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1/32 Trumpeter P-38L Lightning- "Kicked Up A Notch"


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Hi Chuck. Are the pic's included at the following link any use?

http://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?showtopic=41131

Thanks Jari and John! All that info is very much appreciated and most of it I did not have before. If nothing else, I had no idea the gear wells for the "L" were supposed to be aluminum color, because the only pics I have for an L have them as green.

Thank goodness I'm not worried about perfect accuracy this time around or I'd go nuts. The specific details for the various P-38's are all over the map.

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Thanks Jari and John! All that info is very much appreciated and most of it I did not have before. If nothing else, I had no idea the gear wells for the "L" were supposed to be aluminum color, because the only pics I have for an L have them as green.

Thank goodness I'm not worried about perfect accuracy this time around or I'd go nuts. The specific details for the various P-38's are all over the map.

Chuck,

I read through the link, and the NMF is from a restoration. They even said that bits and pieces show Interior Green, but they're not sure if that was a protective coating form a previous paint job. Most resources have the wheel wells as Interior Green. Since you're doing a "what if" restoration, you can easily go either way.

Joel

Edited by Joel_W
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Chuck, I´m hesitant on writing a comment, because I´ll add nothing that´s not been said before. Nevertheless, here I am, I just joined the forum to express my admiration and gratitude for your work. I found by casualty your post of the F-4, and I´ve read in a row that, the A-10 and now, for the first time, I´ll be able to follow your work in real time. I´m Spanish (now living in France for some years, but Spanish nonetheles), so I´m not proficent in english language. I´m also not an expert either in aircrafts or modelling, so sadly I will most likely not help you much, sorry for that.

To finish, I´m planning to download all your topics, delete the comments and not related post and make pdf,s with the result. Your comments and minitutorials are gold and the help that you have received (and the rest of us) in the form of information and pictures makes a perfect source for those specific models and modelling in general. So, again, thanks! I´m following you at your six, from now on.

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Chuck, I´m hesitant on writing a comment, because I´ll add nothing that´s not been said before. Nevertheless, here I am, I just joined the forum to express my admiration and gratitude for your work. I found by casualty your post of the F-4, and I´ve read in a row that, the A-10 and now, for the first time, I´ll be able to follow your work in real time. I´m Spanish (now living in France for some years, but Spanish nonetheles), so I´m not proficent in english language. I´m also not an expert either in aircrafts or modelling, so sadly I will most likely not help you much, sorry for that.

To finish, I´m planning to download all your topics, delete the comments and not related post and make pdf,s with the result. Your comments and minitutorials are gold and the help that you have received (and the rest of us) in the form of information and pictures makes a perfect source for those specific models and modelling in general. So, again, thanks! I´m following you at your six, from now on.

Wow, what a nice compliment. Feedback like this sure makes all the extra work of posting pics and explaining everything more than worthwhile!

Since I'm responding anyway, here's where I am right now and what's to come in the immediate future. The landing gear wells have been started and I'm starting to detail them. As mentioned above, I was having a lot of difficulty in getting decent pics of various parts of the gear wells, which was very frustrating and brought the progress of this build to a halt. Thinking about it, I've decided to try and do a good job on the gear wells, but not go crazy as I did with my Mustang build. The P-38 gear wells (all 3) are long, narrow and deep and with the gear doors attached, you won't be able to see too much, even with a mirror underneath. This is the very reason getting good overall pics are almost impossible to find on the real deal. If it's hard to see the gear well detail at 1:1, why torture myself at 1:32? My focus will be to enhance the stuff you can see and not worry about the little bits you can't.

Now a question for those who have built this Trumpeter kit before. The landing gear has 3 main pins that attach to the inner gear wells, with two on the inner wall. The top two pins insert into closed receptacles that don't allow total insertion of the pin, while the bottom pin receptacle is totally open, so you can shove in the pin the whole way. Is there a reason I need the top pins to not go all the way in? Since the kit parts are made this way, it would seem so, but it also isn't as strong as it would be if I could get the pins all the way into the side walls with a good glue bond. With the extra weight I plan on sticking in the front, a strong gear leg is critical, but I don't want to screw this step up. Any ideas of why the kit parts are made this way?

Thanks

Edited by chuck540z3
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Hi Chuck.

