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1/32 Trumpeter F4F-3 Grumman Wildcat


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  This is my 1st build since making the move to 1/32 scale, and my 2nd 1/32 build ever, the 1st being the F2A-3 Buffalo, as well as my 1st buiild Blog  with my return to ARC.  The kit I decided on is one of my personal favorite Grumman aircraft, the F4F-3 Wildcat, kitted by Trumpeter. The build started several months ago so I've broken up my build pictures into several updates to bring everyone up to date, posting them a few days apart.
 
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This isn't one of Trumpeter's newer generation kits, which I understand are quite good, but rather an earlier release that have some issues which range from minor to major. So I'm going into this with some intrepidation and caution. I've seen several of these built, so they're certainly buildable. The issue is to be able to bring it up to my latest person standards. My 1st choice was to do their -4 with the folding wings, but as the earlier of the two kits, it has issues with the shape and profile of the fuselage. The 2nd kiting, the -3, has an all new fuselage amoung other corrected parts, including non-folding wings. To do a correct -4 you would need to buy a -3 just for the fuselage. That's another project for another time.
The instructions of course start out with the cockpit, I opted to start with the Pratt & Whitney R-1830-66 Twin Radial Wasp engine.  As usual I planned on just adding spark plug wires and  other details to enhance the look.  The engine itself is a miniture kit.  These are the parts needed just to build the front bank of cylinders.
 
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 After doing some basic research on a few other builds, it became quite apparent that the engine has some issues. The most visual issue is that the push rod tubes are all to short' and the valve covers are at the wrong angle in repect to the angle that the  push rod tubes are.
The 1st order of business was to cut off the pushrod tubes and drill out the ring that the tubes go in.
 
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I cut .035 Evergreen rod to make new tubes. After test fitting a few rods into the valve covers, the gap is basically gone, but the angle is just as bad. I thought about filing down the tops of the cylinder heads but rejected that as there is a brace that I'll be adding that goes across and it won't align correctly. Also the profile would be completely wrong. The issue is that Trumpeter just dreamed up the valve covers. Here's a picture of the real engine. You can see that the valve cover is cast so that the top is angled directly down the pushrod tube, while the bottom half is directly facing down the middle of the cylinder head.
 
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Now that I know what the problem is I had to admit with my limited modeling skills there is no way I could scratch out those covers, so I just opted to live with what's in the kit as the cowling lip will completely hide the offending valve covers.
I painted both cylinder banks, crakcases, and the exhaust MIG AMMO Black primer, then the cylinder heads, tube manifold, and wiring manifold were airbrushed with Alcad 2 Dark Aluminum, followed by a Black wash using Tamiya's Black recessed panel line wash. Then the pushrod tubes were installed and painted Tamiya X-1 Gloss Black.
 
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Next I made the collars that secure the pushrod tubes to the valve covers from tape. Once painted flat Aluminum, they should fool the viewers eye. Here's a picture with them painted on the right and just tape on the left.
 
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I dry fitted the engine and wasn't happy with the color of the crankcasing as it's just to light, so I repainted it a darker shade. The pushrods with the collars fill up the space in the valve covers and the overall look does seem much better then the stock parts.
Next up was the wiring of both banks of cylinders.  Now I've always thought that the plug wires were rubber encased, but a friend whose a living expert on all things B-17 said that for most of the war they used a bronze colored braid to house the ignition wires. The Rubber casings weren't used until very late in the war. Sure enough I checked my resources, and what I thought was just an upgrade in restorations were actually Bronze braid. Thank you Karl for that bit of information. Who would have known but a expert.
 
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So I wired the engine with .4mm lead wire from UMM-USA, and then painted them with a Bronze Yellowish color. Wiring took 3 days for each engine as the ignition manifold for some reason has the wire attachment fittings facing inward. No problem for the back bank, but for the front bank of cylinders they were almost completely under the cylinders. So I very carefully had to re-drill each hole after I had glued the manifold to the crankcase. How I didn't screw it up is beyond me.
Here's the almost completer P&W R-1830-66 engine. I still have some wiring on the crankcase to do as well as the rear housing. The crankcase is just dryfitted at this point.
 
