[yet another] 1:48 Tamiya F4U-1a

[Johnny1000]

@Squibby I have tried the steel series. They weren't my bag, but I'm psyched to see what you can do with them. I'll report on the HGW ones when I get them in hand.

 

@Thom216 Yes I will! Thanks. That looks awesome. The retaining ring is an intriguing way to go.

 

Meanwhile, here's where I am with the seat. 

 

I've just put on the gloss coat to prep for a wash, so everything looks awful, but behind that there's some issues that are going to be tricky. There's a bit of a blob of CA next to the right harness, and both harnesses have stress breaks below the bar, right at the top the seat. The right harness is also riding a little high on the bar. I really want that harness to twist, but this is really reading right to me yet--it was better before. The lap belts also look a little stiff at the bend on the seat walls.

It's not terrible, exactly, but it's also a bit hard to picture this really fooling anyone. I really want those belts to look strewn (in a respectful way), and held down by gravity, not super glue.

 

I was hoping to wrap up the cockpit before moving on to other sub assemblies in earnest, but maybe it's time to focus elsewhere and come back once the cornucopia of additional seat belts arrives.

 

Cheers

-J

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 16, 2018 by Johnny1000
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[Thom216]

Good looking seat, and I like the twist in the belt. I have a Do-335 awaiting more work, and I draped the fabric shoulder straps up to wrap over the back of the headrest, for something different. Saw it in a pic. .

[Squibby]

I think those belts turned out great, remember we can't always see the belts from this angle to pick out the bend around the seat edge, when closed into the cockpit those will look great. 

 

Great painting work by the way and I really like the twisted belt. That's one thing you can't do with PE belts.

[Johnny1000]

@Thom216 Thanks. Do you have a pic of your Do-335 belts? I'd love to see.

 

@Squibby You're probably right. I'm probably kind of punishing the seat and belts because I'm a bit annoyed at myself that the execution isn't a bit cleaner. I'm not going to rip it up, but I might take one more go at it with another set of parts before I call it done. I'll do the wash, oil highlights, and dull coat, and see how I'm feeling about it then. The glossy stage makes everything look worse to me, so I should keep that in mind. But there's a ton of other things to do (finishing the engine, detailing the wheel wells) before I have to actually make a decision.

 

-J

[MeneMene]

Just a word of caution, double check that the engine is the right size. I know that some Quickboost R2800s are underscale, found that out when I tried to use their one for the Hellcat.

[Johnny1000]

Ah crappers! Thanks for the heads up @MeneMene

 

Just found the maintenance manual online. The max diameter is quoted as 52.8 inches. I'll measure the Quickboost tonight.

[Thom216]

7 hours ago, Johnny1000 said:

@Thom216 Thanks. Do you have a pic of your Do-335 belts? I'd love to see.

 

@Squibby You're probably right. I'm probably kind of punishing the seat and belts because I'm a bit annoyed at myself that the execution isn't a bit cleaner. I'm not going to rip it up, but I might take one more go at it with another set of parts before I call it done. I'll do the wash, oil highlights, and dull coat, and see how I'm feeling about it then. The glossy stage makes everything look worse to me, so I should keep that in mind. But there's a ton of other things to do (finishing the engine, detailing the wheel wells) before I have to actually make a decision.

 

-J

Yeah, sure!

[Johnny1000]

@Thom216 oh, that’s fantastic. I love that... you get a great sense of the personality of the pilot from that in a way you just wouldn’t from a more conventional pose. Nicely done. 

[MeneMene]

7 hours ago, Johnny1000 said:

Just found the maintenance manual online. The max diameter is quoted as 52.8 inches. I'll measure the Quickboost tonight.

It was a few years ago, I don't remember the exact ratio, but it was severely underscale, could be seen when next to the kit engine without any measuring. Hopefully yours is OK, your work so far has been great.

[Johnny1000]

@MeneMene You've sent me into an OCD tailspin! Why on earth did I ever decide to re-take up this awful craft/hobby in the first place?

 

Okay, I reckon it's time for a shoot out. I obviously have the Quickboost and the Tamiya, but I also have a Verlinden set in my humble stash that came with an Ebay purchase of another kit. 

 

The Verlinden set comes with one full 20+ part resin engine and then two fronts. Because getting an accurate measurement from the full engine kit would be a bit iffy at this point, what with it not being assembled, and figuring that they were molded from the same reference, I used the fronts to measure. (Ignore the styrene rod sitting on the Quickboost engine that was going to form the basis of the ignition ring.)

