Lockheed P2V-3 Neptune --A Forgotten Warrior

[Tailspin Turtle]

Turtle -- just curious -- have any idea why the extra inch in diameter?

Ed

Nope - just guesses like the stack-up of parts came out closer to 15 feet 1 inch than the original intent (the P2V-1 had a four-bladed prop diameter of 15 feet 2 inches).

[mackem01]

Loved the trick to create the oil coolers, makes you look at things a copletely different way. You have a very original approach to

your modelling..........I like it!

[Antoine]

To this day, I probably enjoy conversions more than straight building.

And in your case, it's more scratchbuild conversion.

More challenging, as you really have to use your brain to find the best way to reach your goal.

[TheRealMrEd]

Yes, Antoine -- If I could have found another way, I would have used it. I hoped for years that some enterprising soul would make the parts for me, but no one did. Alas.

However, after examining some of my quickly cast resin masters, I have decided to go with a pressure pot for all my future castings. I found a super cheap deal on E-Bay, and while awaiting it's arrival, I'll suspend work on the nacelles for a time, and begin work on the second largest problem with modeling the P2V-3 is the six-gun nose section.

Anyone who has ever tried to drill gun ports on a curved surface knows that it's usually hit or miss. I usually drill a starter hole at an acute angle and the try to gradually straighten out the direction of the drill bit until it's in the right alignment. Then, I's sometimes have to fill a hole or two with CA glue and start over. The problem with this nose then is manly alignment of the gun tubes or hole. If I could hve found another model with a horizontal 6-gun layout that I could have adapted, I would have done so!

The best solution I could muster after lots of thought is detailed below. As always, all comments, suggestions, etc. on an easier way to succeed would be greatly appreciated, as this model is not complete and is a living work in process that I just THINK I know how to build.

I began by using the plans to make horizontal and vertical center out of around 40 thou card, trimmings from old vacuform models. These were then glued together with perfect 90 degree angles.

Some 20 thou card was glued below the horizonta section to drop the gun holes down a little, and then layers of 20 and 40 thou card were alternated as needed for currect spacing:

This latter diagrams attempts to explain the outlines procedure a little better. If this doesn't work out right, I may shave a little off the front, smack on some fine Milliput and re-drill from the backside. I still have to figure out how to temporarily anchor the nose part in the fuse, so that I can reach to backside of the gun tubes to re-drill if needed. I will probably use Milliput on the top of the nose, as well.

All the time I have for now so adios!

Ed

Edited January 5, 2016 by TheRealMrEd

[Gondor44]

That's a very neat solution

Gondor

[Hamden]

Agreed a very simple but practical solution to the nose/gun blast tube problem

Awaiting the next installment with interest

Roger

[TheRealMrEd]

Decided that to continue the shaping of the nose, it would be better to be able to attach it to a set of joined fuselage halves. I am currently working on some of the fuselage issues, so will set aside the nose for the time being.

As for the nacelles, my ordered pressure pot for casting finally arrived, but I am still awaiting some hardware I need to make it a dual vacuum/pressure pot. Hopefully in the next week or so, I'll be able to get to some resin casting.

Meanwhile, I'll move ahead with work on the P2V-3 wings.

First item before the wing halves are glued together is to fill the unwanted holes where the jet engines locate on the P2V-3 wing. I use stretched kit sprue stuck in the holes, then glued sawed, sawed off and sanded flush after the glue dries.

The next item is that the kit P2V-7 wing is expecting a searchlight/fuel tank on the wingtip, while the P2V-3 mark will need a more rounded tip, as well as wingtip nav lights. The first order of business than, is to sand/file the wingtips to a flat profile, in order to have more gluing surface for our new plastic card tips:

Mine are made from old plastic scrap for vacu-formed kits, probably around 40 thou. I added two layers first, taking care to align them on the wing centerline, where the upper and lower wings join. This provided a good datum line for final sanding. As shown above, one half required another layer to allow enough thickness.