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End of Part 1

Joel
 
Edited by Joel_W
forget a sentence
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 Going as far with the engine detailing as I can for now, the next step was to get the firewall bulkhead fitted so that there isn't the huge gaps that dry fitting showed.  Once I got the firewall to fit correctly without having to apply any force, I glued it into one wheel well.  I took a good look at the wheel well from the outside looking in for the 1st time. What I saw was a completely wrong profile and a huge lip that just isn't there in real life.
 
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   The lip that blocks part of the well that the wheel seats into once retracted. if this was correct, then there was no need for a wheel well to exist. This is what it looks like in real life.
 
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   Depending on the angle of view the well looks circular, but it's in reality it's more of a uneven oval. 
 
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   Trumpeter indeed molded them as perfect circles
 
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   As an interesting side note that I found, Tamiya on their 1/48 scale F4F-4 originally went with the circle shape, then re-did the fuselage shape and changed the wells to the oval shape.
 
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   I started out dry fitting the firewall, then marked what plastic needed to be removed. In order to keep the correct orientation for the retraced wheel, I had to move the existing wheel rewards and downwards. In this picture you can see the original wheel well on the right, and the roughed out well on the left.
 
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   Here's a close up of the rough well at this point. the other well is also done to this point.
 
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   I still have more putty work and blending to do, then I'll prime and go from there.
Joel
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Just now, polo1112 said:

Your engine really looks fantastic.

Can't wait to see the following stages.

 Polo1112,

   Thanks so much for that most positive comment.  All the build stages and primary painting updates will be posted every few days till I'm finally current.

Joel

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2 hours ago, Joel_W said:
    As an interesting side note that I found, Tamiya on their 1/48 scale F4F-4 originally went with the circle shape, then re-did the fuselage shape and changed the wells to the oval shape.
 
QRuwQC.jpg
 

The image you used there shows the differences between the original and retooled 1/32 Trumpeter F4F-4 kit as displayed at HyperScale on this page:

http://kits.kitreview.com/f4f432reviewbg_2.htm

 

As can be seen in that image, the F4F-4 kit's fuselage shapes were corrected. That change occurred PRIOR to the kit being released in the USA. It is extremely unlikely that your F4F-4 kit has the original, misshapen fuselage.

2 hours ago, Joel_W said:
 My 1st choice was to do their -4 with the folding wings, but as the earlier of the two kits, it has issues with the shape and profile of the fuselage. The 2nd kiting, the -3, has an all new fuselage amoung other corrected parts, including non-folding wings. To do a correct -4 you would need to buy a -3 just for the fuselage.

 

If you have the -4 kit, tape one of its fuselage halves to the -3 (late) that you're building here, and you'll see that they are quite similar.

 

HTH,

D

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17 hours ago, D Bellis said:

The image you used there shows the differences between the original and retooled 1/32 Trumpeter F4F-4 kit as displayed at HyperScale on this page:

http://kits.kitreview.com/f4f432reviewbg_2.htm

 

As can be seen in that image, the F4F-4 kit's fuselage shapes were corrected. That change occurred PRIOR to the kit being released in the USA. It is extremely unlikely that your F4F-4 kit has the original, misshapen fuselage.

 

If you have the -4 kit, tape one of its fuselage halves to the -3 (late) that you're building here, and you'll see that they are quite similar.

 

HTH,

D

D.

  Thank you for the correction to the Tamiya kit, which most likely occurred when I was 1st researching the differences from the -4 and the retooled -3.

  My understanding was that Trumpeter did indeed correct the main issues in their molding of the Fuselage for the -3, so I traded my -4 for the -3.

 

Joel

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Janne,

   Why thank you my friend. Coming from you it means a lot.

