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1/48 Monogram B-29 as RAF Washington B.1 *Finished!*


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Hi All,

As long as this nice (? well, mild anyway!) weather continues my outdoor shed is still bearable. The last few years I've usually built ships indoors during the winter months, but this year I've been bold enough to start a nice aircraft project going into January.

 

This has been one of my "must-build" kits since I saw one hanging from the ceiling of Beattie's in Leicester when I was 17 or so. Since then I've never really got round to getting one of these kits, but last year I was very kindly donated one by my good mate Canberra Fan. At Telford in November he also discovered a set of Air-Craft decals for RAF Washingtons, and that set this build up!

 

I have some hopes for this project, but if it comes out anything like Ian (fu manchu)'s recent epic build, (and I'm not going to draw comparisons with the late Paul Coudeyrette's amazing looking version!) I'll be really happy!

I do hope this comes out as a bit of a reference build, as this is one of those kits that lots of people seem to own, but not many get made due to the sheer scale of the finished product. I hope plenty of people get involved with references, questions and the like, as I hope to answer a lot of questions about the kit and subject, as well as pose a few of my own.

 

References I've found useful so far are Chris Howlett's excellent PDF Washington Times series (link HERE) and Dave Forster's 192 Sqn info page HERE.

 

I'd also recommend a good general B-29 page featuring brilliant panoramic views like THIS (it's Enola Gay - a museum piece but authentic!)

 

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Here goes...!!!

Al

Edited by Alan P
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On 05/01/2016 at 5:52 PM, fu_manchu said:

Good luck!

Wow, it's that bad? Really? :banghead: (I mean, thanks!)

I have some useful material...

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I think all the options on the decal sheet had the Hamilton Standard props, hence the need for the TD set. If I'm going to do some detailing in the interior, vac transparencies are a must.

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Interior detailing is always helped in this scale by my mate Eduard and his nifty little pre-painted panels. (Self-adhesive! <_< yeah right, boss) and the Eduard exterior set makes up for some of the surface detail which I won't have to rescribe :yahoo:

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Eduard also features in the new resin wheels (nice!) very much more detailed and less fiddly to paint than the kit ones. The trick is getting the finished model to sit squarely on all six of them at the end!

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One last thing, a bit wasteful (only need the barrels) but look very nice:

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I can always save the carriers for one of my other Monogram bombers. (ed: yeah right, he'll just buy another bunch of them, won't he?)

Oh, and there's that nice decal sheet:

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What a refreshing change from the usual American noseart.

I'll be aiming to build the all-natural WF503 from 90 Sqn.

Edited by Alan P
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First impression - it's very big, and there's a lot of interior detail:

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It also represents a LOT of rescribing!

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So far all I've done is sand off the raised panel lines. Monogram silver moulds helpfully leave the exact line of the former panel line, greatly simplifying the rescribing job! I'll wait till all the halves are assembled before rescribing, so I end up with continuous lines across seams.

Not pictured, I've also prepared and cleaned up all the interior parts for painting.

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Picture credit and © AF Museum Dayton

What I originally thought was a plain Interior Green and Black paint job turns out to be a lot more interesting! There's interior green, chromate green, bronze dark green, some greeny-grey type colour.... down the back there's chromate yellow, natural aluminium and even plywood. This should be fun!

Al

Edited by Alan P
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Sounds great, I've always had an interest in RAF washingtons, I hope you won't mind me tagging along. Still best of luck with this build!

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Hi Alan, good luck with The Beast, I built one some years ago as a Korean War Tarzon bomber (the build is on the other site -Hyperscale, the shame...) and I can tell you not much of the interior is visible once it's all closed up. It's definitely one of those "well I know it's there" models.

Rescribing is as "inaccurate"as raised panel lines - they were lap joints and quite prominent, don't forget the wing spar is quite a different shade of natural metal to the rest of the airframe.

Mine took over the dining room for months, the wife has only just started talking to me! Then some bar steward nicked the finished model from storage at work!

Can't wait to see this progress, Cold War RAF - lovely.

Dave

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Really can't wait to see how this one progresses, I bought the same set of Air-Craft decals with a view to doing just such a project of my own eventually!

Regards,

Nik

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I`m looking forward to following this Al,.......good luck mate!

I`d love to build this myself but I just don`t have anywhere to put it,....so I`ll live my dream through you!

Cheers

Tony

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So I got those propellors for mine, I found them quite warped and spent quite a while with some hot water trying to resolve, but they still weren't perfect.

The vac form canopies look lovely, again I bought some, but these I didn't use - so you have spares available if you have issues. The main challenge is that you either have to make a different cut on the fuselage to match the intended vac canopy (causing issues if you have to revert) or you need to further cut the vac to fit the stock shape. The reason i didn't use it is you literally have the thickness of the clear parts to try to butt joint the front circular element with the top part and there is quite a large contact surface that needs to match well, the kit parts give you a mm or so of adjustment which i found very useful. You could create an internal frame to give you a bit more leeway.

Ian

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Thanks Ian. I'll give it a go as my philosophy on this is not to compromise on the interior (I'm going to use a hidden tail strut rather than try to add 200g of nose weight). That means it's important that I at least try to fit the vac parts to be able to see as much of the cockpit as possible.