Next, after eyeballing photos, I determined that the large bump on the trailing surface of the wing provided just the right curve for my outline. So, as shown below, I laid one wing across the other and drew the circle on one wingtip only.

Below is shown the outline drawn on one wingtip, and the sanded square edge of the other.

Next, I trimmed off excess plastic from the added wingtip, using sprue cutters, to lessen the sanding chore.

After sanding the one tip to proper shape, I traced that corrected outline onto the second wingtip. Note here -- when final sanding the wingtips, the bottom wing has a slightly more acute angle than the top half. You see this same thing on many flying model aircraft.

Now, for the navigation lights. I took a piece of old clear sprue (I never throw away any clear plastic!) and filed a flat side along a piece around 1/2" long, which I then saw in hand two make two more-or-less 1/4" long light pieces. On the wing itself, I started at the leading edge where the original wingtip line was etched, and measured back 6 scale inches (a scant 2 mm in real size). I cut this line with a razor saw, and then sawed from the rearmost point out to the wingtip, leaving sort of a diagonally-bisected rectangle to hold the nav light.

Normally, I'd just drill a tiny (in this case #72) hole in the appropriate spot in the rear or end of the clear plastic part, paint the wing cavity silver, and glue them together, In this case, I wanted to try for a better effect. I wanted to glue the clear plastic on, then shape it. Then I wanted to remove the clear plastic lens, drill the hole for the bulb and add color. BUT, I also wanted to line the cavity behind the lens with bare metal foil as a reflector and then glue the lens back into place.

I didn't trust the foil to hold up under sanding stress while shaping the lens, hence, I needed a way to hold the lens, yet remove it, then to reinstall it later without screwing up. I tried this, but had problems with getting the metal foil to behave on the tiny surface, so in the end I used silver paint after all. I was able to glue and sand, then remove paint and sand the lenses, using the glue described below.

I would love to hear more about ways other people use to make these lights. Mine are usually okay, but not great.

All the above being said, I was very happy about one thing and so I thought I'd pass it along for what it's worth. (By the way, I have no financial interest in any product I mention. I make my money the old-fashioned way -- investing in munitions...)

Any way, the product is G-S Hypo Cement, used to glue on watch crystals, etc. It comes in a tube that has a really tiny needle dispenser, but pressure from squeezing the tube starts the glue running out so that it's a little hard to control. HOWEVER, the good news is that it dries crystal clear and fairly hard. It can be smoothed with water (I think) before it sets up, but after that, you have to smooth it with alcohol, but not the now-common 71% stuff sold in drug stores. I had to order a bottle of 99% alcohol online through Amazon.

This stuff is my third choice for gluing canopies: I like white glue where stress or mush repainting are not a problem; CA glue where these things ARE a problem, and this GS for all other occasions. Glue the canopy down , with a little excess, wait for it to dry, then rub the stuffing out of it with a q-tip soaked in old 99, and it's smooth as glass. I bought mine either thru Amazon or Micro Mark -- can't remember.

Here we see both nav lights, one shaped and the other not.

And here is the finished product. Not a good photo, but you can see the little red and green "bulbs" in the lenses.

One other thing, when you glue on the filler piece to the top wing, be as neat as possible when fitting and gluing. It will save a lot of filling and re-scribing later if you do a better job than I did.

Still to come on the wings is locating, then fabricating the mounts for the 5-inch rockets. Since I'm building a truck strafer, these will be very necessary. But, because it's cheaper to build one and then cast several, that may not get done until the pressure pot is ready. Guess I'll just have to find something else to add until then.

Sorry about these parts being sort of mundane. They are, however, necessary for the final model and much of it is aimed at folks who might be encouraged to try something they haven't done before. Hopefully, they will also profit from the wisdom offered by any others that may jump in and offer other or even better ways to do a task. I'm nearly 72 years old and am still learning new modeling tricks all the time.

