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Thank you, John and Steve, for your kind words.

 

Quick post; more details added, the supports of the armored glass made from styrene strips, the switch boxes come from the Aires cockpit, and the supports for the gunsight reflector are leftovers from a photoetched set. The glass is dry-fitted only to test all before airbrushing this area.

 

DU9uAsc.jpg

 

The area around the exhausts is ready after applying Tamiya's epoxy putty and sand it.

 

dREc2Rj.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello all

 

The original plan was to install the front part of the canopy over the fuselage and smooth the union before making the riveting; since the vacuformed part has no rigidity, I was afraid to knock it off (and the armored glass underneath) in the process. So I started with the riveting instead.

 

I want to share a pic of the current progress and show my way of working these details; I find it easier to trace the lines with a pencil and run the riveting tool over them.

 

M8dFoyq.jpg

 

I use strips of painter's blue masking tape as a guide to trace the lines and keep them parallel;  in this part of the fuselage is difficult to maintain the lines evenly spaced due to its conical shape; a wide single strip for each space will tend to deform, so I use two or three thinner strips between the lines.

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Very nice, Carlos- the armor lass and the reflector are the first time I've seen this modeled!  Yes, with good pencil lines it's easy to use the riveter freehand- it looks wonderful- cheers!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello again.

 

On 3/30/2021 at 9:40 AM, chukw said:

Very nice, Carlos- the armor lass and the reflector are the first time I've seen this modeled!  Yes, with good pencil lines it's easy to use the riveter freehand- it looks wonderful- cheers!

Thank you for your kind words Chukw.

 

Here are some pics of the armored glass installed.

 

Vpw6nas.jpg

 

 

T1eOyUq.jpg

 

I used cyano to attach the glass to the supports, and while it sets, I test fit the windscreen to check the alignment; one of those times, I put it too close, and a small drop of cyano ended up inside the windscreen (can't help myself).

 

I tried my best to sand away the blemish and polish the area, even resprayed the internal supports; we will only see the result after removing the external mask (after painting the model).

 

Here is the windscreen in place, first glued at the base of the styrene edge using Tamiya's glue to ensure a good alignment; after that, AMMO's black cyano was used to glue the rest of the part and to fill the gap in between. Since the interior of the windscreen isn't masked, the cyano was applied in small portions at a time to minimize the risk of fogging; let's hope it worked.

 

yNYatZv.jpg

 

While working on the riveting, I sanded away the hinge detail of a door on top of the fuselage that was already too soft; this detail was replaced using stretched sprue, as seen in this picture.

 

evSvBrv.jpg

 

Another area that needed rework was the main gear; one of the simulated springs broke, and I had to make a new one using stretched-sprue like in the others.

 

XChPTYu.jpg

 

These are several failed attempts at it, along with the one I'll be using on top.

 

VooWjzO.jpg

 

Before attaching the wings to the fuselage, I'm thinking about how to put in place the rest of the parts (flaps, landing gear, doors, etc.) at the end of the build; the bent wing of the Corsair is making this very challenging because there isn't a clear visual reference or a uniform surface to rest a jig that helps with the alignment. Any ideas about this are more than welcome.

 

Carlos

Edited by cruiz
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello all, quick update.

 

Here is a jig I made to help align the landing gear (please don't laugh too loud).

 

ApozZND.jpg

 

Those would be one of the last parts attached, and I want to get the best alignment I can.

 

At this point, the main goal is to get them parallel; if there is a discrepancy in the height, I hope it would be small enough so I can compensate by tweaking the wheels.

 

Thanks for watching.

 

Carlos
 

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3 hours ago, cruiz said:

Hello all, quick update.

 

Here is a jig I made to help align the landing gear (please don't laugh too loud).

 

ApozZND.jpg

 

Those would be one of the last parts attached, and I want to get the best alignment I can.

 

At this point, the main goal is to get them parallel; if there is a discrepancy in the height, I hope it would be small enough so I can compensate by tweaking the wheels.

 

Thanks for watching.

 

Carlos
 

I am not going to laugh... Very nice trick Carlos😊

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15 hours ago, cruiz said:

Hello all, quick update.

 

Here is a jig I made to help align the landing gear (please don't laugh too loud).

 

ApozZND.jpg

 

Those would be one of the last parts attached, and I want to get the best alignment I can.

 

At this point, the main goal is to get them parallel; if there is a discrepancy in the height, I hope it would be small enough so I can compensate by tweaking the wheels.

