getting them ready for paint, cutting the float struts and a few other boring steps that aren't worth the effort to photograph. Once I get ready for final assembly I'll put up some more pictures.

Great looking aircraft. I don't know if you know this or even care but it was base at Quonset Point Naval Air Station and was used to test torpedos for the Newport Torpedo Station Air Detail. They said it probably dropped more torpedos for tests than all her sisters did in combat during WW II. It was last seen on the Quonset A&R scrap line on July 23, 1943.

Hi Dekon. Yes I knew that. The picture I have at the beginning of the thread was taken on the seaplane ramp there. Nice little bit of trivia regarding the testing though. Too bad she was scrapped. After loosing all of them at Midway it would have been nice to have one survivor.

Cheers

Mike

[HOLMES]

Hello Mike,

Sorry that you had a " mishap" but also very leased that you recovered the damage BRILLIANTLY...

you know if you had not told us, WE'd be non the wiser because the new wing looks AWESOME...you managed to

stay calm in the face of adversity ..well done

The fuel tank access and gear wells look very nice....

I am getting more excited by the work...any more pics yet Mike?> :)

Thank you

HOLMES.

[ron]

Good save and good call on the 24 hour cool down rule

Looks great

Ron

[Skyking]

Wow it's really been a long time since I've posted anything on this, what with the holidays being here there hasn't been much modeling time until this week. I had to dig a bit to find the thread, and then I thought perhaps it might be best to either let it die on the vine, or start a new thread, but I was finally able to locate it and continue from the last post.

I've spent 3 days working on the float struts. After measuring the struts to length, I center drilled the strut ends and Superglued lengths of .020 brass wire into the ends. After they cured, I punched out plastic disks from .010 sheet, drilled a hole in the center, put the disks onto the struts then installed them into place with the model in the jig. This held the disks in place so they were sitting flat and flush to the wings and floats, and a bead of superglue was applied all the way around to secure them to the strut. After these cured I used Milliput to form the cuffs on the tops and bottoms of the struts, and then sanded them to shape. I have the fronts done, now I have to cut and fit the rears.

The wing also got some work. I covered up the landing gear wells with .010 plastic sheet, made new fuel tank covers and filled the gap in the flap well. I've decided to install the Torpedo onto the model, as every picture I have of the 1a shows them in place. I've also decided to drop the flaps, but leave the wings extended.

Here's the struts with the disks in place, after gluing them up.

And here they are after the Milliput cuffs were installed and sanded to shape. All that remains now is the rear and center struts. They will take a little thinking through though, as the rear and center struts are joined together at the float, forming a "V".

And finally here's a shot of the bottom of the wing. I've closed off the wheel wells with plates, just like the real aircraft. I also added new Fuel Tank covers, and because I'll have the flaps dropped it was necessary to add detail to the flap well with .005 plastic and Evergreen strip.

I'll post a couple of pictures when the rear struts are in place. I plan on gluing the struts to the floats and painting them, then focus again on the main airframe. I'd like to get this one done so I can start carving wood on the Boeing project I have lined up.

Cheers

Mike

[HOLMES]

Mike,

Thank goodness you postedmore progress...Had gotten withdrawl symptoms..

WOW !!! It looks so very detailed and any damage that you had the misfortune to have

seems to have disappered....

The Float sruts looks very GOOD and you have really worked hard on this.

Question, will the rear cuffs be just as easy as it seemed for the front...do you

have to do anything different for the rear....And finally have you decided

on what the color will be...Oohhh questions questions...Sorry...I am

just excited that is all...I love the FLOAT version....

HAPPY NEW YEAR Mike....

HOLMES.