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Hello again, As is usual, the black primer on my XP-47B is taking forever to dry, so I'm going to give it a few more days. Meanwhile, as I have been getting bored, I'm going to start another concurrent build, something I seldom ever do. This offering is the excellent LF Models 1/72 rendition of the original Curtiss XP-42. I say excellent, in regards to general appearance and accuracy, but alas that comes with the caveat that there is lots of trimming, sanding and sprue stub nipping before you get to the end. Therefore, I must say upfront that this is NOT a good beginner's kit, although those with a few miles under their belts can probably see it through! The kit is a multi-media kit, with plastic main parts, and resin detail, add to that the vacu-formed canopy and windows and a few photo-etch parts, and it looks like this, a LOT of stuff crammed into a very tiny box: Interestingly, the box includes drawings for two later mods to this aircraft, but no parts to make them. These modded aircraft were very short-lived, perhaps with only a flight or two each. They were designed to try out differing cowl shapes, and are interesting, should some of you wilder modelers out there wish to stray even further afield than this kit... In my old age, I have come to dislike cockpit interiors a lot more than earlier in my life, because they slow me down from my primary mission in life -- to hack and slice plastic! Anyway, I decided to start there, and do the cockpit later on. First step was cleaning up (flash and pouring blocks, mostly) the resin parts for the front end, albeit two front cowl halves and the prop spinner: The center photo, above, shows the prop spinner centered up atop my propeller jig, talked about in some of my other prop type build threads, so not repeated here. Anyway, the part is centered over a bit of two-sided cello tape, to hold it in place while I mark three vertical lines from each three-bladed position, to the tip of the spinner. This is to help align the prop holes (which are NOT provided by the kit). Since the whole top of my prop jig box is covered with plastic shipping tape, the two-sided tape will peel right off later. The far right photo, above, shows the prop spinner having been moved to the side edge of the box (so that the drill bit would reach), with a suitable thickness of scrap plastic (arrow) used to control the distance of the hole from the rear of the prop spinner. Later on, I will drill a hole in the center of the rear of the prop spinner, to make a mounting shaft. (The kit directions show a nice resin prop shaft in the directions, but not is actually provided. That doesn't matter much however, because there is also no hole in the cowling to receive said shaft!), a matter which I will address now. Since gluing the two front cowl halves together with CA results in the large hole as shown, I placed the assembled cowl halves on a bit of scrap 40 thou or so plastic card, and using my trusty #2 lead pencil, traced a circle, inside the cowl's front opening onto the plastic "A". To the back of that part, now labelled "B" I added two bits of square thicker plastic, simply to add depth to support the prop shaft in a hole which I will drill later: Center photo, above, shows the filler and CA that I added to the cowl inside, after positioning the part "B" assembly (square bits to the inside) in the front hole of the cowl. This is needed to re-enforce the join (also, I sanded the part a little too small in circumference!). The powder is just a nail-building powder, used with CA adhesive to build up fingernails with fake tips, etc. It's about the same as baking soda, but a finer grind. I use it because my wife had it laying about, and no longer wears fake nails... Above, far right, part "B" from the front. After the glue fully cures, I'll sand it a bit. I'm doing all this, rather than just gluing the spinner in place, because I don't want to take a chance on sanding the spinner out-of-round, when working on the model later, as most resin models require a lot of sanding! Also, it will be simpler for me to add the propeller blades, using the jig, later on. Lastly, for now, a small chisel is used to remove the injection stubs from the inner wing surfaces; the ones in the center belly pan won't be in the way. At this time, I also glued the kit-provided wheel well roofs over the wheel well openings, on the inside: Well, I'll be back later with some kind of updates for some model or the other! See you then... Ed