 

   You'll notice that I switched scales for props as my eyesight has gotten pretty bad. I'm now legally blind in the left eye, and facing more surgeries in the right eye trying to save my eyesight. So naturally, I pick a hobby that requires superior eyesight.

 

Joel.

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40 minutes ago, dnl42 said:

Hey Joel,

 

Glad to see you back! Very nice work on that engine.

dhl42,

   Believe me, it's great to be back. I could kick myself in the butt for ever leaving in the 1st place.

 

   BTW, Love that F4F-4 on floats. One doesn't see one of those very often.

Joel

Edited by Joel_W
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3 hours ago, Joel_W said:

  My understanding was that Trumpeter did indeed correct the main issues in their molding of the Fuselage for the -3, so I traded my -4 for the -3.

Trumpeter's F4F-3 came later. It was "corrected" from the beginning, and it was based on their retooled -4.

 

Trumpeter produced the deformed F4F-4 first, and quickly retooled it as described on the page I linked. Their F4F-4 kit is ok now.

 

HTH,

D

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7 minutes ago, D Bellis said:

Trumpeter's F4F-3 came later. It was "corrected" from the beginning, and it was based on their retooled -4.

 

Trumpeter produced the deformed F4F-4 first, and quickly retooled it as described on the page I linked. Their F4F-4 kit is ok now.

 

HTH,

D

D,

  Thanks so much for the corrected time line. I was always under the impression that the -4 version still have the misshapen fuselage. Now, I can plan on another F4F build down the road, as I had already bought a specific decal sheet for that version.

 

Joel

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  Looking at both fuselage halves, it became quite apparent that there is considerable work needed to prepare the inner surfaces of both halves prior to continuing working on the 2 compartments: Engine/Wheel Well, and the cockpit. Looking at the outside of each fuselage half, the wing mounting surfaces are raised above the fuselage surface so that there is a more positive gluing surface.
 
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But that creates a huge issue on the inside surfaces:
 
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The front portion is clearly visable in wheel wells, and the center section is also visible looking down into the cockpit. The only viable solution is to fill in those massive areas. To accomplish that, I 1st cut out and glued in a "spar" made from .020 sheet just to shallow the depression.
 
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Then a layer of Milliput. I sanded the putty level making sure that I maintained the concave surface. Unfortunately my Milliput is rather old, and no matter how many pieces of dried skin I removed, some remained which is those dark spots. I filled any  remaining depressions with Bondo, which is the red oxide colored material, and sanded it smooth.  Hopefully the wheel well areas once primed won't need any more putty work.
The next area is between the cockpit and wheel well bulkheads which can't be seen, so I really didn't need to fill in the depression. So on one side I left it as is. And the area past the cockpit also can't be seen even though I filled and blended in that area as well.
Next I decided to skin the cockpit walls and added ribbing in a similar mannor to the Eduard interior PE set that is out of production and next to impossible to find.
 
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Dry fitting over and over again, it should more then fools the viewer's eye especially once painted and weathered.
 
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I still have work to do to get the cockpit aligned properly so that the fuselage halves will close correctly without having to force the issue.
 
Part 2
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Part 2
 
  My attention now turned to the cockpit assembly, which builds up quite nicely with excellent detail.  The 1st order of business was determining the proper color of the cockpit. My resources had a mixed bag of colors ranging from Interior Green, Dark Dull Green, and the more exotic Bronze Green.
  For some time I've followed the research and findings of Dana Bell, who really knows his stuff. Dana stated that the pre-war F4F-3 cockpits were either Natural Aluminum or painted Aluminum Dope. At the start of the war the cockpits were painted by Grumman's what was referred to as Bronze Green. By the time that the -4s came out, the standard cockpit color had been once again changed to Dark Dull Green. The issue is that Bronze Green didn't have a ANA number, so there was no conversion to FS numbers. Dana suggested that two very close matches were FS 24050 or FS24052, and started out as a semi gloss finish, which naturally didn't last very long. My guess is that the color originated by the local company that mixed the paint for Grumman's right here on the Long Island.
  Bronze Green was very, and I mean a very dark green with a ting of Blue. FS24052 being the lighter of the two FS numbers is what I mixed my paint to. The mix that I came up with using Tamiya paints is: 2 parts XF-13 J.A. Green to 1 part XF-18 Medium Blue thinned 2:3 with their Yellow Cap thinner. 
  The Pit construction started with the IP and bulkhead. Trumpeter has the IP panel as a 3 part assembly:
Bulkhead/back plate in gray/ Acetate instruments that are very well printed, and a cover plate.  I painted the top cover plate with Tamiya Nato Black, as I feel it has a more natural look to it in scale then flat black.    I Tested the acetate instrument sheet on the backing plate, but the white didn't really pop all that well.
 