 

Thanks for watching.

 

Carlos
 

This is very smart Carlos.  I will be trying the same thing.  Great build.  I also have a Corsair waiting to be built.  And I will use your build as a guide.  Great work. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/25/2021 at 12:03 AM, cruiz said:

Hello all, quick update.

 

Here is a jig I made to help align the landing gear (please don't laugh too loud).

 

Those would be one of the last parts attached, and I want to get the best alignment I can.

 

At this point, the main goal is to get them parallel; if there is a discrepancy in the height, I hope it would be small enough so I can compensate by tweaking the wheels.

 

Thanks for watching.

 

Carlos
 

 

Half of me is in awe of your skills, and wanting to make my builds look this good. The other half wants to sell all my stash and just give up, I'm at ~ 75% this level.

 

Your jig is a great idea. I did the same thing with styrofoam sheets, to simply hold the model during painting.

 

20210503_220958.jpg

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Many thanks, zaxos345, SapperSix, for visiting this thread and your nice comments.

 

Thank you, MA Cooke, for your kind words; that's a clever painting jig, and I really like the paintwork you are doing in that Tomcat.

 

The build has taken a different route from planned; now, the focus is to work on the landing gears and related parts, along with the flaps and bomb rack. This way, I hope to minimize the handling of the painted model with the wings fixed.

 

Here is a picture of the bomb and rack; as with the rest of the kit, easy assembly goes before accuracy; lots of work to do in this area.

 

CVWqvq4.jpg?1

 

Here are the main wells doors from the Aires set; they are thinner and have more detail than the kit ones, but some sink marks, air bubbles, and rests of the mounting blocks required filling with black CA.

 

rBocNky.jpg

 

Kit's wheels are well detailed and a good representation of treadless ones as seen in some pictures of the time; they look a little thick to my eye, though.

 

I couldn't find a replacement with a diamond pattern, so I settled with a grooved set from ResKit, but I'm still open to use the kit ones.

 

4ENJBQW.jpg

 

Here are both examples; the advantage of the resin replacement is that the tire is separated from the wheel; this allows me to flatten it beforehand (as seen in the picture) and attach it last to assure that it lies flat with the ground. I can't do that with the kit ones because the tire and wheel are molded together, and the wheel is keyed, so it would be complicated to predict where the flat spot should be before the model is finished.
 

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I need help from you experts; while searching for references on the Brewster rack, I realized that the shape of the kit's bomb is odd. It doesn't seem to match any of the US bombs I could find.

 

From what I know, this should be a 1,000 pounds M65, but the size and shape don't match references; here is alongside a bomb from a Monogram kit, which is very close in shape and dimensions from references.

 

wAkCLko.jpg

 

Is the kit's provided bomb correct? If so, could you share some references?. Should I go for the Monogram instead?

 

Thank you in advance for your help.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I had no luck in finding information on the bomb provided in the kit; only in a couple of pictures online I found something similar, but it seems to be a practice bomb because it is painted in a very dark color, probably black, the attachment points connects to metal rings around and not directly to the body; also the bomb doesn't have an attachment point for the fuze on the nose.

 

I decided to go for the Monogram bomb instead, refining some parts and adding details where needed. Here is temporarily mounted on the rack.

 

thkVWCM.jpg

 

The kit rack is reworked to refine details and make a better representation of the real one. The most evident change will be the anti-sway braces; I have new ones made from Evergreen rod, the trickiest part is their alignment, so I'll be using the bomb as a reference point for them.

 

Boring nostalgic speech inside.

 

Quote

When working on the bomb, I remembered that it came from an old B-25, one of my first models, around the mid-'80s, that I never really finished; I don't know why.

 

In Mexico, we had two main brands of model kits, one that repackaged mostly Revell and Airfix, and the other one that did the same with Monogram kits; the latter was my favorite; the subjects, the scale, and level of detail were just incomparable. 

 

I bought the B-25 in the supermarket just like my other models; at the time, the whole modeling universe was in that aisle in the toy section, and I was convinced that building all the models that existed was feasible; little I knew that some years later would find myself ordering from Squadron, also found that there were already two hobby shops in town.

 

Looking at this bomb, I realized that I tried to use the thick yellow paint to fill the gaps and did a poor job of cleaning the remnants of sprue; I thought it would be fun to see what a more experienced me can do with an old kit.

 

I separated the halves using a thin blade; back then, I used glue similar to Testor's tube; it did a decent job but fortunately didn't fuse the parts. I cleaned the parts to ensure a nice join with no gaps; the plastic reacted well to Tamiya's thin glue.