Assuming the maintenance manual is correct, none of these are right: 1:48 of 52.8" is 1.1", but these measure:

• Quickboost: .912" which is equivalent to 43.776" scale inches.
• Tamiya: .980" is a bit of an improvement at a little over 47 scale inches (but it just doesn't look like a PW-2800).
• Verlinden is the best, at 1.055", or 50.64 scale inches. I can live with a 0.045" difference.

If that maintenance manual is right (can anyone confirm the diameter of a PW-2800?), that means the Quickboost is a little over 9 scale inches short. I'm not the kind to freak out about accuracy if it basically looks right, but that's quite a lot in 1:48.

 

I didn't want to use the Verlinden for this because the full engine is a pretty big project all on it's own with most of that detail invisible unless you open panels (which I do not want to do for this build), yet the fronts feel a bit spartan. It seems like the cowling will fit over the Verlinden without modification, so there's that, but I can't tell how far back it sits to see if it will fit with added ribbing detail, which I'm okay losing or modifying if needed.

 

I wonder if I could cut one of the Verlinden fronts from it's backing, and then cut the gear reduction box off of the other, to serve as the second row of cylinders as a compromise between the flat front and full engine? Or is it worth it trying to engineer in the full engine (which, in addition to the labor on it's own, would require chomping up the front of the fuselage)? Or look for another offering along the lines of the Quickboost, but sized appropriately?

 

Thanks! 

-J

 

Edited January 16, 2018 by Johnny1000
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[MeneMene]

I'm also seeing 52.8 inches for the R2800 diameter.

 

In the Tamiya P-47D (the only R2800) kit I have, the engine measures 1.01 inches diameter in 1/48 scale. I also have the Vector resin representation. It's unbuilt, so difficult to measure now, but each of the cylinders is 0.28 inches long from the point at which they leave the hub.

 

From what I've seen, all the quickboost R2800's have this problem, and the only difference between them is the mounting backing for different kits. Sorry to set you off on this, the engine looks great so far. I had the same reaction when I was building my Hellcat- I never got to painting/detailing it, but when test fitting I thought it looked awfully tiny for such a big airplane.

 

From the options you've listed, I think the best solution would be to combine the Verlinden fronts into the two banks of cylinders. Barring that, maybe spring for the Vector one? It's not super expensive.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Could it be because the inside diameter of the cowling won’t allow a true sized R-2800 ? 

[Johnny1000]

Thanks @MeneMene. That makes sense. After looking more carefully at the Verlinden, it just isn't that nice compared to the Ultracast, so a Vector engine is on the way.

 

@Corsairfoxfouruncle, I don't think so: as far as I can tell, it seems like the Verlinden would fit, and that's almost .2" (5mm) larger. 

 

In the meantime… wheel wells!

 

The Tamiya kit offers rudimentary detailing, with the hydraulic cylinders and a simplified junction box. We could just weave in wiring around them, maybe drill out the cylinders to add the piston rods, but what would the fun be with that?

 

Instead, I scraped out the detailing, including the ribbing, with a Mission Models Micro Chisel (super useful tool) and a file. 

 

I added back the ribbing with .020 x .010” styrene strip. For the junction, I took 0.020” rod and carefully glued it in an arrangement roughly approximating the prototype, with two bars, a spacer, and then a third bar. 

 

I also scraped out four ribs on the interior sidewall and CA’d on a bit of wine bottle foil for the canvas access hatch. You can’t really tell in this pic, but I embossed dots around the ring to simulate buttons.

 

At this point, I added the outside sidewalls. These don’t normally get added until you add the outer wings, but as far as I can tell, you can add at this point. The alignment is critical to getting the seam between the outer sidewall and the top, so I wanted to do when I had the most control and the fewest moving parts.

 

To make sense of the somewhat chaotic wiring, I color coded the lines in a shot of a restored F4U-1A. Apparently the wheel wells didn’t change much at all between the F4U-1 and the F4U-5, at least, so almost any reference you can find of almost any version will be generally accurate. 

 

Starting to add wires. Looks pretty silly at this point, but the night is still young. I also have some clean up to do.

 

I haven’t addressed the hydraulic cylinders yet. The reference clearly shows them sitting over the back row of wiring, so that could happen later. I do have a couple thoughts about how to represent them—either nesting Albion aluminum tubing with strips of wine foil, or turning styrene rod in a drill, probably using the aforementioned micro chisel to rough in the shapes. Either way, I’ll need to drill holes perpendicularly at the ends and add 0.020” rod to represent the connection to the hydraulic lines. 

