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WIP - Monogram 1/48 B-58 Hustler in foil


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7 minutes ago, habu2 said:

Cut a slot between the two holes. Glue a corresponding raised tab on the pylon. Bob’s your uncle. 

 

Dude!!! You are sooooo close to my proposed solution! I'm going to try my solutions tomorrow.

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I'm going to use nails and a staple to improve the attachment of the engine pylons to the wings.

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Regarding the inner engines, I drilled holes into the wing and the pylons. Then I super glued short sections of a nail into the holes in the pylons.

 

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This is a dry-fit test of the solution. The fit between the nails and the holes in the wings is tight enough to hold the engines in place. I will super glue the nails into the holes in the wings when it comes time for final attachment of the engines to the wings.

 

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The same technique was used for the engine on the opposite wing.

 

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A different solution is required for the outer engines. The wing is very thin, only two layers of plastic thick, so I couldn't drill a hole in the wing for fear that the hole would go through the wing. Instead, I cut a slot by removing one layer of plastic and super glued a bent piece of metal staple into the slot. 

 

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The upper leg of the staple will be glued into a hole that was drilled into the engine pylon. 

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I glued the tail to the fuselage. Now it's starting to look like an airplane.

 

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I'll give the glue a couple of days to cure than I'll attack the seam between the tail and the fuselage. In the meantime, I'll work on the rack mounted nukes.

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The B-58 had a 4 Meg nuke hanging from the fuselage and four 1 Meg nukes mounted on bomb racks under the wings.

 

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The kit's four rack mounted  bombs come in two parts, which results in a nasty seam running the length of the bomb. The will require putty nd sanding to fix. I have no interest in doing that.

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Instead of using the kit's bombs, I purchased some resin bombs from Eduard. The bombs are composed of a nose, main body, fins and decals. No ugly seams to deal with.

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The only problem is that the bombs do not have mounting pins. So I decided to use some brass rods as mounting pins.

 

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The B-58's main nuclear bomb was carried under the fuselage. The bomb was inserted into a pod caring fuel.  The fuel pod was dropped prior to dropping the bomb. When fully loaded with fuel, the combination fuel/bomb pod weighed in at 26,000 pounds!!!

  

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The item below the F-86 is the nuclear bomb. Below that is the combination bomb/fuel pod. 

 

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The kit provides four tiny mounting pins that are inserted into four oversized holes in the fuselage to hold the bomb/fuel tank in place. That will not work, so I inserted two thin nails into the pod which will fit tightly into the holes in the fuselage.

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The landing gear is the final subassembly. Let's start with the front gear.

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Based upon photos of the actual landing gear, the hydraulic lines were fastened to the strut with clamps that appear similar to stainless hose clamps. I used some hose clamps that were left over from one of my car builds to fasten the brake lines to the strut.

 

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This is a size comparison between the B-58 front gear and the front and main gear of a B-24.  

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23 hours ago, Johnny_K said:

OMG!!!! I'm a retired architect. However, I could never draw something like that. 

Small world! Ive always said Model building eventually lead me to architecture. I really get enjoy the projects  work on and I'm always blown away to see them when they are built.

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The main landing gear will be the final subassembly.

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A standard main landing gear system would not work on a B-58 because the cross section of the main wings is so shallow. The solution was to use sixteen, 22 inch diameter tires inflated to 240 psi. The tires were mounted in pairs on eight wheels, four per wing. The wheels were designed so that they would not shatter in the even that tires failed during a landing. In other words, the aircraft could land on its wheels alone 😵

 

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There are sixteen, small wheels/tires that require painting. In other words, this was a real pain.

 

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There wheels/tires are mounted to a subframe which in turn I mounted to the main gear.

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Here is a size comparison between the B-58 wheels/tires and a B-24 wheel/tire.

 

I am waiting for a new tube of Perfect Plastic Putty to arrive to fill the seam between the tail and the fuselage.  So I guess that I'll start work on my B-25 gunship.

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I used Perfect Plastic Putty to fill the seam between the tail and the fuselage. It worked great. Next, I finished foiling the model.

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When I purchased this model from E-bay a couple of years ago I also purchased a set of Caracal Models decals printed by Cartograf. It is thing that I purchased the decals when I did because there are currently no  decal sets for a 1/48 B-58 on the market. There are decals for about a dozen different aircraft.

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These are nice decals. Easy to apply, opaque colors and clear carrier film.

 

Next I'll attack the bomb racks. The mounting lugs on the racks are way smaller that the slots in the wings and the curvature of the racks do not match the curvature of the wings. More wasted time fixing Monogram's mistakes.

 

 

Edited by Johnny_K
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2 hours ago, KursadA said:

They are Caracal Models decals - they are only printed by Cartograf. Cartograf themselves would not be able to tell a bottle of Chianti from a B-58.

 

Looking good so far - I can’t wait to see the end result. 

Thanks. I fixed my post.

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