 

The plastic is tough; after all these years, it didn't become brittle, but it is difficult to sand or file; my hands hurt after a session of doing that but at the same time, that allows me to thin the box fin assembly to an acceptable thickness.

 

V2Fcafa.jpg

 

Instead of replacing the nose fuze, I reworked the original; fabricate the attachment points on the body from scratch. The back cover and the tail fuze were also made from styrene sheets and stretched sprue.

 

6RkEXPb.jpg

 

Two of the fins were shorter than the others, so I glued styrene extensions; the joint was so good that I could file and sand them to shape without breaking.

 

ss9y2iZ.jpg

 

I'm happy with the result; it's not 100% accurate but better than the kit's one.

 

All this nostalgia tempted me to look for a Monogram B-25 and finish the kit this time around, but if I can get one, I will replace the bombs with aftermarket ones.
 

 

That's all for now, thanks for watching.

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2 hours ago, Tailspin Turtle said:

Very nice work! A bit of trivia about the forward-facing main landing gear door: https://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/2012/10/f4u-main-landing-gear-door-attachment.html

 

Thanks for the info, Tommy, and I'm glad that you like it; I regularly visit your blogs because of the interesting and useful info you share.

 

Indeed I took note of that detail of the forward door from your blog and intend to add this detail with foil or something similar, and it will also serve to hide the gap between the Aires well and the wing.

 

Also, your article on aerials will be handy when the time comes; I haven't decided which arrangement to use yet but now at least have more options.

 

Regards

 

Carlos

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2 hours ago, AlienFrogModeller said:

Incredible work!

 

 

Cheers

 

AFM

 

Thanks for your kind words, AFM; also looking forward to your excellent F-18 production line.

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Hello all, here is a small update.

 

Instead of using the bomb as a reference for the anti-sway braces, I made a jig from a styrene sheet. Here is one of them, made from 1mm. (0.04") Evergreen rod, since the attachment point is small, I used Tamiya's glue to make a strong union; after it dried, it was reinforced with black cyano; this also emulates the solder line of the real thing.

 

KyCorjo.jpg

 

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After attaching, both braces tend to spread unevenly; to align and make them parallel, a pair of reinforcement rods (as in the real rack) were attached between them. For this task, a vise was a perfect tool to maintain alignment and equal pressure while the glue sets, as with the braces, the rods were glued with Tamiya and black cyano.

 

GCVuSXs.jpg

 

On another thread, I mentioned my rule of not gluing parts that required maintaining pressure with my fingers while the glue sets; this time, I followed it using jigs, and the result was a strong bond and an aligned part.

 

Here are bomb and rack dry-fitted; four pads made from styrene were glued to the bomb using the braces as a reference, both were drilled to insert rods after final painting and assembly.

 

1ABIqGc.jpg

 

Thanks for watching.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello again

 

These past days, the build became an intellectual exercise with little progress on the kit itself. I devoted most of the time to figure out a way to deal with the landing flaps.

 

Previously in the build, I planned to attach them using metal wires that I'd inserted where the original hinges were, but due to their thickness, they needed to be short to fit inside the hinge and didn't provide a secure attachment point; a thinner wire wouldn't be strong enough.

 

Finally, I decided to use photoetched leftovers; they are thinner but stiff and can be long enough to provide a strong attachment point. Also, it will allow me to attach the flaps at the very end of the build, making the painting easier.

 

Here are the flaps with the new hinge extensions, note also the small attachment points for the flap's door struts.

 

MJFk7rY.jpg

 

Due to the handling, most of the corners were damaged and had to be repaired; I will make the final shaping just before the paint to avoid further repairs.

 

Here are the flaps dry fitted to the wing; their final alignment will be made by eye based on reference pics.

 

swSMcgl.jpg

 

DSOZ0h2.jpg

 

That´s all for now; thank you for passing by.

 

Carlos

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I just threw my Corsairs out....

then I went back and got them out of the garbage....

Then I threw them out again after coming back and re-reading this...

then I went back out again...gonna follow your instructions...Corsairs are secured again. For now.

 

 

Simply amazing craftsmanship.

 

Cheers

 

AFM

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Carlos,

 

What can I say, this build gets better and better with each update.

 

You have a incredible drive and knack for details and it is such a treat to see your tweaks to this kit.

 

Thanks for sharing and I wish you continued success on this build.