About your search for details of the wheel wells: I guess you've already had a look at this AMAZING project on LSP: 1/18 Scale P-38 Lightning ?

/Kristian

Thanks for forcing me to open up that thread, which I knew about, but didn't pay any attention to, until now. Holy crap! Compared to this work, I feel like a 12 year old with tube glue and fingerprints all over a plastic mess. :lol:

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Compared to this work, I feel like a 12 year old with tube glue and fingerprints all over a plastic mess. :lol:/>/>

I wouldn't down play your skills that much. He is working at 1:18 which is considerably bigger and therefore he can obtain higher levels of detailing.

The amount of hits your threads get shows the pointlessness of the above comment ;)/> I know it's meant in humour but it reads like fishing.

At any rate, I am looking forward to your next update

Oh, whilst I think of it, your coined term "kicked up a notch" seeks to have begun a new trend in thread titles as I've seen one on BM and another one on another site which name escapes me right now I would add a link except I'm on an iPad and I can't do that.

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I wouldn't down play your skills that much. He is working at 1:18 which is considerably bigger and therefore he can obtain higher levels of detailing.

The amount of hits your threads get shows the pointlessness of the above comment ;) I know it's meant in humour but it reads like fishing.

At any rate, I am looking forward to your next update

Oh, whilst I think of it, your coined term "kicked up a notch" seeks to have begun a new trend in thread titles as I've seen one on BM and another one on another site which name escapes me right now I would add a link except I'm on an iPad and I can't do that.

No fishing at all. My point, made in jest of course, was that there's always somebody a LOT better than you are out there at just about everything. This guy is scary good.

I used the term "Kicked Up A Notch" exactly 5 years ago when I made my 1/32 CF-18B, then again with my F-4E and P-51D. It's not exactly unique, but maybe somebody liked it and thought it fitting for their build. What's the saying? "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". I'll take that as a compliment!

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December 24. A little more progress before the Xmas break.

With the landing gear almost completed, it’s time to paint and assemble the gear wells before they are placed in the fuselage booms along with the engines. As mentioned above, the gear wells are fairly narrow and deep, so seeing any detail in here will be tough, even with a mirror. Using at least a hundred pics of these wells for references, I found that no two P-38’s were the same and the details were all over the place. The superchargers, for one, are deleted in many restored birds and a lot of the electrical and other boxes are missing as well. These gear wells also have a lot of rivet detail, but I decided to save myself a lot of extra work that I’ll never see or appreciate later by adding Archer raised rivets as I did on my A-10C build.

Here’s a pic of most of the right side gear well, except for the roof, which is equally devoid of any real detail and is full of seam marks everywhere. These seams are particularly hard to remove on the very small landing gear door arms, attached to the ends of the wells.

Gearwell1.jpg

I decided to go with interior green for the inside of the wells. With a BMF on the outside, the green should add some nice contrast and I believe it was the original color from the factory. I found a lot of aluminum painted gear wells, but you can see green poking through underneath. The Eduard photo-etch brass set is a real help to get the gear wells a bit more busy, including those oval access panels on the sides which are wrong on the kit parts. Right or wrong, this is how I distributed the panels according to reference pics on the left gear well in the middle, compared to the unaltered right well on the outside.

Gearwell2.jpg

Here’s the main gear well parts before final assembly. I didn’t go crazy with wiring or plumbing, but there are a set of hydraulic lines that go along the inside of the well that are fairly prominent, so I made something similar out of nickel plated #28 copper wire. I have several pics of the main glycol line painted blue or turquoise, so I went with that because I like the color and as a “restored bird”, I can do whatever I want for a change! You can see a lot of the Eduard brass details on the end walls, but I left out a couple of the main boxes, because I could not find one pic with them installed where the Eduard instructions tell you to.

Gearwell3.jpg

A rear view. A big improvement using the Eduard parts is on the roof where the tire depression is. The Eduard brass is on the correct side and oval shaped, while the kit parts just have a big circular sink hole underneath.

Gearwell4.jpg

The front. I used some more Bare Metal Matte Aluminum foil for the rings on that little tank to make them “pop”.

Gearwell5.jpg

Hydraulic lines and the glycol pipe. For the hose clamp on the pipe, I used black electrical tape with some automotive hose clamps.

Gearwell6.jpg

I also used these automotive clamps on my P-51D, which you can see on the lower right, a trick I learned from LSP’s own Wolf Buddee on his awesome Spitfire build!