Otherwise, I might as well sacrifice the whole area behind the seats and fill it with lead!

Edited by Alan P
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you can definitely have the correct weight with no visibility, i filled the voids either side of the nose gear, the underside gun area (which isn't visible) the top turret -again not visible, and if you put weight in the engine nacelles it should be ok.

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you can definitely have the correct weight with no visibility, i filled the voids either side of the nose gear, the underside gun area (which isn't visible) the top turret -again not visible, and if you put weight in the engine nacelles it should be ok.

That's good news. How does the nose gear stand up to the weight? Did you replace it with anything metal?
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That's good news. How does the nose gear stand up to the weight? Did you replace it with anything metal?

Do Scale Aircraft Conversions do a set for this kit?

This should be a fun build to follow :popcorn: however, my initial thought was that you will have a fine old time re-scribing this one!

Martin

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The gear seems strong enough, they are pretty robust. The main issue being the wheel to gear joint, as like you I used the eduard wheels so it's a superglue bond rather than a proper weld. However the actual legs don't lack in sturdiness

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Typically, after my first post, it's turned freezing out there. I'll try again tomorrow!

On the plus side - I just got some lead plate in. I'll see just how many places on a B-29 you can stick it. (Obviously you can tell I have a clear vision about this build, and I'm not remotely susceptible to suggestions, no sirree!)

Al

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Typically, after my first post, it's turned freezing out there. I'll try again tomorrow!

On the plus side - I just got some lead plate in. I'll see just how many places on a B-29 you can stick it. (Obviously you can tell I have a clear vision about this build, and I'm not remotely susceptible to suggestions, no sirree!)

Al

Presumely there is now a local church roof missing it's lead to provide sufficient weight to keep the nose down on this beast?
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi again,

Me and my big mouth, the highest temperature I could get in my shed using an oil heater was 7C!

Even so, through several abortive modelling sessions I managed to get a lot of groundwork done on the interior:

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Covered up the irritating ejector pin marks with thin plastic card

Also did the same for the bomb racks. I was wondering whether to detail them, but I think I'll just clean them up.

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I also put together the wing box which is prominent in the bomb bay:

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I extended the edges to fit into the entire width of the bomb bay, so there are no mysterious gaps!

This is the state of play so far....

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And here's a whole box of interior bits which will soon be ready for primer!

 

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The cockpit section was part started by the original owner:

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For some reason they also scratchbuilt the entire nose gear bay. I'm not sure why as it doesn't seem to solve any issues I'm aware of?

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The interior detail of the kit is pretty good. This is the forward-facing wall of the armoured bulkhead in the waist gunners/rest area compartment.

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I'm not going to even bother with the area behind this bulkhead as it will be completely invisible. At least the gunners' area will be visible through the big vacform blister windows.

And finally, a brief reminder of my current working conditions:

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No wonder this build is not up to the cracking pace of my usual efforts!

Al

Edited by Alan P
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Great stuff Al, I love these old Monogram kits and have a couple of 'em on the go, once united with all the AM stuff available they can be turned into something rather special as I'm sure yours will. Once you've finished it be a good chap and dump it on the Bomber Command sig table....actually come to think of it it'll need a table of its own !

And finally, a brief reminder of my current working conditions:

What's up with yer...a shed, I wish.....I'm in a distant corner of the the garden at the mo,

snow-505348_960_720.jpg

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Thanks for the well-wishes Andy, see what you think after this big update!

Cockpit primed:

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Here's the 150g of lead I've managed to stash around the underside of it:

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(and it's still not enough!)

I managed to get another 50g into the front end of the tunnel - a very convenient location for nose weight, top tip from me :)

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Here's all the rest of the interior parts primed and ready for some colour.

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After a lot of head scratching I decided that the Washington I'm building did have the twin exhaust pipes on all engines, so I adapted the kit single exhausts into twins.

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One of the units was lost somewhere along the line (the perils of second-hand kits!) so I managed to create one from one of the kit bomb halves.

Bomb bay interior primed and ready for paint:

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This will be my first use of Alclad Honey Primer, I'm hoping the black areas will give a shinier finish compared to the grey areas when I spray the Polished Aluminium on it.

Al

Edited by Alan P
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The Alclad worked very nicely, caught just the effect I was hoping for:

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Got the first proper colours on the interior parts:

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There's a variety of greens for the different components and parts. These are base colours, and I still have a lot of detailing to add.

Meanwhile, I started mucking about in the bomb bay with some yellow chromate primer:

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So far I really like the effect that makes.

Here's the finished interior, it looks much more interesting than the usual monochrome.

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While that's drying, I started assembling the wings. These are huge and require a lot of cleanup.

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One thing I can unreservedly recommend on these old kits (especially if you use liquid cement) is to gently file down the mating surfaces of both wing halves. It saves lots of filling later!

Here's a test fit - it doesn't look too bad:

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Unfortunately, I greatly underestimated the size of the finished product - this will be very difficult to display, or transport. I don't know how Tom Probert copes with his 1/32 versions!

Al

Edited by Alan P
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