Later, dudes.

Edited June 18, 2016 by TheRealMrEd

[mackem01]

Love the attention to detail that's going on here (although it's way beyond my skills) - I've picked up a couple of tips here already and may

shortly put them to use for my long term project.

Keep up the fantastic work, she's going to be great when she's done.

[TheRealMrEd]

Mackem01, thanks. In addition to wanting to do this model because it has not been done (and it should have been, had the U.S. Navy NOT classified the night interdiction aspects of the P2V's career in the Korean War for more than 50 years!), I'm doing it for guys like you. I can't even remember all the guys I learned from, so passing some along makes me happy, indeed!

Ed

[TheRealMrEd]

Well, after surviving my wife's yard sale, various other "honey-do's", I am back to the P32V-3.

My new pressure pot for casting arrived, and pretty much everything leaked! (Sigh). Guess Chinese quality control ain't what it used to be.... oh, wait!

In any event, the next concern on the P2V-3 project will be the rocket launcher stub mounts for the 5" air-to-ground rockets. Lacking any good underside views, I was forced to use my blow-up copy of the P2V-2, mentioned at the beginning of this build for placement info.

As indicated in the first photo below, my first job was to measure where everything was. Using the kit line scribed as the rear edge of the leading edge of the wing as my datum line, I used a small square to locate the center lines of the rocket mounts (hereinafter referred to as the "mount(s) as opposed to the "stubs"). I extended these lines to the fore and aft edges of the wing drawing. I also discovered that the center lines were 1 scale foot apart (around 4.5 mm) apart.

I then laid the wing across the plans and extended the mounts' center lines onto the wing itself. (Also, please note where the holes existed for the kits jet engines have been filled.) Below, line "B" represents the rear line of the kit leading edge, while line "A" is a line drawn a scale 15 inches (about 5 mm) parallel to line "B". This is the distance from the datum line to the front of the mounts.

Below, we find that the first mount is 6 scale feet from the inner flap line. and all needed location lines have been transferred to both wings.

Now for the rocket mounts themselves. I took a random piece of leftover plastic card (around 40 thou, I'd guess -- about 1.25 mm) thick. By marking first with a pencil, then scribing, I laid out some strips about 9 scale inches wide, by about 15 scale inches long (more or less 3mm by 5mm). Using my exacto knife to follow the scribed line, I cut off one strip, 6 sections long. I discovered that it was best to round off the top sides of the long edges first, and then to file in the pointy ends of the mounts, using both ends of the strip for this, as you have a better hand hold now, than later, when everything is in smaller pieces.

At this point, you should have something that looks kind of like this (please excuse horrible photo!):

At this point, some pieces may break off if you are a little rough. No worries, as these parts will become the stubs for mounting the rockets. At this stage, they are intentionally oversize.

Eventually, when they are sanded and roughly shaped, and the mounts and stubs glued together, they will look more or less like this:

After which time, we will begin gluing them to the wings as shown below, being careful to align them side-to-side, as well as fore-and-aft. The excess height of the stubs will be dealt with later. For now, their size will help to align them to each other, and permit sanding to a uniform group.

I originally intended to make a master and then cast the rest, but after finding that each takes about two minutes, it's actually faster making them than mixing and pouring resin into such tiny molds. Any tips on easing THAT process would be appreciated.

The liquid glue job is a little sloppy, because my magical glue dropper was plugged. But it will all clean up with a little sanding, primer and paint.

Another view of aligning the stubs and mounts.

Well, that's all the time I have for now. See you next time.

Ed

Edited June 12, 2016 by TheRealMrEd

[jbpruitt]

Wonderful stuff Real Ed! You may just inspire me to build another Neptune!

[TheRealMrEd]

Hi, jbpruitt, that's the idea. By the time I get through, you should be able to do a -3, and maybe even a -4 version. Someone over on ARC did a -2, so there you go.

