Torbjorn

Two passable seats, some paint and a staff with a knob on the end and I’m closing this up. Those copper wires will go somewhere upwards later on, but for now that has to wait.

Oh, very neat. A shame to close it all up. No possibility of making the deck as a lid that can be removed?

Or at least his plane. Bought this a while ago: It contains Hasegawa plastic, canopy masks and decals for Finland’s two leading aces: I will be doing the plane of Hans Wind, partly because it has a neat wintry paintjob and partly because I will not need a cheater’s note every time I try to spell his name and partly because I already have a unopened box containing Juutilainen’s Bf109. Here are some sprue shots. Two of these - notice the strategically placed sink mark on the tyre (not the only example): Hopefully I’m painting the right prop blades. I had some yellow left in the airbrush so I tried out how it will look: Vallejo yellow has the coverage and staying power of Midsummer snow. I have started to prepare mentally for the three or four dozen layers to come. Straight out of the box and, except for the yellow and the sink marks, a fun and easy build to compensate for the rivet counting (or rib counting rather) in the other build. Started with the office. I read that they were initially aluminium and some or all were later overpainted grey. No idea how Wind’s machine looked in the winter of ’43 so I made it an indeterminate alu-grey colour. It is much lighter than it appears here. Wonder if that armour plate should really be so shiny? And finnaly, decals by Cartograf, looking fine to me. I already used the IP:

Don’t you have spme spare wings to do the paper tracing on?

Take 2: More even spacing now - I call it finished. Added wires for rudder and elevators, though I need a new camera to be able to portray them. The angled beams, integrated with the bulkheads, will hold the wings. Also worked on the hull. The tail is rather specific, triangular in shape, bent upwards and tapered. I could not mould this, so another solution was necessary. For those interested the shape of the tail of a this century old lady, see e.g. here: http://www.wwi-models.org/Photos/Fre/DonnetLeveque/index.html Some years ago I bought supplies from an Internetmodelshop and ordered - among other things - some (circular) plastic rods: when I opened the package the rods had magically turned triangular. Not liking having made bad business, I will try to get some use of these now. I tapered the rod (or whatever it’s called when it has a triangular cross section), and manually bent it after heating it in the toaster: This now has to be mated to the moulded part. Picture says how: I started making drawings for the wings. Measurements were taken based on photos, data from digitalmuseum, drawings (with correct-ish hull but bad wings). Making comparisons and verifying with whatever reference distances to be found, I came of with these dimensions: All in scale [mm] (i.e. 72 times smaller than real): Upper wing: Span: 161 Chord: 23 Lower wing: Span: 115 Chord: 18 Height between wings: 23 mm This means the separation between wings is identical to the original, while the upper wing is considerably wider and the lower wings somewhat wider.

And why not, it looks realistic to me, just the right dull aluminium sheen. And an F4 machine too - I approve! Sorry I missed the thread until now, but to my defense it finished almost before it started.

Terrific!

I shall make a try sometime. — Added detail in the cockpit, including hand pump, a meter of some kind and tubing, based on a photo. Unfortunately it all has to go. I followed the drawings I found, which obviously underestimate the size of the foreard cockpit - the spacing of ribs should be approximately the same, and I believe the aft cockpit is correct

Check the link Christer posted: plenty of pictures and they know what they are doing. Google translate works fine for Swedish to English, and if there’s something specific I’m sure me or somebody else can go through and find out. This movie contains some internal shots from service boats (anti-pirate duty off Somalia, but I doubt they repainted anything interior):

Hmm, I’m not familiar with that technique. I shall definitely look it up, thanks for the tip.

I used 0.5 mm for this, but I’ve used both thicker and thinner before. Temperature-wise I have no idea. I rest the frame holding the plastic on top of the toaster, poking the plastic from time to time with a spoon until the plastic is soft. When the plastic goes from matt to having a slightly glossy sheen it’s ready to mould. Trial and error is the best way to find a method that works, in the beginning I had maybe 1 out of 5 turn out good (the others smelted or was not hot enough and didn’t conform), but now it is usually good on the first try. The reason I made two here is because I wasn’t satisfied with the shape of the first and tweaked the mould a bit.

I was eager to start, considering how much time I will be likely to need — I made a mould for the aft half of the hull. I use a high tech plung mould system consisting of 1) mould carved of balsa (right), 2) a frame holding threplastic consisting of scrap balsa pieces pieced together and held in place with office clamps (left) and 3) a heat supply consisting of a bread toaster (not visualised here, but the audio accompanying its use goes ”oh, you are going to poison us again?” ). The mould is white because I was not happy with the first attempt and added some putty to be able to make fine adjustments: balsa is easy to carve but is not suitable for fine detail or sharp edges. Neither were needed here - which is why I used balsa - but the area going from square to triangular cross section needed some sharper definition. First and second attempts:

Hmm, I think need a second build to relax: what does the jury say about a Hasegawa Buffalo or an AZ model 109G-6 (both 1/72 in Finnish colours)?

Neat. I have seen this on a decal sheet and wanted have ut. Very glad to see it being built.

Well, I’d be shopping, at least in 1/72 (but that’s because I’m psychologically stuck in that scale, not related to the kits in any way). I’m buying one or two whenever I find them for sale locally (which isn’t often I might add).