Sprueloose

Gorgeous painting work! Nicely detailed little kit!

Not much progress today. Worked on reshaping the gun camera: And added the terminal point for the antenna just above the radio: Here's the real thing: And my little bit of brass and Evergreen: Thanks for watching. Terry

Lovely work Martian. I hope that you are getting as much enjoyment out of the doing as I am getting from watching you do it! Telford sounds lovely key so much fun, anyway you could give me a lift when you fly by? I suppose deadlines are a good thing to have sometimes. Terry

Thanks James. I'm learning. Yeah,I think 3 feet will be the minimum allowable viewing distance for this, my first effort!

Thanks you guys for all the help! Oops! I used the word "guys"! When I was 12 my family spent a year in Birmingham and my parents tried to instill in us boys that we should never call someone a guy in Britain because of Guy Fawkes! Silly yanks! So today being the impatient person that I am, I decided to try some of the varnish in my paint locker. Polyurethane, but an old can, and I didn't stir it up too much, fearing that the solids might be a problem. So I decanted some and brushed on a thin patch after sanding down my Mr. Surfacer repair. Anyway I I waited 10-15 minutes, it appeared to be drying so I went for it. (Thanks for the detailed instructions 71chally). Smoothed out a bit of foil and plopped it on the puddle. Did a light smoothing with thumbnail, and noticed the speck of dust under the foil! Oh well, 71chally, you tried! Waited 45 - 60 minutes and cut away the excess foil: Foil photographs terribly. Wonder if using a polarizing filter would help.. Anyway I liked the way that worked. The excess varnish scraped off easily but I think that I would try to stay closer to the lines next time and make the layer thin and even as I could. This time I put on too much varnish and had to wick it away with a dry brush to get it down. Thanks again 71chally for the instructions. My execution was not perfect but I see my way to improving. I did look into goldleaf sizing but the info that I saw wanted you to leave the stuff on to dry overnight!.. Not a good idea in my shop.. so dusty. Plus there's the impatience thing... Enough for now. (I do still have the box Pete... but you know I haven't added much to this kit. Just removed a lot!) Cheers Terry

Superb! He makes a fitting companion to your gorgeous aircraft! I have gone back through you build several times, it is such a pleasure! Terry

Thanks Tony. I had seen 71chally's build and his great foil job. So today I thought that I would rip off the bare metal stuff and give it a go. Superb standard?? Oh dear.. Thanks 71chally for the vote of confidence, I'm afraid that I will never live up to that! I had seen your build and the wonderful foil application, but my problem was that I had no Humbrol 35 polyurethane varnish. I have lots of polyurethane varnish in the paint cabinet, but it's for woodworking projects and I thought it might not work to well on plastic. I figured that the varnish needed to be non-water/alcohol based to adhere to the aluminum foil. The only clear non-water/alcohol coating that I had was a bottle of Testers Dullcote. So I started with that. The problem with the Dullcote is that it's lacquer based and de-tacks really quickly. So it was hard to get the foil on at just the right time. Too late and the foil didn't stick., too early and it never seemed to dry. I did however learn that kitchen foil presents a much nicer surface than the batch of bare metal foil that I have! So remembering another build where the modeler used sheet pewter and some sort of contact cement, I thought that I would try contact cement. But the stuff I have is quite thick, so I thinned it a little with lacquer thinner...(see where this is headed? ) It seemed to work OK. I put the stuff on, letting flash off a bit and then lay on my bit of foil. I quickly discovered that foil is quite soft and easily marked. Especially if you get impatient and don't let the glue dry (probably overnight!; I bet varnish is faster!) You can see that the contact cement is way too thick: You can however remove the excess with a rubber cement eraser! But, the thinned down contact cement was extremely "hot" and quickly melted the styrene, so any attempt to reposition the foil meant scaring of the wing as well as marring the foil.. Which is where it stands now.. 5 patches done, 1 in recovery: The contact cement really was too thick and attempting to work the foil before the cement had setup was not such a good idea, note the deep rivets! So all in all, I think that I will order some Humbrol 35 just to see how it's supposed to work. I had also thought about using goldleaf sizing as it performs the same function albeit with gold leaf instead of aluminum foil. Thanks for putting up with my long winded update. Onward to Victory! Terry

Look good! I'm enjoying watching this take shape. Thank you for sharing your process. Terry

Thanks Corsaircorp for your kind attention. Hope that my daily updates are not too boring!

Worked on the upper wings today and sanded a bit on the new gun camera. I've noticed that the bare metal foil has a texture to it after burnishing. I'm guessing it's the adhesive and that it was not put on smoothly. Of course it could be my installation. But it seemed pretty straightforward, peel off the foil and stick it on the model. I will re-read the instructions but this seems unacceptable to me. I will experiment with regular kitchen foil and some adhesive like varnish and see what results I get. The gun camera got some sanding and I added another drop of sprue goo. Will look at some more pictures of the real thing to make sure I get the height as close as possible. All for now. Terry

Tony, one modification that I plan to make to my stand is to epoxy some small washers on end into the screw slots that are used to adjust the height. I flip the plane frequently and using a screwdriver to tighten and untighten the screws gets to be a pain.