Well, this week has been a week where real life interfered with my real modeling. I hate it when that happens! But, I soldiered on and got a little done.

Continuing with the wings, after getting the rocket stubs installed and cleaned up a little, I extended lines from the back of the rocket mounts. There is a small panel behind the rockets and in front of the flap. There is a tiny hole behind each rocket, about 2" (scale) behind the leading edge of that little panel. These holes are where the cables for the rocket igniters come out of the underside of the wing. I will add these as the rockets are mounted, if I can get the old hands to steady up. I will use 32 gauge (AWG) from my friendly local jewelry maker supply, Hobby Lobby.

Next, we'll need to get some paint on the wings, but first I have to mask the Nav lights.

For about two-thirds of my masking needs, I rely on Parafilm "M", available from your local hobby shop, medical supply depot, or as in my case MicroMark. The film comes on a roll umpty-nine feet long and about 2" wide. To use, simply cut a piece about 1" or 25 mm from the roll, and remove the covering paper film. Take the remaining waxy thin film between the thumb and forefinger of each hand and stretch a material to about double it's length. WAIT ONE MINUTE. This allows the sticky part to set up. Then just place the film sticky side down where you want it, and burnish it down with a finger or cloth.

I personally find that two layers atop one another works better for me than one layer, as the thicker layer(s) are easier to remove when done painting. Of course sometimes two layers make it hard to see panel lines on canopies, you just one is needed, but because it is so thin, it may be harder to peel off in one piece. Just cut thru it with a sharp #2 blade, and remove everything you don't want masked. In this case, everything but the Nav lights.

Below, the one on left is not masked, the one on right has been masked and trimmed.

Next the wings were primed with Alclad grey and polished smooth with a fingernail buffer. Then a couple of coats of Alclad Aluminum were sprayed on just the leading edges of the wings and nacelles.

After this all dries a layer of water to which a drop of liquid dish soap had been added, was carefully dabbed here and there on the leading edges. The original guy who developed this technique (sadly, I can't remember where I read it) used a toothbrush to randomly splash droplets here and there by running a thumb over the soapy-water-laden brush. The theory is to let it dry, then paint your final color; let that dry, and then take sticky masking tape to the model in the chosen areas (something like removing lint), and some of the soapy spot residue painted over would fail, resulting in random paint chips of various sizes. Amount of soap and size of droplets to be experimented with at your leisure.

I am trying to better the results shown on this PB4Y-2 Privateer done a dozen years ago:

In my case, as some weathering and exhaust staining will be painted on the nacelles before the great unveiling, we'll all just have to wait and see how it goes. You'll either be amazed or I'll be sad -- probably the latter. One can always hope...

Next time, we'll get into something a little more meaty than technique. Perhaps those crazy UN-centered landing gear.

Bye for now.

[tonyot]

You are doing a brilliant job on this and I like your style,........looking forward to seeing this one progress very much indeed,....the Privateer looks great too.

I quite fancy doing an early Neptune myself with a solid nose in order to one of those operated by the Dutch Navy aircraft.

Cheers

Tony

[TheRealMrEd]

tonyot,

I think that just with a different noses (P2V-1 "Turtle" nose, P2V-2 having the gun nose or the "non-gun" nose, the 20-mm turret nose, plus all the later variants), then whether three or four-bladed props, 3 or more different nacelle designs and various radars, etc., one could make a career out of Neptunes alone! Certainly (IMHO) the most varied naval bomber/asw/interdictor of the U.S, and probably only second to the Canberra overall.

One word of caution on the P2V-3 however. Take a close look at the nose in the following picture:

The two blisters on the lower nose between the camera port in the center and the nose gear doors, are blisters to house the mapping cameras used for aircraft assigned to that mission. I can find ZERO evidence to show that these were ever used in wartime at the same time as the gun nose. This aircraft having seen only stateside duty, (at the end Jax NAS), I surmise that since the gun nose was obsoleted, the cameras were installed for their peace-time mission on the nose that was on the aircraft. This aircraft (or perhaps others at Jax) may be the only examples of this.

