Another Hasegawa1/72 B-47E

[Sten Ekedahl]

After posing a question in the Cold War forum regarding the B-47, I thought why not start a WIP-thread on this build. That might put enough pressure on me to hopefully eventually complete this build. It all started with a visit to my LHS where I spotted the Pavla resin cockpit set for the Hasegawa B-47. Turned out a customer had ordered it, but in the end never bought it. I had long been considering getting this set for the B-47 kit buried somewhere deep down in my stash since... well, a long long time ago. So I thought this is my chance, and bought it.

 

So after a bit digging deep in my stash I eventually found the kit.

 

If you look carefully you can actually read the price tag. Yes, it says £6.95! That's how old it is. Bought at W.J. Walker's in Hackney, a shop now long gone, on one of my visits to the UK. This kit has been reissued a couple of times over the decades. But I think this is one of the very early ones.It was top of the line when first issued, But by today's standards it is a very simple kit. It is reasonably accurate, but has raised panel lines and rivets (B-47s were flush riveted!), nice wheels but simplified gear legs, a very thick canopy, very little cockpit detail, the RWR antenna and bomb aimers periscope on the tip of the nose incorrectly positioned on the centre line instead of offset to port, missing landing lights on the inner engine pods, substandard decals which have yellowed over the years. But nevertheless, with a bit of work it can be made into a very good model.

 

So the Pavla set is quite extensive and will do wonders for the cockpit.

 

It will require some very fine detail painting, especially the two instrument panels. Unfortunately the vacformed canopy has some nasty scratches on one side. Luckily I have a Falcon vacformed canopy which I will use instead. The main resin "lump" has to have some of the resin trimmed off in order to fit inside the fuselage. This is clearly shown in the instructions. The areas that have to be removed are also marked on the resin. After that I did a dry fit which looked promising.

 

But when I dry fitted it in the port half of the fuselage, the crew access passage didn't line up properly with the crew door. The whole resin piece needs to be moved 4-5 mm to the rear. But to do this I had to remove just over 3 mm from the rear end of the cockpit insert in order to clear the front end of the forward wheel well. For the time being the cockpit has been put aside and will be dealt with later.

 

In order to be able to start this project, I had to make sure that I had proper decals for it. A search on the net showed that Warbird Decals had issued four sheets for the B-47. One sheet with stencils and wing walk/ways, and three sheets featuring individual markings. Unfortunately most of these were sold out almost everywhere. But Warbirds themselves had the stencil sheet in stock, and Sprue Brothers had one of the other sheets in stock. So both of these sheets were ordered last week, and three days ago the sheet from Sprue Brothers arrived in the mail.

(Sorry for the slight out of focus. Printing is actually very sharp.) Just waiting for the other decal sheet to arrive.

 

Since the kit has raised panel lines, I have started to rescribe the kit. She scribing is actually not that difficult and doesn't take that much time. What actually does take time is the sanding afterwards, especially since some  areas on the wings are not even and the thickness of the trailing edges are not constant. So I have spent several hours scribing, sanding and polishing. So far one wing, one stabiliser and one wing tank is more or less done.

 

 

Meantime, I'll carry on scribing and sanding, scribing and sanding...

 

 

Edited March 31, 2017 by Sten Ekedahl

[SallysDad]

So glad to see your build.

Thanks so much for sending your link.

Randy

[adey m]

Hi Sten

 

Great to see another B-47 build with a different approach.

 

Looking forward to following your build and picking up on any information that I may have missed.

 

Adrian

[Sten Ekedahl]

No photos this update since they would look very much the same as in my first post. The B-47 is coming along nicely so far. Rescribing is about 50% done, apart from the fuselage which won't be done until it's closed up. So right now it is scribing and sanding, scribing and sanding... Scribing actually doesn't take long to do. It is the sanding that is time consuming since the surface is quite uneven and the trailing edges are rather thick in places. Scribing one wing takes just about an hour. But sanding it to shape, and then to the smoth finish needed, takes another 5-6 hours. So still a lot of work to be done. 

[Sten Ekedahl]

Finally received the second Warbirds decal sheet I had ordered. While the first one arrived only six days after I ordered it, this one took more that a month before it arrived!

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I'll be using the walkway lines and stencilling from this sheet. Possibly also the canopy frames since they include the white sealant edging the frames. Saves a lot of work instead of having to mask and paint them.

Edited April 22, 2017 by Sten Ekedahl