Newgear2.jpg

Oval cuts in the sidewalls are needed to feed the plumbing lines through before assembly.

Gearwell7.jpg

You also need to add the main brake line to the gear leg before you close up the side walls, which you can barely see as a black wire on the right. The only “weathering” I used was pastels to replicate some tire marks where the tire touches the depression in the roof.

Gearwell8.jpg

Another angle….

Gearwell9.jpg

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Gearwell10.jpg

The wheels won’t be installed until the end, to avoid scratching them up and also to allow some tweaking with alignment at the very end of the build, but now is a good time to figure out where that brake line should go. I also want to add a brake line clamp at the front of the scissor link, but I will wait until the end for that as well for the same reasons.

Those Aires wheels are beautiful….

Gearwell12.jpg

The clearance between the scissor link and wheel is very tight on the P-38….

Gearwell13.jpg

A view from the rear, but the tire is a smidge too close to the leg.

Gearwell14.jpg

And finally, a very Merry Xmas, Hanukkah, or whatever you may celebrate at this time of year!

Gearwell15.jpg

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited by chuck540z3
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Chuck,

Very nicely done wheel wells. Your decision not to go crazy detailing something that will never be seen unless it's turned over in a contest, which I don't think judges do any more. Thanks for the heads up on the clamp hoses. Will have to see if I can find any that works with 1/48 scale.

And of course Happy Holidays to you and your family. I'm sure that since you live in Canada, you most likely had a white Xmas. Here on LI its been raining with temps in the mid 50s for a new daily record.

Joel

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Hey Chuck. You may have already answered this question before but where did you get the automotive hose clamps?

Thanks

Richard

The "Model Car Garage" Richard, website below. There's lots of stuff the car guys use that comes in very handy in aircraft landing gear wells!

Model Car Garage

December 26, 2014

I just finished the assembly of the right side gear well, which went twice as fast as the left side now that I had a plan and knew what the heck I was doing. Well, sort of....

Gearwell16.jpg

The gear wells have a lot of photo-etch and I used lots of CA glue on the outside of the gear wells, to ensure a strong bond without any glue marks or mess on the inside. This got me to thinking…..It’s time for another Tutorial! As with my other tutorials, I am no expert, but I have learned a few things along the way and pass on my own personal observations.

CA Gluing Made Easy

When I first used CA glue (Cyanoacrylate) for the first time on Eduard photo-etch, it was a very frustrating experience. I got my fingers stuck together, the brass parts were covered in glue and the parts were crooked on the plastic. I dreaded using photo-etch parts for this reason, but over time, I figured out how to do it cleanly and quickly. I now love photo-etch parts and you’ll always find a lot of them in my builds. Eduard photo-etch brass really “kicks up your model a notch” with super fine detail you can’t mold with just plastic and resin alone.

First some basics. Generally speaking, CA glue comes in three viscosities of thin, medium and thick and each viscosity has its own uses and drying times. The thin glue usually dries very fast while the thicker the glue, the slower the drying time due to less surface area of the glue being exposed to air. I never buy medium or thick glue, because over time, thin CA glue will be of medium viscosity in about a year and almost too thick for anything after a year and half. I buy thin glue only and rotate the bottles according to age, so I always have all three viscosities on hand. I’ve read that keeping CA glue in the refrigerator will increase its shelf life, but I go through it so much that it doesn’t matter.

Besides the glue itself, you will need CA glue “Accelerator” and a “Debonder” to “dry” the glue immediately or remove the glue from places you don’t want it. The accelerators all work about the same. After you glue the parts, apply a bit of accelerator to the glued area with a microbrush and the glue will cure instantly. From what I’ve read, CA glue dries or “polymerizes” due to the attraction of water molecules in the air, which is totally the opposite of other glues where solvents within the glue evaporate. Since thinners or solvents aren’t leaving the glue, it doesn’t shrink, which makes it perfect for using as a filler. More on that later.

The biggest discovery I have made about CA glue is that not all debonders work the same. With many debonders, the application of the solvent will make a gooey mess and doesn’t quite remove all of the glue. “Great Planes Pro CA Debonder” is super strong and really dissolves the CA glue completely, but only where it is applied. Once I found this debonder, almost all of my CA gluing problems went away. It’s that much better than the other debonders, including the ones made specifically for certain brands of CA glue.

