Accurate Miniatures 1/48 TBM-1C Avenger

[Bill Bunting]

Great work so far and looking forward to seeing more.

[Pappy]

G'day people,

A small update. I have painted up the undercarriage units.

I will still need to add some brake likes but I will wait until the drag braces struts are installed as the lines run along and around some of these. The keen observers amongst you will have noticed that I also cut off and displaced the tail wheel

cheers,

Pappy

[Pappy]

G'day people,

A small update today.

I have begun work on the wings. A previous poster mentioned that the wings in their kit were badly warped. I am happy to report that there are no signs of wing warpage in my example. I intend to use the KMC resin wing fold set. The set provides resin stumps for the fixed inner portion of the wing, and the builder is required to cut apart the wing into the two sections and retain the moving outer portion to use with the resin wing root section.

I will only have one wing folded as I think that when both wings are folded it destroys the lines of the subject and one folded wing will add interest whilst also displaying the carrier heritage of the design.

I began by trimming the protruding section of the right wing spar in preparation to installing the right resin inner wing portion.

The resin portion was a very tight fit and I had to slightly bevel the edges in order to persuade the part to fit. I took a fair amount of pressure but eventually it popped into the wing root recess. I am glad that I did this before I joined the fuselage halves.

I marked out the two sections of the right wing and then began to carefully separate the two parts.

Here are some pics of the separated right wing against the complete left wing,

It was at this point that I realised that the folded right wing may obscure the view into the rear cabin access door, bugger, oh well hopefully something may still be visible!

The next part of the process was to thin the exposed edges of the wing fold to give the impression of scale thickness. The black areas were carefully thinned with the edge of a scalpel and dressed with wet'n'dry paper.

Once I was satisfied, the first of the PE brass parts were folded and offered the wing parts to check the fit

I think that there is an error in the KMC instructions. The 'V' shaped part for the right side that is called out is part number 2. The problem is that when installed as per the instructions, the diagonal edge slopes the wrong way. It should slope up to support the surface of the upper wing half. If part 2 is used, the part will slope away from the upper wing. This had me perplexed for a about half an hour until I realised KMCs error. I use part 21 for the right wing and this fixed the problem.

I wasn't sure how rigid the PE parts would be so I reenforced the rear of the PE parts with some plastic stock.

cheers,

Pappy

Edited September 14, 2013 by Pappy

[Bill Bunting]

Looking really Good Pappy.

I just sent you a PM re: turret installation.

Cheers.

[Mozzy19]

Very nice. All these Avengers are making my wallet hurt a lt!

Sean

[Pappy]

Looking really Good Pappy.

I just sent you a PM re: turret installation.

Cheers.

PM sent

Very nice. All these Avengers are making my wallet hurt a lt!

Sean

Work through the pain!

[Calum]

Nice work Pappy.

[trickyrich]

Very nice. All these Avengers are making my wallet hurt a lt!

Sean

Go on you know you want to build one!!

An late model ASW or AEW one would look great.

Pappy,

the folding woing conversion kit looks great!

Can't wait to see the finished product!

[Pappy]

G'day people,

Last bit of progress for today.

After joining two right wing halves, the last of the PE ribs were added to the to the folding wing section.

I will add the remainder of the ribs to the resin wing root section after I have dealt with the fuselage seam.

The fuselage halves have at last been cemented together. I had been putting this off because I was concerned that I would not be able to insert the dorsal turret assembly after the two halves were joined. The instructions indicate that this is possible, however I had my doubts as the Eduard PE set has changed the fit of the parts slightly. After several attempts with the fuselage held together with rubber bands, I have determined that it can be done(just) though I will probably end up scraping a little paint off in the process.

Here is the fuselage glued together, the seam will be dealt with once the glue has cured

Just to prove that fitting the dorsal turret can be done afterwards,

Whilst all that was drying I temp fitted the undercarriage legs to the wings and attached the rear drag braces to each unit. Once set, the undercarriage units were removed as a complete assembly.

I will add the brake lines to these, I really should have done this before painting, d'oh!

Finally a mock up to get an idea of the overall size of the completed model

She is a big sucka!

cheers,

Pappy

Edited September 15, 2013 by Pappy

[Tedfellows]

Outstanding work Pappy :-)

[sprue]

Extraordinary P.E. work on the wing folds, and it seems Avengers are the flavour of the month. I'm following this with interest.

Good job so far.

Mike

[Martian]

Great start! but then we would expect no less from you!

Martin

[Shalako]

Very impressive work!!!! Especially the painting and weathering level you have managed to achieve.

My hat off to you Sir!!!!!!

[zimmermaniac]

absolutely stunning work, makes me wanna start mine

[Mozzy19]

Work through the pain!

Go on you know you want to build one!!

An late model ASW or AEW one would look great.

My wallet definitely hates this site (I love it though!)

But I will resist,

for now

Great work by the way.

Sean

[Kahunaminor]

^{Noice, real noice!!}

^Regards

[pacificmustang]

great going Pappy

Bruce

[Pappy]

Whew, it has been a little while since I have been able to get to the modelling bench but I finally got some time.

The Eduard PE set provides two very delicate PE items for the front of the weapons bay. I had previously attached the straight item but I was concerned that the front bulkhead item would have been knocked off during handling, so I had left it off until now.

I have attached the kit donk. I was tempted to buy the Quick Boost resin replacement, but you can really only see the front row of cylinders and I am satisfied with what the kit maker has provided.