This build, being Korean War vintage, will not have these camera blisters at all. Opinion, or better yet facts about ths matter would be appreciated!

**** Note **** Have since found a few other photos with this gun nose/cam set up, but they are all of Naval Reserve aircraft, so far.

Ed

Edited June 18, 2016 by TheRealMrEd

[TheRealMrEd]

Moving right along, the next bit we'll tackle is the problem of the landing gear not being on center-line of their respective bays. As we are working on the engine nacelles and wings, this is the time to address this issue, before the nacelles are glued to the wings.

At this point, two major hurdles occur: A) that the entire main gear wheel bays are too shallow, and the main gear wheel would not fit into the bays if they could rotate closed. These problems would require cutting away the lower wing surface within the nacelle area and moving the forward part of the wing rearward inside the nacelle. As I have said before, I am no longer a bonzai scale fanatic, and so, will not be addressing these issues.

What I WILL address however, is the fact that the wheel is not centered in the wheel well, and since things that are visible while the model sits on the ground are my concern, we'll address that issue.

n the photo below, you will see the stock landing gear main strut, with one side bar carefully removed. In addition, there is a laminated chunk, consisting of two pieces of 1.5mm x 3mm plastic glue together with Weld-on #3 liquid glue.

I needed to saw the top of the gear strut free of the vertical part, leaving a very clean joint. I used a Lego block placed in a miter box to give me a 90 degree surface to saw on, as shown below:

The next picture shows the stock gear above, while below, the little mounting nib of the left as well as the horizontal part of the gear that I am keeping are glued to the white block, which has been cut to correct length, to fit the models' mounting lugs. The main leg has not yet been glued, but the other were glued with liquid cement, reinforced with short lengths of tiny music wire inserted into holes drilled in both pieces joined.

In the second picture above, all pieces have been joined including a slightly larger piece of plastic rod. Below, the secondary linkage has been built, using plastic rod. Since all these parts are fairly bogus anyway, I took the liberty of moving the connecting link to the opposite side of where it should be, because it simply made life easier, and it won't be seen with the model setting on it's gear anyway. There should also be a slight "kink" in the longer leg of the secondary bit, but it wasn't worth the effort to me.

In the above photo, the rods on the secondary linkage (where the glob of CA glue is) are actually Plastruct Butyl-coated wire 3/64" or 1.2mm diameter, #90101, from your favorite stockist.

The next picture shows the modified gear on the left side and the stock kit gear on the right. At least the main wheel ends up in the right spot!

The modified gear seems strong enough, but if it gives trouble later on, I'll cast some new ones out of 70/30 lead solder. Not PC I know, but I promise not to eat any.

Oh, one last thing. In order to be able to install the landing gear at a later date and hopefully avoid breakage, cut the secondary gear mounting lugs (inside the nacelles), by cutting out with a sharp blade, the top of one side, and the bottom of the other. This, for me, works better than cutting out both tops or both bottoms, and enables me to finagle the gear in after the fact.

"A" has the top side of the lug cut out (relative to the aircraft itself) and "B" shows the bottom cut out. Or would, if you could see it...

Later, Ed

Edited January 31, 2016 by TheRealMrEd

[TheRealMrEd]

Now, to divert for a moment to another useful bit, the 20mm tail turret.

I will describe the method which works best for me: I began by outlining the parts on the master sheet with a mini-marker.

After outlining the required parts, the next step is to trace the outline several times with a scribing tip, tool, or even a sewing needle in a pin vise. This sets up a fairly accurate outline that will eventually snap off cleanly, or it will guide a #2 exacto blade without slipping.

