Sprueloose

Even with her makeup scrubbed off she is a beautiful bird. Good luck tomorrow!

This is extremely interesting to hear. That as ones skills increase, the forces that swirl around ones work area increase proportionally. It is heartening to observe that ones recovery time is also decreased. A lovely plump little being coming into shape Moa!

Another beautiful civil aircraft Moa. I must say thatI find them more attractive than the killing machines. I love the color of the plastic on this one!

Moa, what is your feeling about “weighted” wheels? Just curious. Lovely model!

Curious to know how you constructed the tube and it’s very realistic ribbing. It looked like you use PVC pipe in the previous Caproni-Stipa build I assume that you had to resort to epoxy or CA glue on that one. Both very sculptural.

Another gorgeous art work of a lovely aircraft! Thank you Moa for sharing your joy with us.

Interesting and lovely work Tony. Curious how you are going to represent the fasteners, rivets etc. Will deforming the brass change the shape? Or will you work on the painted layer? Inspiring to watch as always. Terry

Looks really nice Gadget. I think that your paint job is subtly done. Speaking as anther newbie here, lurking in awe, your admonition to “swallow your pride and post the picture” is excellent advice. I too have struggled with the wires and finally discovered E-Z line, an elastic thread which makes it all much easier. Plus it gives if you accidentally hit it after installing it! Great work. Thank you for sharing it! Terry

It has been such an instructive pleasure to watch this build Tony. A wealth of modeling tips and tricks on display, as well as just great skill and determination to care this incredible project through to completion. Thank you for sharing your journey with us.

Re, the gorgeous ball turret. Have thought of making netsuke Fozzy? https://goo.gl/images/eEv7pg Beautiful work as usual Fozzy.

Thanks Corsircorp, coming from you, high praise indeed! Thanks for stopping by. ble as the old Mono kit wit when you've done with it! I do like that little anvil you have there! Keith I can't remember where that little anvil came from but it has been quite useful! Thanks for keeping an eye on me Keith. LOL , well you caught me out there Devilfish, apparently I'm building some sort of night fighter bomber! Truly a "What the heck is it?". Basically I just like the shapes involved and after wavering about at the beginning and decided to go with the flow... Thanks for the kind words Keith. I appear to enjoy the challenges of working with these old kits.. To bring us up to date. I have been working on the cannon bay. Here is the real thing (up side down): I had to remove the bulkhead that I had added previously (a common practice with me it seems, add a bit and then rip it out!) and then constructed the new piece out of three thin sheets of plasticard : I had started mocking up the cannons earlier but then I actually did a little research and I have been re doing them: Here I am just checking the height of the spacer beneath: Here are the real things (upside down again): And my attempt so far: All for now folks! Hopefully things will continue and I might get some paint on the Whirlwind! Terry

The hand grinder that I have can be turned down to fairly slow rpm so that made it easier. The cooper wire is really fine and worked well. I think that with practice I could produce longer runs of useful stuff. The lead wire was interesting as it would twist up so easily and then automatically break off! Really I was trying to represent what we call Romex cable or metal-sheathed cable. I saw someone here doing it by winding really thin wire around a thicker wire and then coating it. Looked much more like Romex that my twisted affair. After getting the crew sorted I started working on the bomb bay. Installed a couple fuel tanks and strut details: Made room for the cannons which I will have to scratch build. More details. Made the hydraulic cylinders for the bombay doors out of several sizes of brass tubing: Added bits of PE for the mounting hardware and lead wire for the hydraulic lines. Installed and ran the lines for the bomb doors. The doors for the cannons are separate and don't have hydraulics. Set the doors in place and realized that my previous attempt at representing the hinges is not good enough: So I started to make the hinges out of copper wire. Heated the wire, then bent it around a pin and hammered it flat. : Made a jig to help me cut the hinges at the right angle: Here is what I am trying to represent: I bent a little foot on each leg of the hinge to facilitate attaching them to the model. There are 18 of them for the bomb and cannon doors and the engine nacelles as well. Made a few spares and picked the best ones for the model. Hope they do the job! That's enough for now. Almost up to date! Thanks for watching. Terry

Thanks John for the kind words.