Thanks for the kind words Tony. The greatest thing about the stand is that it protects the model. I don't handle the model as much and consequently don't knock things off of it as often. I hold the stand instead of the model! I think that you could use the bi-plane version for doing monoplanes but the upright supports might be a little more annoyingly in your way. You could probably modify it to make it more versible! Terry

I have noticed that the gun camera on the kit seems a little stunted. Here is the real thing: I think that even taking the camera angle into account, the kit piece needed a bit more height. So I have been slowly building up sprue goo on the kit part to bring it into shape: I'll let it cure for a few days and then sand it down. Onto the upper wings. Added a few bare metal panels after looking at the Whirlwind Project drawing: Oops, looks like I need to redo the middle one as the drawing looks a bit larger. I got a carbide scriber which I like a lot better than the needle or the "Mr Scriber" tool that I had been using. I'm using a thin feeler gauge with a bit of Tamiya tape for a guide. I was using that self-adhesive labeling tape, but it has been leaving some adhesive behind so I switched. Enough for today. Hope your modeling is going well. Terry

Awesome skylight effect. Elegant bit of butchery! Oh god, now look at all the structural detail to add. Lovely! Major surgery and math, this build has everything! Terry

Oh it's still lurking there Martian! I'm just having fun gussying it up a bit.

I have been re-scribing and adding bits of detail to the undersides of the wings. Added some detail to the tail wheel bay. Strapped in the fire extinguishers and painted them. Moving along.. Thanks for checking in. Terry

Wondering if there isn't a way to use the details in the more realistic roof to provide the strengthening for the wings.

I can only offer moral support for this effort, but would gladly hand you the saw Tony. As Perdu said, the opportunity to create something more detailed than the kit roof, seems pretty hard to resist especially considering the gorgeous work that you have already done in the rest of that area. It's the journey. Terry

Nice work. Love the engine!

A little more today: Terry

Thanks Keith, some of my best work! Ha! but it was a pleasure to punch out these little suckers and have them fit! It is pretty satisfying to add these little bits and bobs. Keeps me going! I may never get to paint! Today I worked on the underside of the forward section of the fuselage. The photos show that many aircraft appear without the bulbous protrusion that catches the ejected casings from the cannons. So even though I think that I read somewhere that they started using the collector again because of damage to the tail section caused by the casings spewing out into the airstream, I went ahead and whacked it off and dug out the two squarish holes for the chutes. Here is a picture of the real thing with the gun camera but not with the shell bucket: You will also notice the identification light just to the right of the shell chutes as well as what I believe is the connection port for the external battery/acumulator? connection that the ground crew uses when starting the beast. So I have put in the light and will get the port done tomorrow. I cut out the holes for the chutes and boxed them in with styrene just to give it a bit of depth. Clean them up tomorrow too. You can see that my de-tacked Tamiya tape has lifted some more of the primer. No worries. Can't say that I am completely comfortable exposing my ham fisted work at this magnification but I am getting used to it! I noticed that the gun camera has a gasket around the base and I attempted to represent that with a bit of lead wire. I think that I will get a higher magnification set of lenses for my Optivisor before I paint! That way I can spend another month filling and sanding all the blemishes! (that was sarcasm). I'm done for the day. Cold hits me at the end of the day... Terry not Tony. (just needling you Martian. my short term memory left long ago... no wait I can't remember when it left!)

Thanks Martian and Baron for hanging in there with me... I have been dealing with a cold and haven't spent much time on the model until today. I have been thinking about it a bit and something that I read in the maintenance and repair manual got me wondering about the fuel tank fillers. The Kookabura drawings that I have been using shows the fillers toward the rear of the tanks: But the procedure for filling the tanks in the manual talks about filling the rear tank and then the forward tank. I knew that the fuel tanks were divided by the main spar but both the model and the drawings showed two filler openings at the aft end. I did some more research. The Whirlwind Fighter Project has a few drawings available and I noticed that they have the fillers fore and aft of the spar as well as the two access panels that the kit and the Kookaburra drawing shows: It just made a lot more sense considering the maintenance manual info. So, I filled in the two that I had opened and scribbed and opened two more: After a little sanding and some primer: I also found this photograph of a refueling that makes it pretty obvious that the fillers are much closer to the leading edge of the wings: Then I decided to remove the landing gear to do a bit more detail of the bays. I should have figured this out much much earlier but the kit wants you to install the landing gear with the engine nacelles with means that you have to hassle with masking them etc. The solution is to cut an opening notch in the collet that holds the oleos so that they can be drawn out the bottom. Done! And then I added the fire extinguisher bottles. Note my over-engineered supports for the oleos... Sigh... at this point I am not going to bother correcting that structure especially as I added it because I had to sand the nacelle walls so thin that you could see light through them and I was worried about the walls collapsing. Here is a page from the maintenance manual showing the position of the extinguishers: Starboard: Port: Well that's enough for today. I got my gloss black paint so when I'm satisfied with the model I can start painting! I'm in no big rush as there is lots to tweak yet. And I love that! Thanks for watching. Terry

Shaping up nicely. I love the details you have added and I would worry too much about the color it's very interesting and your shading adds a lot of depth. Thanks for sharing your progress! For a newbie like me it's helpful to see how you treat each step of the build. Cheers Terry

Lovely tidy work! I am new at this and your talk about trying to avoid it being a tail sitter got me wonder if someone somewhere has ever made metal wheels (lead or something as heavy but not so harmful). Anyway looks great!

Why is it that the words "quick" and "re-scribe" seem so other-worldly when used together? Must be because I am still new to this. Looks like a fun ship to build. Terry