This leaves the thickness of the plastic as a thin white line below the black marking. This is the part that must be sanded off. When you sand down to the black line, stop. I also left the two turret halves joined for now as it made sanding easier. Forgive the glare, but the photo below shows this stage. Then the two halves were separated with a razor saw, sanded, and glued together. I piece of 5 thou card was glued to the backside of the turret and the sanded to shape. This 5 thou space will be where the pour stub or reservoir of resin is sawn from the turret after casting. Lastly, a couple of pieces of scrap plastic were glued together and to the 5 thou card, to finish the master for the resin cast.

Next a mold box was constructed of Legos, and acopy of the turrect was cast in resin. The bubble canopy area was left intact for the molding process.

The first casting was made with the re-useable molding material described earlier. In the next photo the vacuform plastic mast is on the left, the primed resin casting is on the right.

Notice the pinholes in the casting, as this was a gravity-only casting. At that point, I decided I needed a pressure pot for casting. Before going any further, I filled the inside of the turret with water putty to get an inside plug mold, and made the necessary mods to the original vacuform parts, as it was much easier to glue stuff to the plastic parts, more so than the resin copy. At this point, I decided to go for broke and make my first-ever hollow casting.

I placed the modified vacform turret on it's back in a Lego box, poured RTV silicone over it and waited. This gave me the female mold for the outside of the turret. I then built the Lego box a little higher and turned everything over and sprayed mold release over everything. Then, I poured the rest of the mold, the inner half, which makes the casting hollow inside. To cast the part, I fill the female mold about 1/2 full of resin, then stick the top half (male mold) into the other hald of the rubber mold. This forces out the excess resin, which along with the pressure pot, leaves me a clean molding when cured.

In the photo below, from left to right are shown the water putty inside molded part, the original resin turret cast, the re-work vacuform master, the trimmed resin final casting, and the both halves of the RTV silicone mold.

In my case, I took the resin part out of the mold a little too soon, and had to install my water putty inside part temporarily for the resin to hold it's shape until it had fully hardened.

The parts below are about as close as I could find for the 20mm gun barrels, which I will glue on later in the build.

I hope you enjoyed the story of my first effort not panning out, and appreciate how happy I am as the second effort did work! As I said erlier, this is a build in process, and I am figuring out how to build it as I go.

Ed

Edited February 2, 2016 by TheRealMrEd

[TheRealMrEd]

Well, seems it's time to get back to the engine nacelles and the exhaust.

After gluing on the cowls, I then added the exhaust parts. They were primed, then painted gloss black, and lastly sprayed with two coats of Alclad II Stainless Steel. This latter will hopefully be toned down a bit with later weathering. I used the canopy glue to glue them to the added little strip in the front, and to the bulkhead in the read of the exhaust area.

The next thing on the list was making the cowl flaps. I used .005" brass, because I had some laying around. Probably aluminum would have been better, perhaps from a soda can or something. In any event, I started by scribing and then cutting off strips that were 8mm wide, as this is the for/aft cowl distance on the model.

These strips were then cut into lengths of 23mm (the vertical height of the cowl flap area on the model), and then curved around the 11mm dia. barrel of a pin vise I had laying about. This let them precisely fit the curvature of the nacelle:

After checking the fit, but before gluing into place on the nacelles, I added two small rectangular strips on the back side, to represent the cowl flap actuators, as shown in the next two pics.

The strips were just glued into place with canopy glue, but, as you will hear later, perhaps 5-minute epoxy would be a better choice.

I then cut 4 pieces of brass to represent the plates that cover the cowl flaps when they are opened. My cowl flaps are going to be closed, so I just glued on these 8mm long, 5mm at one end and 2mm wide at the other end, smack dab in the middle. If you build one with the cowl flaps open, then you'll need to cut the 23mm cowl flap strips in half, and glue on at the correct angle, before gluing on these pieces.

See "A" below.