Before I get into gluing PE brass, you really should have two other tools to help you cut and bend the parts. The “Hold And Fold” is a great little tool to hold and bend the brass parts and the Xuron cutters are super accurate and do a much better job of cutting brass than any other tool, including scissors.

PETools1.jpg

Now to gluing. Depending on the application, I will use thin glue on tiny parts and thicker glues on larger parts that I might need to move around and therefore need a few more seconds to do so. The best way of applying the glue is to use a toothpick or the end of a microbrush with the brush pulled off. These brushes have a second life when the brush head is contaminated or dried with glue, they become CA glue applicators. By pulling the brush head off in an outward direction, the plastic stretches, creating a nice fine plastic tip for gluing. They are very cheap when you buy them in bulk, so you can throw them away after they are no longer usable.

I also like to put a few drops of the glue into a shallow plastic cup, like the one below. While not air tight, the rim of the cup restricts the air circulation over the glue and I can sometimes keep the glue from drying for 24 hours this way, even uncovered. When I’m not gluing, I cover the cup to keep the glue thin for even longer.

CAGlueSupplies.jpg

I like to apply the glue to area where the part is to be placed and not the part itself. That way you can control where the glue stays and place the part with tweezers without fear of the part sticking to the tweezers. Once the part is placed, give it a gentle push to distribute the glue under the part and decrease the drying time. If some glue oozes out, no worries, assuming you’re dealing with just plastic and brass and not any paint. Apply some of the Great Planes debonder to a fresh microbrush and apply it to the area you want the glue removed. Wipe the area, then wipe the brush on a cloth to remove the glue from the brush, then reapply debonder and repeat until the area is glue free. If debonder gets under the part and is in contact with the glue you want to stay there, again no worries. Just let the debonder evaporate and give the glue more time to dry. The glue bond will not be compromised

Depending on the application, you may need to use an accelerator to set the glue quicker than ordinary drying times. To do this, I just load another microbrush with accelerator and let the solution touch the glue by capillary action underneath the brass part. For some very small parts, I might hold the part in place without any glue, then apply super thin CA glue to a microbrush and let it wick underneath the part from the sides. Cleanup is the same as above, using debonder.

Another tip. If you’re moving a part around with glue on it and it suddenly gets stuck before you’re ready, you need to pull the part off and try again. The bond will never be strong, even though the glue might not be totally dry. Carefully scrape off the glue on the plastic and the brass with a #11 knife and glue it all over again.

While accelerator is a great aid when using CA glue, it can also cause the glue to cure too quickly and unevenly, which creates a rough surface and air bubbles. For most applications this is not a problem and is only cosmetic, but sometimes you want the glue to stay as smooth and clear as possible, especially if it’s visible. For these situations I recommend no accelerator or, at the very least, the application of accelerator nearby the glue and not directly in contact with it.

You can also use CA glue to makes parts! When I was building my P-51D Mustang, I broke off the wing tip next to the aileron (almost impossible not to do at least once because it catches on everything!) as shown below:

Save1.jpg

To fix it, I cut the thin part back to provide a stronger base and inserted a pin, which in this case was a strong drill bit base.

Save2.jpg

I then applied a bit of CA glue to the base of the pin and let it dry with a small amount of accelerator placed on the pin.

Save3.jpg

Building up the part, I applied more CA glue to the tip of the pin which dried fairly quickly with the remnants of the accelerator, then sanded the new tip to shape and added the missing rivet detail while the CA glue remained relatively soft.

Save4.jpg

After re-painting, voila, the wing is as good as new! Ignore that outer panel line, which I re-scribed later.

Save5.jpg

I also use CA glue a LOT to fill seams, panel lines and as a general filler instead of putty. Putty has its uses, but if want to fill something quickly, without shrinkage and you want to re-scribe panel lines or reapply rivet detail, you can’t beat it. Putty shrinks, takes quite a while to dry and re-scribed lines across its surface are often ragged and torn looking. The key to using CA glue as a filler, is to sand it within one hour of application while it remains relatively soft and easy to deal with. After it dries for a day or so it becomes very hard and is difficult to sand.

Well, that’s about it on CA glue that I can think of, but if you have any questions, fire away or maybe even offer your own experiences. We all learn from others!

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited by chuck540z3
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