 

Mr. Happy 

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On 6/21/2021 at 4:13 PM, AlienFrogModeller said:

I just threw my Corsairs out....

then I went back and got them out of the garbage....

Then I threw them out again after coming back and re-reading this...

then I went back out again...gonna follow your instructions...Corsairs are secured again. For now.

 

 

Simply amazing craftsmanship.

 

Cheers

 

AFM

 

Hello AFM

 

I'm glad that you find it useful, either as inspiration or as a warning of what not to do. 

 

I've seen your skills, and surely you will do a great job on them. Even more, now that you are printing your own detailing parts (I envy you).

 

13 hours ago, Mr.Happy said:

Carlos,

 

What can I say, this build gets better and better with each update.

 

You have a incredible drive and knack for details and it is such a treat to see your tweaks to this kit.

 

Thanks for sharing and I wish you continued success on this build.

 

Mr. Happy 

 

Thank you for your kind words Mr. Happy

 

I hope to make real progress once the flaps get sorted out.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hello there

 

I currently feel like that scene in the Poltergeist movie; the more I do, the farther the end is. With luck, I'll be able to start painting some parts the next week to have a sense of real progress.

 

Here is the current state of things.

 

Worked on the flaps and ailerons to leave them ready for painting; added the missing or broken actuators, repair corners, edges, and filled the remaining gaps.

 

QzjadT7.jpg

 

Added the missing ribs to the plates that go in between the flaps also.

 

At last, the wing and fuselage are glued together; the front and the wing root had a really nice fit that needed minimal filling; the rear part on the other hand had a large gap, on the bottom fuselage, that was filled using styrene strips and CA.

 

bloBbhe.jpg

 

The section just behind the wing was also misaligned, leaving a step that had to be filled using black CA and acrylic nail powder.

 

I tried to be careful and sand smooth this whole area, but I'm sure it will come back to bite me in the painting stage.

 

Going back to the cockpit, I added the canopy rails on the sides, those aren't a true representation, but they help detail this area and cover the ugly gap where the resin and the plastic meet.

 

i4iiqRd.jpg

 

The armored plate at the back was made from styrene sheet, the bolt heads simulated with stretched sprue, and the headrest came from the Aires set.

 

Finally, I'm currently working on the canopy; I'm planning to use the vac-formed one, so I'm adding the internal framing using styrene strips; here it is,

masked to protect it while I work and also help to reference where the framing goes.

 

voTqHWW.jpg

 

The framing is also necessary because the Aire's photoetched detail is made for the kit's thicker canopy; if the vac-formed canopy goes wrong, I'll use the kit's one instead.

 

That's all for now; thanks for looking.

 

Carlos

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5 hours ago, cruiz said:

Hello there

 

I currently feel like that scene in the Poltergeist movie; the more I do, the farther the end is. With luck, I'll be able to start painting some parts the next week to have a sense of real progress.

 

Here is the current state of things.

 

Worked on the flaps and ailerons to leave them ready for painting; added the missing or broken actuators, repair corners, edges, and filled the remaining gaps.

 

QzjadT7.jpg

 

Added the missing ribs to the plates that go in between the flaps also.

 

At last, the wing and fuselage are glued together; the front and the wing root had a really nice fit that needed minimal filling; the rear part on the other hand had a large gap, on the bottom fuselage, that was filled using styrene strips and CA.

 

bloBbhe.jpg

 

The section just behind the wing was also misaligned, leaving a step that had to be filled using black CA and acrylic nail powder.

 

I tried to be careful and sand smooth this whole area, but I'm sure it will come back to bite me in the painting stage.

 

Going back to the cockpit, I added the canopy rails on the sides, those aren't a true representation, but they help detail this area and cover the ugly gap where the resin and the plastic meet.

 

i4iiqRd.jpg

 

The armored plate at the back was made from styrene sheet, the bolt heads simulated with stretched sprue, and the headrest came from the Aires set.

 

Finally, I'm currently working on the canopy; I'm planning to use the vac-formed one, so I'm adding the internal framing using styrene strips; here it is,

masked to protect it while I work and also help to reference where the framing goes.

 

voTqHWW.jpg

 

The framing is also necessary because the Aire's photoetched detail is made for the kit's thicker canopy; if the vac-formed canopy goes wrong, I'll use the kit's one instead.

 

That's all for now; thanks for looking.

 

Carlos

Excellent work...watching very very closely on this aspect of your work.

 

Cheers

 

AFM

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