The strips of tape are there to give me something to hold onto while painting the flaps, as well as provide a clean strip to glue them. In my case, I first sanded, primed and then painted the flaps. Then, I proceeded to have fits trying to glue them into place. I used canopy glue, CA, watch glue, and finally ended up stripping all the messed up glue and paint off, gluing them down with 5-minute epoxy, and then masking the exhaust parts and repainting the whole nacelle(s).

That's why there's not yet a picture of this stage, as they are still in the paint booth drying for 2 days before I handle them!

Oh, and one last word of caution. You will note, that unlike the following picture, the top of my cowl flaps were NOT cut away on an angle:

I can only guess that this was a late service mod by Jax NAS or someone to reduce the amount of exhaust going over the top wing, thereby helping a bit with maintenance. I can find no other photos of this mod, so your guess is as good as mine.

At this point, I'll confess that I am having fits with the fuselage, specifically the fuselage windows. One had to be added on each side, and the side tail windows made round instead of rectangular. For most of my life, I've had no problems gluing in the kit windows with liquid cement, then filling gaps with CA and sanding smooth, then polishing. In this case the windows seemed to develop stress cracks, even though the liquid cement was carefully applied only to the edges, not on the "glass". Perhaps it is because the Weld-On #3 is too hot or something.

I have also tried drilling out the windows, filing square, then trying Micro Klear, followed by drops of future to fill the hole completely flush, trying CA and sanding. I was going to try casting the windows in situ using polyester resin, but my old can had hardened.

I would appreciate any tips from the bomber or airliner guys out there, so I can get on with it. I'm running out of little bits to do, when I'd rather get on with the fuselage!

Later, Ed

[TheRealMrEd]

Now it's time for another odd bit on this model, the huge, 3-bladed Hamilton Standard props. Fortunately, the kit gives us 4-bladed props, and everything we need to convert them to 3-bladed.

We begin by correcting the diameter of the propeller, which in this case is 15 feet 1 inch. Since the prop hub measures a scale 18", I added half of that to the kits 4-bladed prop length, and found that the kit blades were a scale 9 inches too short. This gives me a final diameter of 15 feet, and I figure the paint will make up for the last inch!

Anyway, I cut a strip of the proverbial ol' vacuum kit scrap, around 40 thou or so thick. This strip is 9 scale inches wide (around 4mm), with a very sharp, flat sanded edge. Then I glued 4 of the kit props to this strip, and will do the same later for the other four prop blades, giving me two spares or throw-aways. The liquid glue was allowed to dry overnight, before proceding.

These props are then cut apart, trimmed to width, and then sanded to shape. I sanded the backside curve of the prop with rolled up sandpaper, and the front side with a sanding stick, supporting the tip with a forefinger, to keep from stressing the glue joint more than necessary.

Next I glued plastic rod into three of the four cutouts in both the prop hub or backing plte, as well as the prop spinner. BTW, the small grey rod piece cut from the main gear legs while modifying them turns out to be a perfect fit for this.

I also printed out a 3" circle with 90-degree and 120-degree angles on it, and taped the drawing to a small cardboard box, covering the whole thing with clear packing tape (so that the glue won't stick to it), and then poked a small hole at the center of the drawing to accept the prop hub rod, which of course, fits into the hole in the front of the plane's engine at the end.

Next, scrap pieces of the old 40 thou card wre glued together with liquid glue, and then the joined bits were glued to the prop lines with the white canopy glue. The lower piece, marked "A" below, serves only to see that the blade is in horizontal line with the hub. That is, so that when viewed from the front, the prop blades will neither lean toward you or away from you, but will all be in the same flat plane. The "B" parts are only to set the prop "pitch" when gluing the blades onto the hub, and can be changed as you wish.

