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Messerschmitt Me 410 B1U4 & Me 210 A0, 1/72


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Hi,

Let me invite you to a Messerschmitt shelf of my cabinet. In fact I already posted one from this shelf - the Italeri Me 110 D in fake Iraqi markings from Mosul revolt, 1941. Anyway - I would like to start with Me 210/410 family. I have two models of this set. Both I made together in 1998. I used here a brand new those days Italeri Me 210 A and ... - old Frog Me 410. And some (or a lot?) of scratch work. The Frog Me 410 was made by me for the first time when I was perhaps 13 - and it was not acceptable for me any longer. So I broken it to the pieces, immersed in NaOH and removed all paint. All work (details, markings etc.) I based on a monography on Me 210/410 by E.Kocent-Zielinski (issued by Kagero, 1996).There are innice profiles, photos and plans for different variants in this book.

I decided to make models of early variant of Me 210 A0, which has shorter fuselage and heavy armed Me 410 B1U4 with 50 mm canon. I made crosskiting: Me 410 has Frog wings, engines, u/c but Italeri fuselage and tail whereas Me 210 has Italeri wings, engines and u/c with shortered and reshaped Frog fuselage and tail. As probably most of Readers know, the drastic difference was in canopies:

 

me410210 DSC04094

 

 

Left is a part of Frog, right is basicly the same part from Italeri. The difference is obvious - Italeri looks like an older brother of the Frog one. Regerding plans the problem is with Italeri canopy - it is oversized. Therfore I decided to use "aftermarker" part - namely by " JWM high tech LTD " :) ) - it means I made the canopies by myself.... The Me 210/410 canopy is perhaps the most complicated canopy of WWII plane at all. It was then a bit challenging. I made from teflon rode a kind of "stamps" for side parts of canopy and glue (with epoxy) to a piece of wood:

 

me410210 stmp DSC04153me410210stmp DSC04152

 

 I prepare also a metal part with a appropriate opening for stamp (I cannot find it now to make a photo of complete set) and this way prepare sides. The other elements I prepare from flat cards and then after glueing all together a sand it and polished. The frames are made from decal.

Me 410 B1/U4 is in markings from Stab II/ZG 26, Koenigsberg, Autumn 1944 and Me 210 A0 is from 03/SKG 210, 1942, Eastern Front. This airplane was short in use and was destroyed during landing, so I made very limited weathering.

EDIT - I uploaded again some photos corrected for RGB balance

Some family photos first:

 

me410210 DSC04117me410210 DSC04098me410210 DSC04097me410210 DSC04096me210410 DSC04118

 

 

 

 

 

Me 210 A0:

 

me210 DSC04109me210 DSC04110me210 DSC04111me210 DSC04112me210 DSC04113me210 DSC04114me210 DSC04115me210 DSC04121me210 DSC04123me210 DSC04183

 

 

 

 

 

And Me 410 B1/U4:

 

me410 DSC04099me410 DSC04100me410 DSC04101me410 DSC04103me410 DSC04104me410 DSC04105me410 DSC04106me410 DSC04107me410 DSC04108me410 DSC04116me410 DSC04119me410 DSC04120me410 DSC04122

 

Comments welcome

Regards

Jerzy-Wojtek

Edited by JWM
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Hi Jerzy,

nice duo you have made there. If I remember right had a Matchbox Me-410 long time ago. The scratchbuilt canopy looks interesting, although didn´t really understand how you made it.

Have some ideas of vacuforming since a colleque posted here homemade canopies made with a small vacuforming machine similar to what dentists use. It looked very compact and I´m really thinking about buying one. I know the technique with stove and vacuumcleaner, but this small machine looks like a good choice!

Have a nice weekend

Mario

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Mario - thank you for yor comment. I was trying a bit with vacu but without good results as yet. I did thi canopy in a bit labour way. Let me explain exactly how the canopy was prepared. Only side elements of canopy I prepared using form presented on first photo. This is a classical method, I think - since I've learned about it from some modeller journal. First you have to prepare two forms: one is of desired shape and it is made of wood or teflon, and another one is just metal plate with hole in shape of a contour of the canopy:

 

EDIT AUGUST 2017 - I will rescue those photos when I will found them...

kabina2 DSC04186kabina1 DSC04187

 

 

So this method I used to produce side windows - no 8 and 10 on photo below. The rest are flat plates (like I showed in WIP of Precival Gull and DH 90 Dragonfly). So it looks, that each canopy was glued from 11 parts. Then it was sanded with sanding paper 600 and then 2000, finally polished and painted with diluted gloss acryl varnish (Pactra). Then decals were aplyied as frames.

kabina me210 DSC04121

In similar way I made canopies for many my scratch conversion, but this one was the most challenging I think.

Cheers

Jerzy-Wojtek

Edited by JWM
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A couple of nice models Jerzy. Very well done, Joe.

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Hi Jerzy!

Thank you for the circumstances to answer my question. :) But it should be interesting for others here, too!

Your approach appears more complicated than vacuforming as, if I understood right you need a mould and a stamp to produce the canopy. Did you glue the parts together with plastic cement? Most clear materials like PET or Vivak unfortunately don´t react with it and, in my opinion, other glues produce less strong bond.

Cheers,

Mario

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Your approach appears more complicated than vacuforming as, if I understood right you need a mould and a stamp to produce the canopy.

Surely - it is complicated. I am not reccomend it as rather complicated. I just tell how I solved the problem... :). I was experimenting a bit with vacu but I failed. Anyway - the sahpe of canopy with bubbled sides in case of Me210/410 requires either disamounting (at least two elemental) mould or elastic (silicon) mould for vacu forming. Regarding glue - I used poly cement reinforced by CA .

Cheers

J-W

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Thank you Kira666 and Ace From Outer Space for coments

Indeed - Frog canopy was not nice, but also Italeri was not good - since it is ovesized by some milimeters! - not fraction of mm....

Cheers

J-W

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There's also an old Matchbox kit. I've built it from the box many yeas ago.

Revell who owns Frog and Matchbox tools has only reboxed the Frog kit.

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There's also an old Matchbox kit. I've built it from the box many yeas ago.

Revell who owns Frog and Matchbox tools has only reboxed the Frog kit.

Thx - I did not known, that what is a Revell kit now is an old Frog - actually I thought that it is Matchbox. I do not have personal experience with other Me210/410 - obviously the Fine Molds (or it rebox by Eduard) looks very OK when I watch it in net... And the canopies exist as aftermarket tool.

Cheers

J-W

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  • 3 weeks later...

I like that very much!

Great fix for the canopy, and your method for molding the canopy over boiling water is innovative :)

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