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   So I cut out a new backing plate from .010 sheet and checked out the gauges again.
 
0PSoBB.jpg
 
   There is enough of a difference to make it worth while.
   Then I masked the top half of the IP bulkhead and primed the bottom half with MIG-AMMO Black primer. I air brushed it with my home made Bronze Green color:
ZPT6E6.jpg
 
   I wasn't particularly happy with Trumpeter's seat. Basically, it just to thick, to clunky looking, and thus in need of a diet. Sanding got the seat down to proper proportions, added a seat/backing plate from .010 sheet, and two small plates on the top sides of the back.
 
aWQeAM.jpg
 
  One thing to note is that the -3s still didn't have shoulder harnesses, so I opted to make them out of Tamiya tape. Still not too happy with the plan Jane Aluminum painted buckle and latch.
  The construction of the rest of the Pit only took a few days including painting, as I didn't add any other details. Once the fuselage is close up, you just don't see very much of the cockpit as the side walls are rolled.
 
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   Next up I test fitted the Fuselage halves, and as I expected after reading one build blog after another, the halves just don't align properly, and quite a lot of pressure is needed to close the resulting gaps. Well, sure enough that was the case with my F4F as well. The difference is that I just wasn't going to accept that as a solution. Now I had test fitted both halves with just the wheel well bulkhead glued in place and they fit perfectly, as well as the unworked side to the wheel well. Unfortunately, now I was looking at a modeling  nightmare!! The only answer is that the two cockpit bulkheads were causing this issue. So out came the heavy duty sand paper and I commenced at sanding, testing, sanding, testing, etc for a few hours. Finally it fit.
 
uH6GD6.jpg
 
  Absolutely no pressure was used to close up the fuselages halves other then the normal nudge here and there. What still didn't fit correctly was the wheel well bulkhead. Not to sure how I'm going to go about fixing this issue other then carefully pre-shimming with sheet, the working with Milliput and blending it in with water. When dried, Bondo and sanding. Hopefully it will turn out as well as the other side did, but I have my reservations.
 
Joel
Edited by Joel_W
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9 hours ago, YanK said:

Great progress and skill in improving the kit Joel! Thanks for posting, so looking forward to seeing this one progress.

 

Yannis

 Yannis,

  Thanks so much for stopping by and appreciating the work and effort I've put into the build to date.


Joel

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 Finally it's time for another update. I've been doing quite a bit of shall we say body work, but not much to show for my efforts till now.
   Once the two fuselage halves were glued together using Tamiya Extra thin, I had the usual pock marks from the glue dissolving small areas of the top surface as I applied it with the brush as everyone does. Not so sure that this is the best way to go about, and just might try Testors Model Master glue in the black plastic container with the hollow metal pin applicator. Thicker then Extra Thin, but thinner then the old tube glue.
    So out came the Bondo, and a light coat was needed along the complete seam top and bottom. A day latter I sanded it down and it looks pretty good.
 
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   And a overall pic of the fuselage.
 
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   Now my attention turned to the wheel well bulkhead. While one side was already had the basic filling and sanding.
 
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   The worst of the two sides now needed to be dealt with. I  1st filled that huge gap with Milliput, then sanded when dried and cured the following day. Next came the several layers of Bondo. I still have some final sanding and shaping to do, but it's getting there.
 
