Ju 88A-4, Sicily, June 1941 (Revell 1/72) +++ Finished 19-08-2016 +++

[CedB]

Boring? Not at all! I like the step by step WiPs as they help me and others improve our techniques.

Thanks for making the effort Jaime

[jrlx]

I know you won't!

Always excessively kind, Paul, but now I feel the heavy burden of responsibility...

Boring? Not at all! I like the step by step WiPs as they help me and others improve our techniques.

Thanks for making the effort Jaime

Thank you, Ced! I share your interest on detailed step by step WIPs. I've learned a lot with them, so I think I should try to give my contribution as well.

Cheers

Jaime

[jrlx]

Hi again,

After two week-ends away from home and one week dedicated to my Harrier GR.3 build, last night I returned to the Ju 88.

I spent 1h30m sanding away the excess putty I had applied to the edges of wings, control surfaces and tail fin, as well as to the seams of the 500kg bombs and one of the wheels. There's really nothing to show, as these works don't show well in picture.

I also started removing the excess putty from the ejector pin marks inside the wheel well fairing parts. I only finished one of the four parts, as I was already very tired. This can be seen in the lower left corner of the following pictures. I still have to finish the other three parts:

The sanding was all done using 500 grit wet & dry.

Hopefully, I'll do some more work tonight.

Cheers

Jaime

[jrlx]

Hi again,

Another small update of work done tonight. It took me about 2 hours to do.

First, I finished sanding the excess putty on the ejector pin marks inside the wheel well nacelles:

Most of these won't be very visible, so the hiding of the markings doesn't need to be absolutely perfect. A coat of primer should do the rest of the hiding.

Then, I found I had forgotten to apply putty to the markings inside the tail end of the fuselage, which may be visible through the tail wheel well opening. I'll take care of these later.

To finish with, I took all wheel well doors off the runners, cleaned the gate remains and markings and glued the doors to toothpicks, ready for priming and painting:

Well, that's all for now. Progress is slow and everything seems to take inordinate amounts of time.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers

Jaime

[rob85]

Good to see your still dipping into this one Jamie! Nice work with the ejection pin marks

Rob

[jrlx]

Thanks Rob! The putty I used is 2 years old and already very porous. I think it will be good enough under a coat of primer, since the marks will be barely visible when the wheel wells and main gear legs are assembled. I've already bought a new unit of Squadron White Putty for future use.

Cheers

Jaime

[mcdonnell]

Hello,Jaime - Once again I compliment you on your methodical and thorough build approach. All the very best,Paul.

[jrlx]

Hi Paul,

Thanks, as always, for your kind words I'm now struggling with the GB deadline: so much still to do and the time is flying...

For a change, I'd like to finish this build in time. It's an excellent kit and an awesome aircraft and adding all the PE is a great exercise in super-detailing!

Cheers

Jaime

[mcdonnell]

Hi Paul,

Thanks, as always, for your kind words I'm now struggling with the GB deadline: so much still to do and the time is flying...

For a change, I'd like to finish this build in time. It's an excellent kit and an awesome aircraft and adding all the PE is a great exercise in super-detailing!

Cheers

Jaime

Hello,Jaime - My pleasure.Maybe it would be nice to make the GB deadline.However,the best things are sometimes worth waiting for and this build certainly will be worth whatever time dictates. All the best,Paul.

[jrlx]

Hi again,

Update with work done last night. I started masking the transparent parts. I'm using Eduard's pre-cut mask set, which is a must for German bombers with their complicated glazing.

Here's the set-up, showing the front canopy part in the centre, the yellow mask set and instruction sheet to the right. The tools used were: a nº 11 blade to remove the masks from the sheet, straight nose tweezers to put them in place and a toothpick to rub the masks flush with the transparent parts:

Here's the front canopy completely masked:

Next was the cockpit access hatch. Here it is before masking:

The following pictures show the hatch already masked. There were only two side windows to mask:

However, since I applied PE details inside, I'll have to paint the interior of the part. So, I must also mask the inside of the windows. The pre-cut mask set only has masks for the exterior, therefore I'll have to mask the interior by hand, cutting and applying small pieces of masking tape.

