mnord
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About mnord
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The acrylic ring was fitted into the engine cowl, not without effort. Below is a quick dry fit of the parts together. On to the gear casing(?) and the wiring. The "pigs" surrounding the casing are the kit attempt to mimic the wiring, which I considered a little boring. The bottom detaiils, the "ears" that is a separate part, has a gap to the casing where there shouldn't be a gap, so I will try to fix that as well. First off with the wiring. On the original it's a ring with the wiring coming out of it, but I have found at least three variations
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After the wings it was time for the stabilizer. I started off by replacing two plastic pins with one brass rod which will go through the fin, both to better conform with the original but also to easier align the stabilizer parts. The fitting was a bit awkward. From top it looks good, but seen from the side the mounts are slightly larger than the stabilizers, leaving an ugly edge. Some sanding took care of it, although the final finish is left to do. The moulds were somewhat imperfect so had to use some mr Surfacer on the upper side of the stab
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Work has continued with merging the wing with the fuselage. The fitting was not perfect, however - when the upper wing was aligned the lower part was offset, and vice versa. The images below show the fitting at the bottom of the fuselage when the upper part was aligned. I decided to align the lower part since it was easier to adjust the wing root than it was to adjust the whole line of the belly. By shimming with some pieces of 0.3 mm plastic sheet between the rear part of the wing and the fuselage I got the belly right. In the picture below you can pretty much s
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The upper and lower wing halves have been glued together... The outlets for the guns had the joint going straight through them which is not ideal as they will not be perfectly round, and this case was no exception. I decided to redo them in order to avoid problems later on when the guns should be fitted. I filled the holes with cyano, put the whole wing in a vise, aligned everything and simply (well...) drilled four new holes. They may seem offset but on the P-47 the guns were aligned with the horizontal axis, not with the wing itself. The two
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The landing gear "stubs" ended up successfully in place and the wheel bays are now complete. The linkage between the hydraulic cylinder and the landing gear strut didn't work out as intended but at least no need to rework the whole thing.
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Gave the wheel wells a spray and it was nice to see them reveal in their final color rather than in the messy look of different materials. The roof of the narrower section is not glued yet but only laid out for the picture, and all the detail painting is still left to do. By the way I also took out the macro lens today instead of the iPhone, so hopefully a little sharper images. The problem with removing the kit wheel bays was that the mountings for the landing gear also went the same way... A new solution is needed! The landing gear can always be mounted one way
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Work has continued with more details of the wheelbay. Most prominent is the part marked in the picture below: I started off with milling some aluminium rod to the measurements (the idea was that the metal had better chances to be more distinct in the details than plastic. In the end I didn't manage to fully realize that potential, but anyway...) The basic shape was then filed to shape. (This is the part where I expected the mill to be more exact, but manual labour won this time ) However, the small recess in the middle of the part was done usi
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The new wheel bays are about to take shape. Walls and parts of the framework built from plasticard. The wells for the wheels themselves was kept from the kit. After adding a few more pieces of the walls the brass hydraulic cylinder was added, The fixture for it could have been refined further but I thin it's good enough considering how much of it will be visible. In the below photo I also dry-fitted the "roof" of the wheelbay. Only halfways into the assembly but it already looks a lot more interesting than the original kit solution. More to come!
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Finally some christmas holiday-ish and some time to spend on this project. Have had some further challenges with the hydraulic cylinders above since one of them was wasted when the length should be set, but now a replacement has been created and I can continue with the rest of it. I've spent some more time trying to figure out what feels wrong with the kit wheel bay and the reason is that it's too "two dimensional", both missing details on the sides and some frames. It looks good seen straight from top but the sides have no details whatsoever. Also, the hydraulic cylinders seems t
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Yes, I've realized that any "improvement" takes a lot of time and that some focus is needed to resist starting on something new. I enjoy the process, however, and also try to push my limits so so far this haven't been that much of a problem for me. For that reason I also wanted to improve the wheelbays, even if they are ok in the kit given how much of them will actually be visible in the end. As usual some additional tubes can be added to this area but I saw some other issues as well. The bigger, left part of the bay that accommodates the actual wheel looks good in the kit and will
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The seat is ready, complete with belts. After this it was time to assembly the last parts of the interior. The kit lacks a front bulkhead and I've made a simple one out of plasticard. This was done a couple of months ago and later research has revealed that the bars (resembling corrugated plate) may have been horizontal, not vertical, and that the shape may have a been a little more complicated than just a flat wall. I decided to ignore that as it will be almost hidden anyway, and the important thing is to have something more than just empty space there. As
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True, but you never know The lower part of the seatbelts done:
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Progress has been slow lately - my house needed some urgent repairs, and not only did the repairs consume my time but also the workshop became unavailable for a while. However, last night I managed to create some room and continue with the seatbelts. The seatbelts themselves was cut from two layers of tape around a core of aluminium foil. The result is slightly too thick for this scale but no one will notice and the thickness makes the belts a bit easier to work with. Buckles was made of 0.2 mm brass wire turned around thin plastic sheet with about the same width
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Finalized the instrument panel. Below is the whole package with rudder pedals (that of course snapped off later when I fitted everything into the fuselage, but that was more or less expected) together with a few other small parts. The pedals are from the kit but they have been thinned out, got a hole drilled in each and have been given some added detail. I once considered remaking them but decided at some point that it was not worth the effort. This is how it all looks once in place, with a dry-fitted floor to give a better impression. The mounting of the IP was a little tric
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A busy week this week, but unfortunately not with the model. Anyway, I spent some time with it now and the work with the instrument panel area is finally approaching the end. The gunsight was added to the mount and everything was sprayed black. Luckily it turned out much better after being painted than it first appeared in the brass/plasticard scheme...! The gunsight "glass" has been removed and will be replaced with a thinner piece of plastic sheet. Then it was the instrument panel... The plan is still to use the kit decal behind a clear plastic sheet resembling