Next (not shown) the rods glued to fill in the unneeded holes in the prop hub and spinner were sanded flat, and trimmed to the outside circumference of their respective parts. Then, using the one original unfilled hole in the prop hub, one modified propeller blade was glued to the hub at the zero degree position, and the liquid glue allowed to dry. Next, I used a small knife-edge shaped file to file the correct new grooves for the other two blade at their respective 120-degree and 240-degree places. A razor knife or saw could be used for this; possibly even a miniature rasp. I used the safest bet as I am somewhat ham-handed at times.

In the above pic, note the filled, flatted former hole at the 180-degree mark. This is shown a little clearer in the next pic, as well as the placement of the rear edge of the prop blades on the "A" spacer shown above, as well as the "B" spacer to set the pitch. All prop blades are liberally glued with liquid glue and allowed to dry for 24 hours.

Then, the spinner can be glued into place, after indexing the one original hole in the spinner to the blade at the zero-degree angle, and marking the 120 and 240 positions onto the spinner with a pencil , and opening up the two new slots with your file, blade, saw, etc. After the glue dries fill whatever imperfection may exist, and it's ready for painting.

Two finished views shown below:

And as they say in the movies " T-T-Thats All F-F-Folks"!

Ed

Edited June 18, 2016 by TheRealMrEd

[Antoine]

I'm learning something with every post!

Well done so far.

[Hamden]

Stunning work as always

Roger

[kev67]

Very nice work

[wyverns4]

Just noticed this and very glad that I did!

+ and please carry on. Lots to learn here!

Christian, exiled to africa

[TheRealMrEd]

Thank you all for your very kind remarks. Also, let me say that I just today noticed the little Notifications button atop the page. As I have never posted on a forum that had this, I'm not sure what it means. Is it sort of a "like" on Facebook? In any event thank all of you who have "notified".

I'm so old-school that I still have a flip-phone with no texting or email. I do however respond on my computer to e-mail, PM and to these posts. To everyone else, thanks for looking!

Ed

[TheRealMrEd]

A small, "quickie" update for tonight. As has been pointed out, the nosewheel from the kit is too small in diameter, as well as to "square" in tire shape. Measuring on photographs, if an average person is considered to be 6 feet tall, then the wheel should scale out to about 3 scale feet in diameter, whereas the kit wheel scales out at 2.5 scale feet. My solution is to simply add "meat" to the tire, because a search of my entire stash failed to provide a good substitute,

I started with a length of 10 thou plastic card, the width of the tire. I glued the stock wheel to the strip and let the liquid glue dry overnight.

Actually, this is a staged photo, using a main gear -- I forgot to take the pic when I actually did the nose wheel!

The next day, I glued a turn-and-a-half onto the kit tire, with liberal applications of liquid glue, and clamped the whole thing with a clothespin. Again, let dry overnight.

Next, I sanded a small taper onto the end of a wooden cocktail stick, and glued it into the nose wheel with the watchmaker's cement, so that it would hold well, but I could unglue in later with no trace, using 99% rubbing alcohol. Then a stuck on some non-greasy modeler's clay, to cover the detail on the wheel hub (both sides). This is so I didn't mess up the hub detail in later steps.

I then covered the area between the glued-on strips and the original tries sidewalls with Perfect Plastic Putty. I was going to use Milliput fine, but I find that stuff kind of bothersome when using very small quantities. After the putty dried, I chucked the stick into my ancient Dremel tool on slow speed, and sanded the correct shape, using a fine sanding fingernail file stick thingy. I then removed the clay, and the stick, using 99% alcohol for the latter.

After sanding, I now have a 3-foot scale diameter tire and wheel combo, with the corrected rounder shape. (All the tires should have circumferential tread, but I didn't want to push my luck!)

I used this modified nose-wheel as a master for another silicone mold, for casting a resin master. The wheel is currently in the paint booth, have been primed with Krylon Glossy Gray enamel, and then two coats of Alclad II Aluminum. Tomorrow or so, I will paint the tire and then apply a wash to the hubs. Pics will follow.

TTFN

Ed

[Tailspin Turtle]

The nose wheel tire was actually 40" in diameter...