Next was the front transparent part of the gondola. Here it is before masking:

Here it is already masked:

Hopefully, I'll finish the external masking tonight.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers

Jaime

[CedB]

Very neat work Jaime - good job

[jrlx]

Thanks Ced, very kind!

This took me almost two hours and I used pre-cut masks. I don't even want to think about masking the inner sides of the transparent parts by hand...

Cheers

Jaime

[PlaStix]

Hi Jaime. Great to see more precise and detailed progress. Very impressive as always.

Kind regards,

Stix

[jrlx]

Thanks Stix! Very kind as always!

I would like to have the model ready for priming of the interior areas by the end of this week-end, but to reach that point I still have to finish all the external and internal masking of the transparent parts and apply several PE parts to the landing gear and wheel wells (at least...).

Cheers

Jaime

[jrlx]

Hi again,

Here's an update of work done tonight.

I finished the external masking of the transparent parts.

This is the aircraft's nose glazing:

After masking, which took me 50 minutes, this is the result:

Next, came the two halves of the rear canopy:

Masking these two parts took really a lot of time. Here's the end result:

To finish with, here are the chin glazing and the side windows of the gondola:

These were relatively easy to mask and the two pictures below show the results:

All the work shown in this post took me about 2h40m to do.

The next phase is the interior masking of the canopy parts, gondola glazing and access hatch, since there are PE parts inside these that will have to be painted. I anticipate this will be a lengthy and difficult task.

Thanks for looking and sorry for the rather boring posts of the last few days.

Cheers

Jaime

[mcdonnell]

Hello,Jaime - There's nothing boring about them.They're a lesson in how to do things thoroughly and carefully.The masking is a feat in itself. All the very best,Paul.

[jrlx]

Thank you very much, Paul! Very kind, as always!

Fortunately I used a pre-cut set of masks, otherwise I'd be masking forever...

Yesterday I did some more progress. I'll post an update today, hopefully.

Cheers

Jaime

[jrlx]

Hi again,

Here's the update of work done yesterday.

I thought better about the interior masking and painting of the transparent parts and decided I could do it only for the access hatch and gondola's side windows. These are the only parts directly visible from the outside, as I'll leave the hatch open. The canopy has no PE applied yet, so I can paint the PE parts separately and, hopefully, the interior colour of the canopy framing, applied only on the exterior of the parts, will be properly visible through the transparency of the unmasked frames.

Having decided this, I masked the side windows of the hatch on the inside:

I used Nigel's technique of masking a slightly larger area inside, in order to avoid alignment problems of the internal and external painting.

The insides of the gondola's lateral windows were also masked:

Next, I glued the side windows in place. The front transparent part will be painted first and then glued in place:

Then, I applied the PE detail to the main gear wells:

Eduard's instructions are not very clear regarding the application of these parts. There is a longer and a shorter PE part to apply to the sides of the plastic detail, which fit the corresponding length of the slanted sides. The small stubs in the PE parts should be facing inside. I had to scrap away a small raised detail on the shorter slanted sides, in order for the corresponding PE parts to fit properly.

There are also some PE details to apply to the inside of the wheel well nacelles but, first, the rearmost structures, moulded in plastic, must be removed, as per the PE instructions:

In this picture the detail in the nacelle on the lower left of the image has already been removed:

For this I used a nº 10 (rounded) blade. The next picture show all parts with the detail removed:

Here are the PE parts to be applied:

Again, Eduard's instructions are not very clear on which PE part goes in which plastic part. However, as can be seen above, there are two types of parts: the shorter PE part should go in the plastic part which includes the rear wheel well door (the larger back area of the plastic part), while the longer PE part should go in the other plastic part.

Here all PE parts have been glued in their proper places:

Closer view:

Next, here are the PE detail to be applied to the main gear legs. Included are the break lines and scissor links:

Here's the end result:

Since the oleos in these legs were covered with some type of canvas, the whole leg and PE will be painted RLM02 and that's why I applied all the PE detail before painting.

Before I can prime all the parts, I still need to remove the ejector pin marks on the inside of the tail that are visible through the tail wheel well opening. In the following picture I have already scraped the plastic around the marks on the part on top, using a nº 10 blade:

The marks on the part on the bottom of the picture were also scrapped. Then, I filled the marks with CA and left it to dry overnight.

