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1/48 Revell/Monogram "Special Edition" B-26 Marauder


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 It'll get better, I promise 😓

 

 My sidetrip today was casting Minié balls for a Pedersoli 1861 Springfield I picked up at a local gun show last winter and while I was at it, I intended to make up some nose weights for this build. With the actual nose stuffed full of styrene and resin, the engine nacelles seemed the ideal place for lead weight. I cut a sheet of brass to the maximum thickness of the weight I wanted and wrapped it up in strips of duct tape. Knowing this'll never last I also wrapped it with the wire core of a twist-tie from a loaf of bread (electronics part actually, but essentially the same thing). I figured if I got 5 or 6 out of it, I'd be happy:

DSC02468.jpg

 

I ended up with 28 of varying thicknesses, and the mold survived to make more another day:

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Fits the cowl nicely and I can get a bunch of them into the nacelle.

 

 Ken

 

 



 (pay no attention to the big motor in the lower left...)

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Weights glued into the cowls & nacelles:

DSC02473.jpg

 

 The nacelles will take another one, once the glue dries. The tallest ones I cast do the job just fine with room to spare.

 

 Ken

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  • 2 weeks later...

Come on Ken get the lead out with this build will ya...LOL! Seriously, that's some really nice work on a tough kit. Looking forward to following along.

 

Regards,

Don

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On 9/1/2018 at 10:09 AM, Don said:

Come on Ken get the lead out with this build will ya...LOL!

 

 

 SETTLE DOWN, NOW! We're not grilling a supreme court justice nominee here 😀

 

  The P-51 was finished last weekend and this one was finished last night-

 

DSC02501.jpg

 

 

 So now it's all about this build. Kinda.

 

 Wings are built up:

DSC02512.jpg

 

 

   And guess what-those nacelles are heavy :thumbsup: I doubt tail-sitting with this kit will be an issue.

 

 This kit is typical of something I'm seeing more and more of with these old Monogram kits. The lower wing panel is short-shot. It's not a QC issue; the molds were cut that way. It's not much but I'll bet it's another filler issue some builders have with this kit. Rather than filling & sanding gaps after the wings are on, I filled the gap first with Evergreen .010x.020 strip:

DSC02509.jpg

 

 

 This should eliminate most of the work after the wings are fitted to the fuselage. As an aside, the lower outer and upper inner wing panels on that TBD kit are horribly short. With around 36 of those still in the stash I'm an investor in Evergreen stock.

 

  Speaking of fuselages (and we were...):

DSC02513.jpg

 

 

  Buttoned up. The canopy fit was a bit iffy. I had to sand down the back of the piece on the vertical edge to make it fit, and it became a snap-fit. The nose cone is a bit oversized so that had to be built up. The top was wavy and to get the worst of it out the top of the fuselage got a bit flat spotted. And the tail cone (not appearing in this picture) was also a messy fit. But the filler work is done & sanded and you see some old Pactra fill primer I had kicking around brushed on over the top. You might also notice that I finally got smart and used an empty Tamiya liquid cement bottle for my Tenax. It was always a PITA to use in the original bottle.  Sure made short work of gluing styrene strips to the edge of the wing panels. And, of course, tires & wheels are painted.

 

 Running out of parts...

 

DSC02516.jpg

 

 

 Ken

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I had to do a double take when I saw the picture of the fuselage, it looked like a huge amount of putty, then I saw the rest of the paragraph. I am not familiar with Pactra fill  primer, but  my best guess is that it is like Mr. Surfacer?

 

I agree with you about the tenax bottles, they are so easy to tip over. They are gone now, but Tenax, as well as microscale with the micro sol / micro set bottle would really benefit from Japanese style short bottles

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 Just like Mr. Surfacer. A lacquer based primer/filler sold as a balsa filler for stick & tissue kits. Came in a quart can. It was getting old so I figured I better start using it since my Mr. Surfacer is starting to run out.

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 Been doing the sanding and cleanup during the past week while on my breaks at work. Today was the day for corrections.

 

 The windscreen as provided is correct for B-35 and later blocks of the B-26. Murder Inc. being a B-10 block the extra frames had to go.Not entirely sure what the deal is but Martin fitted the B-26 with windshield wipers at the B-15 block and oddly enough were unpopular with the pilots. They were generally removed in the field and Martin stopped fitting them with the B-30 block. The mods to the windshield at the B-35 block was a "direct vision" window in the windscreen-it opened, allowing the pilot to see ahead with the windscreen either wet or iced. I find it odd as the pilot was subjected to the elements with the window open...

 

 Anyway, I had to unmask the area in question and sand the frames off:

DSC02517.jpg

 

 

 And then polish:

DSC02519.jpg


 

 And an FYI-the windscreen as provided is incorrect for Flak Bait.

 

 The other correction was the pilot's armor. This didn't come along until the B-25 block. The few pics I have do not show the armor retrofitted so it had to go:

DSC02522.jpg

 

 

 Movin' along...

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 My attention turns to the tail. There are some gaps here...

