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In between more serious 109 builds I like to throw in an OOB build or experiment on a new technique. This one will be both. It will not be Luftwaffe, but I'll wager than no one will guess the nationality. But more to the point, I've decided to try riveting. This is something I've dabbled with for years, but never seriously enough to completely rivet a model. Czech modelers have great success with this and it seems to add much to the realistic effect of a model. The final push came from seeing an Airfix Blenheim at the Dayton Regional a few months ago. It was subtly riveted and looked great. So let's have a go... Of all the tools I've tried (and I have tried a lot of them), the photo-etched product from Radu Brinzan seems to be the best in 1/72. These wheels are available in individual sets or lately, in the Rosie the Riveter line. I've used the .55mm and .65mm wheels on this project. Libor Jekl suggests building the entire airframe, priming, then riveting into the primer. That seemed too challenging for my first attempt, so I riveted all of the major parts before assembly. Some modelers suggest using Dymo tape as a guide while riveting. To me, this is unnecessary. I got reasonably good just eyeballing the lines and being careful. For an extreme example of this, look for Spencer Pollard's Airfix 1/48 P-40. This was painted in natural metal, finished, then completely riveted! Takes...umm...intestinal fortitude to do that. Also, that was not his first rodeo. Practice showed that it was fairly easy to get a straight line with a larger riveting wheel, but these came only in .75mm size, too large for 1/72. So I reverted to the smaller wheels. For longer lines I initially used Tamiya tape as a guide, but eventually discovered that just a following pencil line worked even better. I'm sure this first attempt has flaws and the rivets are too deep. But I didn't want them to be obscured in the primer/paint process, so we'll see how they turn out. Here's where things stand at the moment. The circular guide for the wheel well representation on the upper wing was done with the aid of an Atol tool. A real labor saver. Here's a link: https://www.modelimex.com/1-72-bf-109-rivet...template-pe-set I know this is not everyone's cup of tea and I'm not even sure it's mine. But I would never know until I gave it a try. That's why I'm using a less than serious project for this experiment. More soon...