Thanks for checking on me Martian. The weather is still a bit too hot for painting I think, but I think that it will be sooner than later.. I have been enjoying your tug build. Wish that I could scratch build as cleanly! Terry

Still working on the cockpit. Gave it a coat of Mr Surfacer 500: Began making wire harnesses to detail the cockpit, out of lead wire and foil. Added wires to the radio equipment: Discovered that if I chucked up thin wire in my Proxxon I could twist it evenly. Even worked with the lead wire! Added the pilot and navigator's seats. Made the boot that covers the linkages to the column. Decided to populate the cockpit. It became very crowded very quickly. I can see why Monogram didn't add any details! The width of the kit's fuselage is about 3 mm too narrow and putting the resin bits in there really made it a tight squeeze for the navigator figure... plus his feet didn't want to reach the floor! Added the resin control panels and radar equipment (night fighter, remember? ) Decided not to use the rudder pedals as they won't be seen once the canopy is on and besides I had trouble getting the pilot to place his feet on them! Made the little boxed drawer below the radar set.. not sure what it was for.. You can see that space is cramped as the piece of radio equipment that sat behind the pilot's see had to be mounted up on the shelf above. Made a little bracket to support it out of spare PE. Added gunsight and throttles with their linkages that slide beside the pilot's seat when the nose is put in place. The navigator figure had to undergo some major surgery to fit into his assigned seat. I work hard to get his feet on the floor and had to cut him in two , sliding his legs and hips in from the front and wiggling his de-armed torso in from the top. He doesn't look too happy With the nose on, you can see the height difference between the two figures is greatly exaggerated. (Monogram kept the height of the fuselage about right but with the width narrower....) I suppose that the figures aren't exactly to scale either... I hacked off some arms from a figure set that I had and bent the navigator over (had to take a saw to his neck!) so that it would appear that he was hunched over a map in his lap.. Enough for now... Thanks for checking in. Terry

I think you are right about it being for the NF or interceptor. I just couldn't remember last night what version I had settled on! As I mentioned, I'm playing catch up as I started work on this thing months ago and I've gotten absorbed in the details of the cockpit (with the radar equipment installed!) and I am currently having fun in the bomb bay. As you can tell accuracy is more of a tool I use to find interesting things to do on a kit not a end in itself! I will upload another batch of photos tonight and might bring the thread up to date within a few days. This build is a bit odd as I am not working with a particular aircraft in mind. Image working on a kit and forgetting which version you are doing! Perhaps it will end up being a "What If" or more likely a "What the **** is it?" Hope you are doing well. Cooler today. Terry

Thanks for checking in Keith. I am sure that I will get the Crikie moving again soon. It's been so hot here (40 degrees C) that I didn't think airbrushing would be a good idea! Terry

To get some relief from my Whirlwind, which has stalled a bit over the summer, I found this old Monogram kit and thought it might be fun to bash together. The kit supposedly gives you four options to choose from, the MK IV Bomber, the MK II Night Fighter, the Mk II Night Intruder and the MK VI Fighter Bomber. I decided to do the MK VI Fighter-Bomber... I think. I bought a cheap cockpit resin kit designed for the Tamiya kit and a set of resin wheels to correct the too narrow kit wheels. The kit had been opened and was missing one of the propeller blades. So I cast a new blade in resin using dental alginate for the molding material. Attached it to the hub with a metal pin and epoxy. After doing a little research about this kit online I cut the tail fin down. The fuselage is too narrow but I decided to not mess with that.. I inserted some brass tubing for the missing canons in the nose (I decide to use the gun nose and so sawed off the bit of nose for the glassed in version). I substituted brass rod for the radar antenna and subsequently added the additional bit of antenna missing on the kit part. Drilled out the oleos and pinned the resin wheels in place. I think that the stiffening fin on the mud flap is wrong and will fix that later. The kit cockpit was minimal and had both the pilot and navigator on the same level. Started to modify the kit to accommodate the resin. I attached the wings at this point which may or may not have been a good idea. i certainly made modifying the cockpit easier in some respects. Enough for now... sorry for the long post... doing catch up here.. Thanks for watching. Terry