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   Here's how both sides look as viewed head on.
 
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   There is a major issue with the bulkhead not coming close to the top of the fuselage leaving a huge gap. Because of where the gap is, and that it would be very difficult to sand and polish, I decided to fill the gap with Vallejo White Acrylic Putty in small layers. Here's the gap after two layers have been added.  also there is the inside of the top fuselage seam to deal with. I'm a little leery about removing that locating pin. Just not sure if it will effect the glue join.
 
dypsj9.jpg
 
  Trumpeter has made all the major flying surfaces separate parts, which is great, but they made them movable to the point of sloppiness. The rudder needs to be installed prior to gluing up the fuselage halves. So I tested out their hinge system.
 
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  What I found was that the rudder just flopped around at the slight touch, and that it was a tad to far back. So I decided to go with steel pins instead. More on that later.
  As I said earlier, the wheel well recesses still need work and a 1st priming. At this point I'm pretty confident that I can get them just about perfect.
 
End of Part 1
Joel
 
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Part 2

 Taking a break from working on the fuselage. Ok to be truthful, I'm avoiding trying to re-scribe all the panel lines and rivets I sanded off for a while at least. So I decided to work on the wings.
  Grumman's decided to use what I call a split landing flap, where only the lower half of the wing is actually used as a flap. while the upper half is still part of the wing.  Trumpeter with their movable surfaces has done the hard part in duplicating this feature in their wing sections.  Here's what the kit upper wing section looks like.
 
WM1hsw.jpg
 
  At 1st glance it looks pretty nice, but a closer inspection shows several errors.
 
x87S4F.jpg
 
 The ribs are too short in length as they stop where Trumpeter created a flat gluing surface. Rather the ribs should run to the trailing edge where there is a reinforcing strip that isn't on the kit wing either.
  My 1st thought was to buy the Eduard PE flap set and use it. Besides the cost, I prefer to try and modify, detail, or correct kit parts when ever possible, so that's the route I decided to take.
 
U68btb.jpg
 
  Using .010 x .040 Evergreen strips, I made the trailing edge.  Not having the correct size strips to cover those "open boxes" I cut the proper sizes from .020 sheet, then sanded them down some.
  Next I had to decide if I wanted to remove the to small ribs or somehow use them. So I tried to cut a series of ribs. Some came out ok, some didn't as each rib is a little longer then the previous one. I then came up with the idea of using .011 x .033 Evergreen strips glued on top and butting up against the trailing edge lip. This also gave the illusion of the top plate on each rib that is missing.
  the over all top wing viewed from the bottom  looking up, while not being totally accurate, now has a proper look to it.
 
QsfxVn.jpg
 
  Net up is the actual flap itself.
End of Part 2
Joel
Edited by Joel_W
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Part 3

  I ended last week's update with one flap to go, so the 1st thing I finished this week was that flap. Now both flaps are done as well as the upper split wing.
 
hGKudK.jpg
 
   then I glued on the engine mount, followed by the horizontal stabilizers. To my surprise the fit was excellent with no gaps to fill.
 
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 And finally I glued in the fuselage windows. Fit was average at best with gaps that would need attention with Bondo. A few light coats of Bondo, then I sanded and polished both windows. Once they both passed the finger test, I sealed all the seams with thin CCA glue and sanded smooth, followed by Micro Mesh pads from 4,000 - 12,000.
 
Ff7Pga.jpg
 
    Next my attention turned to the windscreen. Dry fitting showed a really good fit, so I proceeded to apply the Eduard masks. For the 1st time I had some issues with them. Strange as it may sound, the picture on the instructions didn't match what the mask sheet actually looked like. I doubled checked the number, and it indeed matched. Not a big issue, but just strange. The Masks for the windscreen fit like a glove;
 
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but not so for the canopy. Almost every section was too small requiring small pieces to finish the masking process.
 
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   Finally, the F4F-3 fuselage is actually starting to look like the real deal.
 
BmM790.jpg
 
Joel
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