The cowling was now attached. Test fitting showed the fit was generally excellent,

However, there is a small but noticeable step where the top of the cowl meets the fuselage. Since the rest of the kit has fit pretty well, I think this one is down to me alone! I have added some filler to the step, and will see how much blending will be required.

Next up, the tail feathers were attached

I just applied a bead of Mr Surfacer and when dry, used an ear cleaner and metho to wipe most of it off to leave a very neat fillet. The kit parts fit exceptionally well in any case.

The fuselage turnover pylon rear face part was substituted with its PE counterpart. The interior of the turnover pylon of FAA Tarpons were fitted with a radio. I used a piece of scrap resin to represent the radio set and attached a leftover PE radio face (1/72!) to the resin block. I am not sure how accurate this is, but at least something is there.

The turnover pylon could now have its paint applied so my version of Bronze green was brushed on and given a light drybrushing to highlight the detail,

Finally, I have attached the port pitot probe.

This part did not match the wingtip profile with a small step the result, probably as a result of my sanding of the wingtip to eliminate the seam when the two wing halves were attached,

A few minutes with a sanding stick should correct this,

cheers,

Pappy

[Pappy]

G'day people,

A small update today.

I have been painting the ordnance

Masking up the dorsal turret has also been tackled thanks to the Eduard pre-cut mask set. If you haven't used these before, you should, they really made a difficult job easy.

A quick blast of interior green before the Extra Dark Sea Grey which will follow shortly.

The masks for the ventral .30" Cal were applied and the glass was attached, simples.

My decal sheet painting instructions indicate that the wheel outer hubs were painted 'dark chromate green or dull red with a dark natural metal axle nut'. This seems an unusual choice, but I liked the idea of something different. I couldn't bring myself to paint the hubs red though so I went for a dark green shade.

The painting instructions also state that the main u/c legs were painted a 'zinc chromate yellow'. Another deviation form the normal practice of applying the underside colour to the undercarriage, but I went withit,

I also added some hydraulic brake lines using fine copper wire.

The wing fold also got some plumbing, this time with fine solder

The weapons bay door unit was assembled.This will be set aside and installed after all the painting has been completed.

The bombs and depth charges were now installed

Finally, the bay door assembly was test fitted to ensure that there would be no surprises later

cheers,

Pappy

[Pappy]

G'day people,

A very small update today.

I have painted the prop. The decals for the Hamilton Standard propeller logos cam e from the Third Group decal sheet instead of the kit items, although the kit items look good as well.

cheers,

Pappy

[Chris W. Balmer]

nice subtle weathering on the blades - something that is easy to overdo.. spot on here!

[snapper_city]

This is really coming on well. Love all the little details you are adding...

[dawkuk]

Great build. I have one in my stash of boxes, so i'm watching this closely.

[Pappy]

nice subtle weathering on the blades - something that is easy to overdo.. spot on here!

G'day Chris, thanks very much. This aircraft was operated from a land base so I don't think I need to go nuts with the chipping!

This is really coming on well. Love all the little details you are adding..

G'day Snapper, I don't think you really need to add much to this kit, perhaps some seat belts. Of course I just can't help myself...

Great build. I have one in my stash of boxes, so i'm watching this closely.

What are you waiting for, stop watching and start building!

A little bit more progress today. I finally dealt with the step between the engine cowl and forward fusleage.

This was something of a mystery as the dry fitting did not reveal any problems. I think this may have happened when I joined the front fuselage. It was not a big dealt but it stands out because the rest of the kit has just fallen together, I will put my hand up for this one and put down to operator error! I have also added the gun sight. I think this is some variant of the Mk.8. I am not sure if FAA Tarpons/Avengers fitted with a British sight by Blackburn (I think that they were fitted with a Mk.3?), and it also seems that the Mk.8 sight was re-fitted by operational units in service.

The rear PE deck part between the dorsal turret and the cockpit has been fitted. I did not think it would be possible to add this after the main canopy has been installed. I am not sure what colour this part of the fuselage should be, ie interior colours or exterior colours?

I have painted up the wingtip nav lights.

The kit provides clear lenses for each wingtip and the wingtips themselves include the nav light bulb details.

I noticed in my references that when a wing was folded, a small tether was connected between the tailplane leading edge and a location just aft of the corresponding nav light. There is a small hatch which is opened, to gain access to the wingtip anchor point. To include this detail, the nav light cover locating tab needs to be shaved away and the rear portion of the clear nav light lens will need to be sectioned. There are some structural stiffeners visible when this compartment is opened. I added this detail using some thin copper sheet bent to shape.

I have applied some matt white in preparation for the application of the D-Day recognition stripes.

I am not 100% what colour the wing fold area should be, I am opting to go with the underside colour (Sky). The wheel bays were painted in the underside colour, I suspect the flap bays were as well. It seems that some aircraft wing folds (on monotone scheme aircraft e.g overall gloss sea blue) were painted in the upper wing colours, but since this aircraft had a temperate scheme, I don't know which colour this would have been (ED Sea Grey or Slate Grey), or even if this would be correct.

I suspect that since corrosion is a real threat for ship based aircraft, any paint that the maintainers could get their hands one would have sufficed. This colour may not have necessarily been the 'correct' colour! I have also experimented with different colours and strengths of oil washes on the white area.

Just because

cheers,

Pappy

Edited October 12, 2013 by Pappy

[Calum]

Lovely work as usual Pappy