Bandsaw Steve

Just found this now Jeff. I remember you mentioning a year or so ago that you wanted to build this ship so it’s great to see it coming together. It looks like your scratch-built hull has turned out well, from here the rest should be a walk in the park for a man of your skills and experience.

Brilliant! I note your Kiwi icon. Did you know that there is a GR3 in NZ? Ashburton aviation museum, about an hour’s drive south of Christchurch, to be specific.

Great job!

I’m not sure how this escaped my attention for so long but I’ve just found it and am very happy I did. In a way my own scratchbuilding career started with a wooden P-51. When I was about ten years old, dad spent an afternoon roughly carving a great-big P-51 out of a few lumps of pine. I’m guessing it was about 1/24 scale. It was carved by eye and was left unpainted, at least until it was turned into a wind-vane and stuck on the shed roof. I was greatly taken by this model and about a week later decided I could do ‘the same but better’ except in 1/72 scale with a Mk XIV Spitfire. That’s how I started scratchbuilding.

Great work! The wheels look very convincing.

Thanks Richie! I’m a bit worried about the cockpit as it will require close-up photos!

Hi Jeff, Definitely much, much cheaper than Tamiya putty. Whether it would work on styrene I’m not sure but I think it’s worth a try. I think the styrene would need to be quite rigid because this stuff sets very firm. I also think you would need to score the styrene first to give the putty something to grip. Tamiya putty chemically melts and binds to the plastic, this stuff is intended for use with metal so I don’t know what it would do with plastic. It is two-part but the second part is a tiny volume for each use and comes in a little tube inside the lid of the big can, so it’s just one purchase. One drawback is that the stuff smells terrible.

Yet More Skinning I'm starting to look forward to doing something other than skinning on this project but in the meantime I'm getting valuable practice and seem to be getting the hang of it a little bit better. After careful annealing with a creme-brulee burner I was finally able to get the largest panels toward the front of the air intakes to conform to the underlying shape without crinkling up like potato chips. I've learned that at this stage - while the glue is setting - it's a good idea to remove the surrounding masking so you can clearly see the panel lines that are forming. Use cotton-buds rather than fingers to press the new panel hard into position, fingers are too 'grippy' and tend to move the panel around a little bit. Cotton buds slide around on the top of the masking tape but are still firm enough to apply useful pressure on the gluing surfaces. Now that I've got a feel for the thinness of the metal sheet I'm becoming more confident to scrape and sand any surface imperfections off the litho. Here I'm using a curved scalpel blade to scrape off a small wrinkle in the litho plate. Medium to very fine grades of sandpaper also work very well on this stuff. Here you can see the effect after panels around the air-intakes and all along the fuselage spine have been skinned. Don't worry about the brass insert in the cockpit, that can be a story for another day. If you look closely at the image above you can see a significant problem. The lithoplate skin on top of the wing does not abut hard against the fuselage. Similarly, the plate on the top of the rear fuselage does not abut hard against the tail. In each case you can still make out a small strip of unskinned - and in parts unpainted - wood. On the real aircraft, there is a narrow strip of metal that closes each of these gaps, but the geometry is complex so I decided not to try to skin these long narrow areas. Instead I've done the following.... Carefully mask off each area that you need to fill; here the wing root. Mix up some two-part automotive bog filler with a thin popsicle stick. Apply the filler to the gap and remove the masking. Smooth the filler's surface with a bit of acetone on a paper napkin. The idea of using acetone is entirely my own and, frankly, I'm just hoping does not weaken or damage the putty. For now though, the 'acetone smoothing' technique seems to have worked quite well. While doing all of this be careful to use good ventilation and to wear a respirator. I'm trying to be a lot more vigilant with my chemical exposure having recently met a New Zealand model builder who claims he has lost his sense of smell due to excessive exposure to model building fumes. I've also taken my Dremmel, fitted with a grinding bit, to the inside of the jet outlet. This has thinned the walls down nicely. Here's the current state of play. As you might be able to see, I've etched one or two panel lines into the bog filler and have made a very preliminary start on the cockpit. I'm not exactly sure where the project will go from here but the cockpit cannot be ignored forever. Best Regards, Steve

What a great looking model! Also good to hear of the high quality Airfix is achieving.

Thanks for the additional photos, they look great! The sea-scape is very good too. Great work all round!

Looks terrific! Congratulations on this one. Amy chance of a few more photos?

Hi, I’m happy to say that is definitely not the case. At least two survive, one at the South Australian Aviation museum at Port Adelaide and another at Point Cook (IIRC). There may be others but I know there are at least two.

I didn’t notice any issues with the band. I would leave it for fear of doing more harm than good. They may have been hand-painted in any case.

That canopy might just be the best bit so far.

Sorry, I can’t help you but it sounds like an interesting model and I would also be keen to see it. Cool user icon BTW.