Bengalensis

Thanks. I was also skeptical about the PE, but it's better than expected. The wheels don't look quite as lightweight and airy as the original, but are quite OK and not a bad compromise to make a good OOB build for most builders. I think the dark color will help a lot.

Engines installed without any problems. And nose weights. I put about 13-14 grams in there. Then the instrument panels slid in place, after they were slightly shaved off in width where they go behind the fuselage walls.

Such nice work on that interior. I hope it can be seen through doors and windows, it really deserves to be visible.

Simply wonderful.

The bad thing of building three at once; all boring jobs come times three... The fuselage joints are now ready. A little filler and sanding needed, but all in all it went well. On the C-version I have also filled the fuel cap for the B-version fuselage tank. After a little adjustment of the forward tip of the canopies they came down nicely in place. I'm very happy with the decision to insert the Evergreen strips in the top fuselage joints to fix the canopy fit issue. Also the nose sections fitted nicely.

I searched around for more photos from the museum, and the green color varies wildly depending on the light and conditions. I wonder if Karl Benz original first build was black or green-black back then? Anyhow I decided to go for that combination, so I have made myself a very dark green mix for those parts of the build. I started with the wheels as they will pretty much make or break the build. The real wheel hubs are built from two parts with no centering feature between them. I centered them on a drill while gluing. Here we have the hub parts ready for a coat of Alclad polished brass. The trees for the wheel parts are used in the jig and must be cut apart and the stubs cleaned up like this. The number tabs can be left. Here a rear wheel section is placed in the jig. Then the photo etch is placed and pushed down with the jig center piece. It is important to carefully cut the attaching points of the photo etch right up the ears. I found the corresponding recesses in the plastic parts to be very tight fitting and not deep enough as they don't seem top in account the slight angle the spokes attach the rim with. What I did was that with photo etch placed correctly I put a tiny drop of methyl acetate on each ear to let it melt into the plastic ever so little, and then followed round with a small amount of CA. When this had securely dried and the wheel was cut from the tree I lightly sanded the backside of the rim with the ears to make sure it was as smooth as possible. The photo etch is copper and sanded quite nicely. After some patience improving work I had six finished parts. A trial fit of two rear wheel halves looked like this. At this point I needed to paint the parts before further assembly can proceed. First paint within 24 hours is not common in my builds.

Good to see the use of 3D-modelling and printing involved. I hope you can sort out the panel lines, printing well can be tricky.

It does indeed look like very nice kit engineering, and well built to. Good work.

Thanks, nice photos. Is the frame and wheels on that one painted black or a very dark green? It looks to be a defintive greenish tint to those parts, but could be some light effect perhaps? It adds some interest to the overall look of the thing.

Oh, what could possibly go wrong with this machine?

Excellent work as usual, most impressive, and also as usual a lovely taste in subject. Have you glued the windows at this stage? How are you treating the edges before gluing, to minimize the impression of material thickness?

The kit looks very nice to my eyes. The wheels will be interesting indeed. Here's the build sequence in the jig. I'm counting 62 spokes in a rear wheel, compared to something like 76-80 in photos of what are presumably replicas. 62 may well look busy enough in this scale? Of course they are flat being photo etch, but they are reasonably delicate and being painted black gives some allowance I think.

You've got an amazing result out of that shall we kindly say compromised set of parts. It's an absolute beauty. I'm saying it again; squeezing down between those two large racing engines must be one of those ultimate happy experiences for a human.

This little box arrived the other day, and it seems it will not even make it into the growing stash. ICM's new 1/24 scale kit of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen 1886. I have been eagerly waiting for it and when opening the box it looks so tempting to build that I will get right into it, in what little time I have right now. I haven't done much research into this, but if I understand it correctly this kit should closely resemble the first car Karl Benz built, #1. There seems to have been many differences in the first cars built, no wonder. ICM are also releasing this kit in a version complete with figures of Bertha Benz and sons, depicting the famous long trip she made in August 1888, but that trip is said to have been made in #3, which apparently looked different with sturdier wheels and a front passenger seat. Opening the kits reveals well drawn instructions and a nice print of the first page of the German patent letter issued. The parts don't look much like what is usually found in a car kit. A main tree of delicate well made parts, two small trees of wheel parts and a jig for building the wheels. Then we have a photo etch sheet of wheel spokes and chain parts. I was a little suspicious of the photo etched spokes before receiving the kit, but when I look at it in real life the wheels may well build up quite nicely, especially when painted black. Time will soon tell.

Fuselage halves glued together and the nose sections also fitted. But no engines, nose weights and instrument panels? It may seem odd, and time will tell, but all my test fittings indicate that I will be able to fit them afterwards - in that order - from the cockpit opening. The benefit would be that fewer components have to line up perfectly in one operation. It was actually enough to deal with as it was now.