Revell 1/32 P-40E "Old Exterminator"

[WymanV]

And the progress on this one at the moment:

 

 

 Resin gun bays & wheel wells installed and the opening for the strut is filled out:

 

 

 I put styrene blocks on the front of the strut opening to give it some meat to hold the weight on the strut. The struts are the SAC metal strut copies for the Hasegawa kit and they'll need a little modifying to work here.

 

 

 

 

 Wing assembly dry fitted, cockpit & engine with firewall. I'll build up the engine assembly with whatever plumbing I can add to busy things up. I also picked up brass machine gun barrels (again, for the Hasegawa kit) because the Revell kit molded the guns into the center line of the wing leading edge and the real P-40E had the guns just under the center line. A small thing, but noticeable. What stands out is the inboard gun on the left wing that's broken off from shifting around the box over the years. I'm considering looking for plastic beads at the craft store to make the metal gun surrounds; sand then to fit the wing and drill holes in the centers to fit the barrels.

 

 I'm still pleased with the way this build is going so I'll stay on it. There's a lot going on here so it was a tough call to say it would be finished in the time constraints of this group build. But I'm really looking forward to seeing all that Revell detail under a coat of paint

Edited February 1, 2019 by WymanV

[WymanV]

 One of the details I wanted to take care of on this before I close the wing up is the landing lights. Revell depicts them quite simply as engraved detail on the wing bottom with no trace of a lens for a light bulb. Once again, M.V. Products Lenses to the rescue. In this case, 15/64" clear. My first step was to open up the holes in the wing:

 

 

I took a Dremel grinding stone (seen above the leading edge) and cupped out the inside to fit the lens flush to the hole:

 

 

I glued the lens in with contact cement to avoid damaging the lens with any incompatible adhesives:

 

 

 And there we go-landing lights:

 

 

 The real one has a three legged frame inside the bulb with a circle in the center but I'm not going to try that-I'll just end up trashing a rather hard-to-come-by lens.

 

 Glue the other one in and the wing should be ready.

[WymanV]

And for fun, an update.

 

 Wing buttoned up:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The ailerons that came with the kit are far more accurate for the E than the resin CMK parts so I went with them. They're too far inboard on the Revell kit for the sake of moving parts but I wasn't about to alter that. Replicating lost detail would certainly stall the build for some time to come.

 

 Dry fit to the fuselage:

 

 

 How about those gaps. The plan here is to plumb and fit the engine assembly, finish up any other interior work ad glue the fuselage halves together. Then I can sand the sidewalls on the cockpit and fit until the gaps close up, hopefully without being so wide it eliminates the wing dihedral.