 

DSC02527.jpg

 

 

 And only on this side where the fuselage meets the canopy part:

DSC02529.jpg

 

 

 Which means more gap filling with Evergreen. Again, better to get it as close as possible before assembly so I can minimize the filler work later.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

 Nope-haven't lost interest. The last couple of weeks was about dealing with 1:1 issues; notably, replacing my winter beater before the snow flies (which it did for the first time 3 weeks ago, actually). Here's what I came up with:

DSC02541a.jpg

 

 

 And just in time too. It was all ice over the Bozeman Pass today. Multiple wrecks and a 20+ minute wait while they cleared a jackknifed semi off a guard rail. 

 

 But I have been nibbling at it. Much of it fitting that tail hood and replacing raised panel lines (accuracy be damned-recessed are much easier to work with) as well as final sanding so it wasn't much worth photographing. My POS camera lost the pics I took of fitting the nose wheel well but to sum up I used pieces of sprue (runner?) cut to fit in a way that spread the resin apart so I could superglue the spot flush to the opening. As the glue set I cut another piece and fitted it, glued the spot, etc. It onnly took three pieces to spread it apart piece by piece and here's how it worked out after repaint:

DSC02545.jpg

 

 

 Shame the resin is too short-I could fill the gaps but then the nose gear doors will be too long and I don't want to play with it.

 

 So with all the fiddly cleanup done, I glued the wings on:

DSC02546.jpg

 

 

 Looks a lot more like a Marauder now...

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Nice truck. 

 

It is nice to reach a major milestone like attaching the wings. It looks like you are in for more fun with the wing to fuselage joint.  With the attention to detail you have demonstrated so far, I am sure it will look perfect.

 

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 A little more like the real thing every day. Hope I can do it justice in the end.

 

 Spent the last couple of hours working on the nose art in my old Flexi program:

Name.jpg

 

 WIP. Still not sure how I'll get this on the model yet. I was considering cutting a stencil but to scale, it is tiny !  Maybe a custom decal... Here's the real one and while it's pretty loud & proud on the aircraft, it's not in 1/48:

FRE_004506.jpg

 

 

 I might be able to find the ducks (decoy missions) on an aftermarket decal sheet but I haven't figured out what it says at the end of the crew names yet. And then there's the serial stencil... :gr_eek2:

 

 The insignia had to be outsourced too. Murder Inc. had the simple star insignia but the star in the blue field is grayed out, and I haven't found decals for that yet. I did however find vinyl stencils so I'll be painting them on instead. The PN*Q codes I did find in a decal set so I'm good there and I still have most of a set of yellow serial number decals for the tail.

 

 The profile shows the bombs in yellow and no ducks, but the bombs sure look white to me in this photo. And try as I might, I have found no evidence of a two tone green scheme being used on the B-26 beyond mentions in both SS In Action books and the Osprey book on the 9th AAF. The only cases are the few that had the medium green "blotches" painted around the edges of the flying surfaces and it doesn't appear Murder Inc. had that either. All the pics I found of Marauders that did have that additional camouflage had a prominent one painted on the rudder and Murder Inc. didn't.

 

 So it sits while I deal with the fiddly stuff. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing because I keep fine tuning the build in the meantime.

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  • 2 weeks later...

 I opted to go with a decal for the nose art. It's a bit pricey but I don't think I'll get a vinyl stencil to work out that small.

 

 With that process underway it's time to start spraying some paint...

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 I've been having some trouble trying to figure out the rest of the paintwork on the nose so I opened the pic in photoshop and zoomed in on the crew name details. And that did it. I also found the reason the pic was taken in the first place-Dave Harnley was promoted to Captain. If you look close you can see "1st. Lt." scratched out underneath the freshly painted "CAPT.". So I came up with this:

Crew.jpg

 

 

 The duck is a bit chubby but I can live with it. What I'm hoping is the decal guy can do the names in white and the "1st.Lt." in gray. I'll put that one down first and then Dave Harnley's name on top of it. A fiddly detail for sure but if I can pull it off it'll capture that moment in time.

 

 Got the proof back for the rest of the nose art:

ken-freundt-20181020-18-INV0726-sheet01-

 

 

 I think it'll do but I also think they are a bit too large so I opted to go smaller with them; 20mm and 25mm long and I'll use the one that fits best.

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  • 1 month later...

 Paintwork started with the insignia. Never found grayed out stars in decal form so I painted them on with Advanced Modeling stencils. First step was the gray-I went with USN Light Gray because I thought Neutral Gray would be too dark:

DSC02569.jpg

 

 

 Here is the wing with the star stencil on. There were many dry fits on the stars as you can't move them around like decals-you only get one shot at this with paint. The wings were tricky because the leading edge wasn't square to the fuselage so it wasn't straight. I had to find the center line with a 3' straightedge.

 

 With all the stars on I hit it with Insignia Blue:

 

DSC02570.jpg

 

 

  And here's where I found the issue with the stencils. They're just a little stiff and since the adhesive is low tack, the circles around the stars on the fuselage wouldn't stay down on the top & bottom-they wouldn't conform to the sharp curvature of the fuselage. I ended up cutting circles out of frisket paper and using them.

 

 But after a few days of back & forth with Model Master OD/NG, I had a painted B-26:

DSC02594.jpg

 

DSC02595.jpg

 

 

 Masking off the fabric bits now for clear coat.

Edited by WymanV
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Decals!

DSC02620.jpg

 

 

 My yellow tail serial code decals came up MIA so I had to order another set-I won't be finishing this up until next weekend. And all the kit decals are a wash (good ol' Revellogram decals...) so there won't be much more decal work.

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