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Back to the beginning - Airfix Wellington III


Andy G

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On 19/02/2018 at 11:24 PM, limeypilot said:

back memories: the fit, the flash, the poor crew......

I checked that the pilots could be fitted after the fuselage was sealed up.  Well, let's just say they may well need to sit on a box to see out the front of the cockpit.

Edited by Andy G
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Thanks for the comments guys.  I had a feeling that ‘waist’ was the wrong term or possibly an Americanism.

 

Cracking photos Andy.  I think there are some details missing from the inside of mine 🙈

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Personally I would never use IPA, a waste of good beer!

 

I find sprue dissolved in White Lightning makes a good filler though.

 

Following this with interest. It didn't seem so horrible when I made it as a kid.

 

Pete

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Pete, I definitely prefer IPA over White Lightning, though the closest I've got to the latter was being in the bottling plant but not a drop passed my lips, unlike the former.  My recollections are also completely devoid of these horrors.  Memory may be using rose tinted spectacles but I'm pretty sure Dad didn't have to drill out the turret gun slots and I know I certainly didn't on the later build as I wouldn't have had the means to do it in those days.

 

It's been a busy few days but I've managed to grab some modelling time here and there.  The fuselage has now been sealed up and Mr.Dissolved Putty applied along the seams.  Sealing it up was a pain trying to align the two halves.  I did it bit by bit, lining up the two halves and applying the MekPak by capillary action before waiting for it to set and then moving on.  It didn't take very long for each section but the combination of the black plastic and the 'ribbing' made the alignment very difficult to see.  I wish I'd put some plasticard alignment strips on the inside particularly in the bomb bay and just behind it as it would have made the lining up much better.

 

Top view with Mr.Dissolved Putty applied

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The round splodge in front of the cockpit is a sink mark.  It's since been smoothed back and then a lot more Mr.Surfacer 500 applied as the Dissolved Putty was quite weak even after being left overnight and rubbed away very quickly.  Also the area affected was much larger than I originally thought.  At the rear of the fuselage you can see one of the joyous highlights that I have to look forward to.

 

The lower fuselage after a first round of sanding

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I've since discovered that Wellingtons did not have symmetrical bomb doors so I can't get away with a seam down the middle of the bomb bay - more Mr.Surfacer, more sanding.  The two circles to the rear are sink marks and again the Dissolved Putty was soft and has been topped up with Mr.Surfacer

 

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The office floor location block has caused a rather noticeable rectangular sink mark on the outside

The short shot trailing edge of the port wing has been dealt with by applying Mr.Dissolved Putty all along the upper edge.  Thankfully the lower wing was complete and was able to be used as a guide/support for the putty.  Once set the upper wing was carefully filed and sanded back.  Quite pleased with how this bit is coming out

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Not so pleased with this bit - 

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Under side of the starboard wing complete with partially removed finger print.

 

Finally the Dissolved Putty has been applied to the leading edge of both wings.  The photo shows before and after sanding (port is the sanded wing).

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Right, off to find some White Lightning and spare sprue to make a stronger putty.

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A bit more progress in the sanding, filling, bodging into shape process over the last couple of days.

The sink mark in front of the office looks to have been dealt with

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I'm reserving judgement on the office floor sink mark until I've got a coat of primer on it.

The bomb aimer's glass has been Futured and glued into place as best I can, this is going to take some work with various fillers.

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I've also done most of the work needed on the port aileron - removed the pips from either end and extended it with plasticard that has then been filed back to shape.  The wing itself has had strips of microstrip glued to the edge and then filed and sanded smooth, all with the aim of lessening the gap.

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The port wing is the lower.  The aileron isn't fixed yet and appears to have moved - the left hand end doesn't actually have a gap!

The aileron may yet be sanded down as it is proud of the wing.

The horizontal stabilisers have been dealt with along with the elevators - ejector marks are thankfully on the lower side.