 

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Thanks for looking.

 

-J

Edited January 16, 2018 by Johnny1000
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[Johnny1000]

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2018 brings good tidings. 

 

I’ve mostly been away for the holidays, but did manage to sneak in a little bench time over the last couple of days. 

 

First up, the seat belts. I had ordered a set of HGW belts almost as a lark, not expecting them to arrive before I had gotten the seat with the Fine Molds cleaned up, but rather as something to consider for a future build, but when the arrived, I got more intrigued.

 

This is a terrible photo, but hopefully gets the gist across. It’s a sheet with the textile portion of the belts printed onto a kind of textured film, and then a fret of PE hardware. Cutting out the belts isn’t hard—I squared the sheet onto a sheet of acrylic, and then used a thin beam square to guide the cuts. 

 

To assemble, you 'simply' thread the the textile pieces through the hardware, and then glue in place with PVA glue (apparently CA will melt the film). It’s not actually all that hard once you get in the swing of it, but it is slow, fussy work. 

 

Each belt is made up of four textile pieces. The shoulder harnesses each use two PE parts, plus another for the backing brace. The lap belts use three PE parts, plus one more for the latch. Altogether it’s 29 parts. For seat belts. It took me a couple hours to get them fully assembled. 

 

But man, it just looks right. The one drag is I couldn’t flip the one shoulder harness like I wanted to because there’s no backing detail. I suppose you might be able to sandwich another piece of textile on the reverse side, and then scratch the back of the buckle, but I’ve had enough experimentation with this seat for this build.

 

Back to the wheel wells. 

 

For the hydraulic cylinders, I used nested Albion aluminum tubing with thin strips of furnace tape (basically thick foil with adhesive backing—it comes in a roll like duct tape that will last a modeler literally forever) and then wire for the piston. 

 

Now we’re about back to where Tamiya left us, but with a little more clarity in the detail.

 

Most of the various conduit and wires added, except for the hydraulic lines to the cylinders, which will come in next. At the moment it looks a bit of a dog’s breakfast, but these runs are on the real thing as well. Once everything is the same color, and I get those main hydraulic lines in, in front, it should start to pull together.

 

I also finally assembled the cockpit—this felt a bit momentous to me. Before buttoning it up, I did fix the registration of the instruments in the panel. To affix the panel face back on on the instrument film, instead of using PVA glue this time, I painted the front of the film with Future. 

 

Reverse view, showing off the 'famous' belts.

 

I might actually start thinking about getting the fuselage together, though it might make more sense to wait until the engine is built, in case there’s any heavy modification required to get the engine installed. Speaking of, the Vector R-2800 is a project all on it’s own, but that's for another day. At least its close to scale.

 

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking.

 

Edited January 16, 2018 by Johnny1000
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[matteo44]

Great job! 

Great job! 

[Johnny1000]

I got both the flu and strep throat at the same time (feeling much better, thanks), which derailed building activities. So slow going, but I did manage to sneak in enough bench time in the past week to warrant an update. 

Thanks to a tip from @MeneMene to check the size of the Quickboost R-2800, the parts count for this build has ballooned a bit. Vector to the rescue!

 

Which is the Vector engine? Next to the Tamiya, there’s just no comparison. 

Mr Surfacer 1500 prepares the surface while also temporarily giving the machine a fearsome Steampunk-Vader vibe.

 

The ignition ring gets a pass of Alclad Aluminum.

 

While we’re at it, the cylinders get a gloss treatment, courtesy of Tamiya X-22 clear gloss over the black, and then once that had a bit to settle in, Alclad Aluminum.

To prep for losing it’s all black bad-assery, I carefully masked the ignition ring with small bits of Tamiya tape. Now it looks a bit like an Elizabethan nobleman.

 

Mr Paint Neutral Grey, MRP-141, gives a pretty good gear reduction housing finish. I built up the color slowly in thin layers to hopefully give some depth and dimension to the finish.

 

The exhaust pipes get a light treatment of XF-64, Red Brown, allowing the black to sneak in here and there, and then a brushing of reddish oxide and umber pigment. These won’t be visible at all from the front, but hopefully there will be tantalizing glimpses through the open cooling flaps on the cowl. I’m not going to detail the back of the engine beyond this, since there will be literally no way to see it. 

Even this was probably overkill, but I used it as an opportunity to do a proof of concept for a potential future build I’m considering.

