OK a little progress update of the 1/72 elephant.
Thanks to Len and David for supplying some excellent reference material I have made a start with this daunting build. I would just like to say here that Len sent me some of his build pictures for his Stirling found earlier in this thread and the level of interior detail is awesome! The photos don't really do the model justice.
Foolishly I had no idea the amount of work involved both updating the detail of the kit and then converting from a Mk.III Stirling to a Mk.IV.
Changes include removal of dorsal turret, removal of nose turret and forming a new nose canopy glass. Also I have just noticed that a majority of the windows are omitted, this comes AFTER I have already thinned the inside of the fuselage of each window to a scale thickness. Also 2 of the forward windows have 'bubble' glass which will need to be made. Some scratchbuilt interior stuff around the nose area is also required.
So to the build:-
Some detailing of the cockpit (most of which will be covered up) and MUCH more to be added.
As you can see this includes a solid bulkhead in the nose behind the dome, I have yet to detail this area with map table, instruments etc.
I then thought I would have a try at canopy molding for the clear nose dome, a pretty easy shape, so to begin with I made a former from good old pine!
In fact I had a few attempts at this as I wasn't happy with the shape of this original master. Then my first go at molding using a primative, dirty method of simply heating some clear acetate over a candle and plunging the master into it. After a few attempts and some scorched fingers I eventually got this:-
Squadron "eat yer heart out! "
So after some trimming the canopy looks like this:-
which should look something like this:
Thanks for looking more to follow soon..........
Doc