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The port stabiliser is a force fit into the fuselage but the starboard has a good millimetre of slop.  It looks as though the front of each elevator are going to need a bit of dressing.

Finally, the stuff of nightmares

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The bomb aimer's window and the front of the fuselage are going to take a fair amount of work to rectify / blend in - I may be sometime ....

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By 'eck you're having to work hard with that one!  You're a glutton for punishment, that's for sure!  How much of the surface detail will be left after all the corrections, do you think, or do you have a cunning plan?

 

Also, as a personal view, I always think that the pilots of the Airfix Wimpey woild have had a job seeing out the front as the windscreen looks so low.

 

Anyway, enjoying the build so far; keep up the good work!

 

Regards

 

Martin

 

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Hi Martin,

I'm not sure how much of the surface detail is going to be left.  The original plan was to just rub it back a bit to tone it down, but it's gradually disappearing in places.  I may wait until the first coat of primer is on to make a decision.  Looking at photos of the real thing the fuselage ribs are noticeable but the wings not so much so I may rub the wings back and just scribe some of the panels - leading edge, wing tips, flaps.

If it wasn't for the nostalgia trip with the upcoming new edition this may well have been side tracked almost straight away - but I'm not being beaten now.

The pilots are definitely the peer over the dashboard variety.  Hindsight shows that I should have put the office on top of its locating block rather than in it and also moved the seats forward, I think they are too far back in reality.  What I'll probably end up doing is packing their backsides with hunks of plasticard - sounds painful!

Glad you are enjoying it, I'm certainly enjoying the challenge even if the end result is not going to be 100% accurate.

Andy

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A mammoth session last night and today has seen quite a bit of progress though  it seemed quite slow at the time.  Firstly things got quite ugly last night with a gradual build up of Mr.Surfacer to give something to file at in front of the bomb aimer's window.

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The window had been masked off and PPP applied and cleaned up around the other three sides.  The PPP will need more work as it is quite rough and is tending to dissolve as I try and clean the window up tonight, a job for Mr.Dissolved Putty I think.

Whilst the different applications of Mr.Surfacer were drying I took to rubbing back the geodesic representation on the main wings and stabilisers.  Once this had been done I then scribed the panel lines - leading edge panel on wings and stabilisers and wing tips, trailing edge and flaps on the main wings.

 

This morning I set to with the files

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Quite pleased with how that is going.  I don't think it will ever be perfect because everything is so misshapen, but it's certainly an improvement on the starting point.  The extra splodge of Mr.Surfacer has been applied after the turret was tried to see what work was required to get the very front looking better.  It took quite a lot of work to get the turret to fit and actually split the fuselage in that little sticky out bit at the top.  The parts that Airfix intended to trap the turret by were sawn off, then the base was filed and then some more and then more etc. etc.  Then the top of the fuselage and then the bottom until eventually something like this was obtained

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I thought it was nearly done, but clearly the camera thinks otherwise.  A bit of filing to the starboard fuselage to level things out and also sort out that extra bit of Mr.Surfacer.

Tail end has been dealt with as well, though not quite as extensively

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The main wings have had plenty of work done on them.  The ailerons have had all of their work completed and have been glued in place.  Realising that it would then be time for the engine nacelles I had to to make a decision about the surface detail as rescribing the leading edge panel was going to be easiest without the nacelles in place.  I decided to stick to plan A and partially (I hope) sanded back the detail and then scribed the panels.  The nacelles have then been glued on and the port side has had Mr Dissolved Putty applied and 'cleaned' up.  A bit of work was done on the locating pins between the two halves of each nacelle and the resulting joins are not too bad.

 

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So everything was going swimmingly.  Let's see what the engines look like

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Oh!

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Hmmm, probably best described as 'vague' and definitely 'orrid!

Time to go completely away from the original plan.  I have in the stash two Lancaster BIIs that are destined to become a Manchester and a Lincoln at some point (it's Woody's fault!).