Assembled, posing with the Tamiya engine (top left) and Quickboost (right). I’m pretty happy with where we’re headed. There’s really no comparison at all with the kit engine, and while the Quickboost is really nice if small, the Vector is just that much nicer.

 

Finally, a coat of Future to ready it for oil washes. I really hate it when we have to gloss stuff up. I know it’s for a good cause, but still, I’ll be glad when we’re back to matte. (Yes, I know the gear reduction housing and pushrods were glossy on the real thing, at least coming out of the factory. But I don’t think anything stayed glossy for long in the South Pacific.)

A note about assembly: I added the front row of cylinders first, placing and then gluing with a tiny dab of thin CA on the backside, where you won’t see any errant globs. The back row is a bit trickier because of the exhaust manifold. What I figured out is that it’s better to alternate cylinder/exhaust pipe and work your way around so you can make sure everything is aligned correctly before committing. The push rod procedure is the same as with the Quickboost (back in November).

 

Next up: wiring the ignition harness. 

 

Thanks for looking

-J

Edited January 16, 2018 by Johnny1000
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[MeneMene]

Good job. Any idea on how easy/difficult it will be to mount the engine? I'm working on the Italeri Fiat CR42, and I had a nice vector resin engine I was going to use for it, but set it aside because of the complicated way the kit had engineered the fit of the engine, exhaust, and cowling panels.

[Johnny1000]

Thanks. Good question. There will definitely need to be some modification of either the engine or fuselage (or both) but I don't think it should be all that gruesome. Will post here once I work it out. No idea if it will apply to your CR42 (cool subject, btw).

[Johnny1000]

While I work my way through detailing the R-2800, a bit of an aside. 

 

I recently came across a letter my grandfather had written to the writers of a book published by the Department of Defense in the mid 90s called “No Easy Days: The Incredible Drama of Naval Aviation,” wherein he sets out to dispel what he saw as myths about the F4U with respect to bouncy landings and stall characteristics.

 

He pushes back on both points with humor and aplomb. A typical quote:
“Whether it was the British satisfaction with the F4U aboard ship or Navy pilots' chagrin that the Marines had a superior aircraft, in January of 1945, the Navy took back the F4U's, giving the F6F's to the Marine Groups that were going aboard CVE's with their own Carrier Air Service Detachments.”

 

He never missed a chance to take a swipe at either the Navy or the F6F. 

 

Since there are a few Corsair enthusiasts here, I figured I’d share. 

 

[DMC]

Like an F4u very much so it was a treat to happen upon your build early this morning.  Read it all lazying around in bed with a cup of tea. Following.

 

Dennis 

[Johnny1000]

Thanks Dennis! Found your Bearcat build—I very much admire how you're attacking that. Inspiring work.

[DMC]

Well, Johnny, I wouldn’t be too envious just yet, still a way to go before “closure”.

 

The Vector P&W looks great but it’s a shame most of it will be covered over.  Vector do a later model one for the F8F, etc., for a reasonable price but, again, most it would be covered up on the Bearcat.  I’ll probably stick with the Quickboost one as it fits the “firewall” on the Bearcat quite nicely.  

 

Again, nice job on the P&W,  happy to follow your thread as long as it takes.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis 

[Johnny1000]

Yeah Dennis, it is a shame that it will largely covered. I partly justified it as a learning experience for a potential next project I'm mulling. 

 

The Quickboost is great--just the right amount of detail for a peek through the cowl, but it's too bad about the scale for the R-2800. At least, it was off enough to throw me into an OCD tailspin, and it was worth it to me to go full overkill with the Vector. You're going to the trouble to get an awful lot of other, more subtle, things right. 

 

Speaking of, here's where I am with the Vector. I've given it a nice wash, courtesy Humbrol, added the harness (0.010 copper wire, annealed and painted) and am working my way through adding the harness clips (wine bottle foil). The latter kind of falls into the category of "life's too short" because it's extremely fiddly and time-consuming work, but it's the kind of thing that, if I get it right, can also push it over the top. Not sure if I'm getting it right enough, but I'm mostly through it, so there it is. Once they're all on, I'll probably do another wash or something to get them to 'sit down' a bit. 

 

I'm also determined to get the PW logo painted, thought that might be more sheer stupidity than anything. 

 

 

 

[Squibby]

Amazing work on that engine, it's really looking the part now!

[Johnny1000]

Thanks @Squibby!

 

I'm cautiously optimistic about it, assuming I can ever finish getting those stupid clips on, and then get them toned down enough to make them feel a bit more integrated, but not so toned down that the whole effort was completely pointless...