With some luck, I'll prime everything today but I still have some small tasks to do before that: glueing some parts to toothpicks, grouping parts by colour, making a bulkhead out of plasticard to seal the rear fuselage in front of the small PE detail that goes in the tail (or was the inside of the fuselage visible through this opening in the real aircraft?).

Thanks for looking.

Cheers

Jaime

[Nigel Heath]

Nice work on the PE, looking good.

[jrlx]

Thanks Nigel, much appreciated!

Cheers

Jaime

[Mottlemaster]

Tell me Jaime , do you eve loose a part into the carpet . My carpet starts to get hungry and starts to salivate when ever i'm looking at at one of your posts

[jrlx]

Thanks Alistair!

In fact, I don't have a carpet in my work room, as the floor is wooded. This picture was taken a few months ago, when I had just installed the block of drawers on the right. It's not as clean now:

Fortunately, I haven't lost many PE parts yet. IIRC I've lost a lever for the cockpit of my Do 17z and several stretchers when I was rigging my Fokker Dr. I

Cheers

Jaime

[TonyTiger66]

Thank you for showing the process of masking step by step Jaime. Also describing the tools used. I haven't used one of these masking sets yet, but I have some and you've really helped me understand a good way to use them .

Very nice work on the undercarriage, it's going to be a lovely plane,

Best regards

Tony

[jrlx]

Hi Tony,

Thank you very much for your kind words! Much appreciated! I'm glad you found my rather lengthy posts useful!

Cheers

Jaime

[jrlx]

Hi again,

Here's the update of work done on Sunday.

Since the beginning of this build, I've been thinking about the best way of assembling and painting the tail wheel and its supporting structure. These are the plastic parts, but there's also a PE part to apply which is still in the fret:

The problem is how to avoid seams between the two parts that make up the supporting structure, while making painting easy and minimising the need for touch ups.

I finally decided that I would assemble the supporting structure before painting. However, this makes installing the wheel impossible, unless the locating pins for the wheel in the structure are removed and some kind of axis is created for latter installation of the wheel.

So, I started by assembling the structure:

The locating pins were removed and a piece of 1 mm-diameter plastic rod was used for creating a new axis:

The seams in the supporting structure were taken care of and the PE part was also glued in place:

Here are the parts glued to toothpicks, in preparation for priming and painting:

After painting I'll insert the axis in the wheel and cut it to the right size, so that it slides in place within the supporting structure for the wheel. Some ultra-thin glue should make it stick in place and only minor touch ups to the painting should be needed.

Next, I glued the following parts to toothpicks, in preparation for priming and painting. Here we have the main gear parts and wheels and the bombs:

I'll prime the bombs without the fins, as these are made up of PE. In this way I'll be able to check the seams in the bombs and repair them if needed, without damaging the PE fins. Only after making sure the seams are perfect will I install the PE fins and, then, prime the complete bombs.

While I was doing the work above, I applied several layers of CA to the ejector pin marks inside the rear fuselage, in the area of the tail wheel well. I let each CA application fully cure before applying the next. When the cured CA seemed to be level with the surrounding surfaces, I sanded the excess with wet & dry and managed to make the marks almost invisible:

I also used plasticard to fill in the holes due to the stubs which will hold the tail plane:

Then, I intended to install a piece of plasticard at the back, so that the interior of the fuselage could not be seen from the fuel dump opening at the rear. Looking for pictures of the real aircraft, to see how I should do this, I found these:

http://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?showtopic=21808&p=174550

http://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?showtopic=21808&p=174551

The rear fuselage was fully hollow but it's not clear if there was a solid rear bulkhead blocking the view from the fuel dump inside. However, seeing the inner structure of this area, I decided to make an approximate representation of the bulkheads and ribbing, using strips of plasticard.

I started by building the bulkhead seen in the second photo of the real aircraft, which separates the wheel well from the rear of the fuselage. The insides of the plastic strips still need some rounding with a round file:

I also started to install a rear bulkhead. The excess plastic will be cut once the glue has fully cured:

After finishing the bulkheads, I'll apply some ribbing. For the bulkheads I cut strips from a 0.5 mm-thick sheet of plasticard. For the ribbing I'll use a sheet of 0.25 mm-thick plasticard.

I didn't manage to reach the priming stage but I couldn't resist this small exercise of scratch building

Thanks for looking.

Cheers

Jaime