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More importantly, they won't be needing this

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Airfix have even nicely moulded the propeller hubs even though the Lanc has them buried in spinners.

Cruel comparisons

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To be fair there's about fifty years between the moulds and the Lancaster cylinders could still be better - no, I'm not going there!

The exhausts will clearly need to be addressed as they are different between the two planes.

If I've got this wrong somebody please let me know, though it will be a while before the engines get fixed on.

 

Fixing the wings on won't be far off but lining them up is going to be tricky as the fuselage is misshapen and wonky, trying to work out what to take as vertical is going to be a challenge.  If there are no head on photos at the end you know it didn't go well.

 

So plenty of fun has been had with filler and files and there's plenty of cleaning up to be done before the primer is broken out.

Edited by Andy G
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  • 2 weeks later...

Firstly apologies for the radio silence over the last couple of weeks, I had a show to get ready for last weekend and this week I've had a very pleasant upturn in business which turned what was planned as a relaxing week into a busy one - can't complain though.

There has been some steady progress this week.  Firstly the crew are all painted.  Basically followed Stew Dapple's process but haven't reached his standard yet 

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The bomb aimer's window has had some dissolved putty applied to blend the rear corners into the body.

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The wings and the tail are on

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Putty has been applied to the engine nacelles and to the wing fuselage joints.

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The wing joints were quite wide even after inserting strips of microstrip into the top of the joint in an effort to fill some of it up.  I think I've found a better way of using the Mr.Dissolved Putty.  Previously I had been leaving it to go off for a bit before cleaning it up with a cotton bud and IPA (more wasted drink!).  For the wings it was cleaned up almost as soon as it was applied and this seems a much cleaner way of working with it.

Trying to line anything up on this plane is very tricky as everything is wonky

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I don't think it's a problem with wear as the two halves of the fuselage met reasonably well apart from the very front but if I get the top and bottom seams lined up vertically the bottom of the fuselage is far from flat.  Hoh hum, not a lot I can do about it, nor want to with the new mould on its way.

Further work this morning, not yet photo'd has seen the canopy and turrets kleared, the stabilisers fitted along with the pilots.

I've tried to clean up the sprue damage on the cockpit but it hasn't been particularly successful which is annoying with it being smack in the front middle.  The pilots each had booster cushions of 30 thou plasticard fitted and painted before being inserted into their office.  The cockpit was then pva'd into place and is currently drying.  

The stabilisers were unsurprisingly odd.  The starboard stab took 30 thou of plasticard glued under the tab before it touched the sides of the slot in the fuselage.  The stabiliser was glued into place before attention turned to the port side which fitted well right from the start.  Whilst the port side seemed to fit well it was subsequently found that whilst the starboard side elevator joint was roughly at 90 degrees to the fuselage the port side pointed backwards quite noticeably if viewed from above.  Straightening the joint out produced a gap of about 4-5mm at the rear edge.  I took the pragmatic view that I didn't really know what the underlying cause of the issue was and it wasn't that apparent unless looking directly down on the tail plane.  It was therefore glued up sharpish.

Next up will be blending the stabilisers and cockpit glass into the fuselage and then masking for an investigatory coat of primer, I can't see me getting away without some remedial work after the primer.

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As I remember it from the 70's, that kit was just as bad back then. Wing spars or solid partition in the fuselage at the wing roots would have helped greatly. I like your engine replacement idea.

 

 

Chris

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Looks really good!

You did a fantastic job on those plastic ...drops you transformed in a crew!!! Got the best of them!!!

And the wellington herself is coming to life! 

It wasn't an easy task to deal with that raised detail , but I think youmanaged greatly!!!

"Lovely jobly!!!"

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  • 2 weeks later...

Holy cow, I thought I had a lot of work to do on the Fairey Battle, but this is way above what I've needed to do!

Looking good though for all that effort, and a nice touch to use the Lanc engines/nacelles. It shows very well just how far Airfix have come!

Ian

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