So it's been awhile since I posted to this thread and that represents the intervention of life and all it's nasty bits and frankly I hit a wall with this build. But I did make a bit more progress. I gave the "new" model another complete shot of primer after deciding that my bits of foil on the wings had to be removed. So after hours of sanding and filling and sanding : Then more time spent burnishing the primer and re-scribing panel lines on the wings: You can see the patches of distressed plastic where the foil had been. More sanding... Finally some scribing: Night flier anyone? Finally I gave both models a coat of Vallejo Metal Color acrylic Duraluminium: My plan was to then coat it with hairspray or the equivalent medium to allow me to scratch through the camo layer and reveal the aluminum since the plane that I am representing was heavily weathered that way.. And that is where my mojo left me back in June or was it July? Anyway I think that I was getting too "precious" with the darn thing and afraid to screw it up with the camo and the painted markings... sigh. So I set it aside and looked for something that I wasn't worried about messing up.... Enter the old (1985) Monogram de Havilland Mosquito kit that I got for almost nothing... I will start a new thread to show you the fun that I am having with that... and I will be back to continue this build soon I hope. Thanks for baring with me! Terry

So after breaking off the flap guide once again.... I decided to replace them with brass... Sculpted the guide in brass rod: And then soldered a bit of brass sheet to the end hidden inside the wing: Cleaned up the over-solder and did a bit more sculpting: Glued in place with epoxy: I'll let the epoxy cure over night and then clean it up a bit... Thanks Martian for the sage advice.. too true.. like my basement.. the clutter does grow to fill the available space... Keith, I am glad to know that there are others out there who work in a "messy" environment.. Reminds me of an old carton, where a scientist is showing someone around his lab and the gentleman comments on the mess. The scientist says "If you think this is bad you should see the inside of my head!" Cheers, Terry

Thank you for the detailed descriptions of your build process. It is wonderful to see how you tackle the challenges. I may never build these exact aircraft but the way you go about it is fascinating and instructive.

Thanks Martian and Keith for the kind words and support. I seem to be at a bit of a low point, struggling to get over a hump and move on! So... back at the bench and after a couple of days of sanding and filling I managed to knock off one of the Fowler flap guides that protrude at the aft end of the flaps.. this makes about the third time that I have managed to remove one of them. They have been replaced at least twice with carved sprew... Sigh.. What I decided that I have learned from this experience, is one, I should seriously consider replacing all of these protruding bits with brass firmly anchored to the airframe. Like I have done with the pitot tube and antenna mast, and two... that my work space was way too cluttered and that added to my problems.. I admit to being rather a messy creator, (you should see the inside of my head!) but I am starting to see the benefits of have room to swing a cat! (without knocking off the sticky-out bits!) So as a general first step in the campaign to ORGANIZE MY WORKSPACE, I decided to build a set of shelves for the paint and other jars of stuff. Scrounging some peg board and slats of various woods I set to work. Room is at a premium in my shop that does double duty as a woodshop (god help me when I start painting the crikey!), so I tried to fit the shelving into the existing space. A couple of coats of paint ,( the weather has improved), and here I am today... Doesn't that work space look lovely... Like Paul Budzik's! HA! Of course now I have to clutter it up with all the stuff that was there before and is now on the table saw! So that is what I have been doing .... model avoidance on a large though thoroughly rationalized scale!... But I did build something! (felt good!) I think that I needed to take a bit of a breather in the build and gain some perspective... It's not going to be perfect... but that's is not the point!!! I will see if I can keep my eye on the prize and soldier on! Thanks for your patience and understanding! Terry I forgot to add that it felt so good to do some work today that I treated myself to: I usually lean toward stouts and porters, but one of our local brewers has come out with a pilsner that is quite tasty. A little hoppy but you can get away from hops and live in the Northwest!.. Cheers you guys, Hope your modeling is progressing nicely!

Beautiful delicate work! A fun build to watch. Like a butterfly being born. Thank you for sharing your work. Terry

Another interesting project! I shall just sit in the back here and learn something! Looks like a wonderful opportunity for a bit of brass work!

Back to our regularly scheduled program.... Life does seem to get in the way sometimes... I just set the radio access door in place (sort of) and gave it all a shot of primer. I have been working on the gun camera trying to get the shape right... Also I used strips of Tamiya tape to represent the reinforcing on the fuel tanks.. I gave the strips of tape a brushing of Mr Surfacer to try to soften their edges.. Good to be back at the workbench... hope to make some progress toward completion.. Cheers Terry