Antares 1/48th Me-262 V1 (Stage I) - final update

[trickyrich]

Wow this build have been a long time in the making, my original plan was for a 1/32nd or even bigger scale model of the 262, But they were a bit too expensive. Next it was to be something really unusual, then a fighter ace’s aircraft or Galland’s JV-44 aircraft, or…. I just couldn’t make up my mind!

 

In the end I decided to build an Me-262 without jet engines!

 

She is the first, the granddaddy/grandmother of them all and a fair bit of aviation history as well, aircraft V1 before she had her jets fitted.

 

The model is by Antares and covers the Stage I & II variations of the aircraft, stage II being with her fitted with the BMW P.3302 engines. She’s a multimedia model mostly made up of resin (yes my 4thone in a row!).

 

 

One-piece wings and solid cast fuselage.

 

 

The rest of the bits are quite nicely cast though the resin is very hard and brittle as I unfortunately found out as I was looking at the fuselage/wing join……..as can be seen above with the plastic strip holding it all together!!

 

 

 

These bits are used if you build the Stage II version.

 

 

The U/C is white metal, which it needs, same with the prop and other small bit. No PE with this one.

 

 

Decals are nice and simple and you get a spare canopy, always a lifesaver!

 

 

Right there is one big issues with the model as can be seen below. There’s a bad-casting mismatch between the top and bottom bits of the fuselage.

 

 

I had a talk to Marcelo from Antares about this, and unfortunately it was just the way it ended up being cast, the few remaining ones he had left were similar (it was an early casting by him and is long since out of production).

 

I’ve done some checking and it’s very close in dimensions, I may just get away with re-filling and profiling, though if it bugs me I’ll just re-skin the bottom…and if it really bugs me I’ll cut the tail off and fit a Tamiya one!

 

I was hoping it would be a fairly simple straight forward build…..guess I’ll have to wait for the next GB!  

[Basilisk]

Rich, do you have a plastic allergy? Normally it is the other way round! Great choice - will be interesting to see how you do the natural metal finish.

 

1 hour ago, trickyrich said:

Wow this build have been a long time in the making, my original plan was for a 1/32ndor even bigger scale model of the 262, But they were a bit too expensive.

I am sure this kit wasn't cheap either

 

1 hour ago, trickyrich said:

I was hoping it would be a fairly simple straight forward build…..guess I’ll have to wait for the next GB!  

Unfortunately they never are ...

 

1 hour ago, trickyrich said:

Right there is one big issues with the model as can be seen below. There’s a bad-casting mismatch between the top and bottom bits of the fuselage.

 

This is a good opportunity to try out CA mixed with talcum powder. It will stick well to the resin and doesn't shrink.

 

And what do you do about the rivets No putty on this aircraft. As the resin is very hard, why don't you try Mike Grant's rivet decals? They look great on NMF.

 

Looking forward seeing her progress.

Cheers, Peter

[trickyrich]

RIVETS!!!  

 

I'll use plastic rod to for most of the filling work.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

8 hours ago, trickyrich said:

 

Are you missing a blade ? Or did the real aircraft only have two ? 

[Ozzy]

Nice looking kit Rich, not seen this aircraft before.

[trickyrich]

On 5/2/2018 at 2:50 AM, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Are you missing a blade ? Or did the real aircraft only have two ? 

no she only had a twin blade prop which was turned by a Jumo 210G (~700hp, from a early series Bf-109D) , with the jets fitted she barely kept aloft! 

[trickyrich]

ok I haven't actually started this but I have....sort of?

 

As I showed in the earlier photos there is a bit of an issue with the main fuselage, mostly the rear section.

 

 

After doing some comparisons with the original model this one was based on I think I found the issue…and it’s not quite a simple fix either.

 

So bare with me on this as I explain. Tamiya’s Me-262A-1A was the base for this model. The fuselage was cast in one piece made up of an upper and lower mould. During the recasting process the upper fuselage section of the mould spread open to far and allowed the lower half to drop into it slightly.

 

 

 

As a result the finished cast looks as it does here, the fuselage is too wide and the depth (top to bottom) is too shallow. Unfortunately this model is long out of production and talking with Marcelo (owner of Antares), there are no spares available and the remaining models have the same issue.

 

So what to do, 

 

1, live with it and just reshape the fuselage, width and depth will be wrong

 

2, cut the fuselage length ways and add a spacer to get the depth right and reshape the width

 

3, cut-off the rear fuselage and replace it

 

4, bin it and build something else

 

All good ideas, some will required lots of work, most sensible people would go for #4, me……well I'm not so I'll go for option #5! 

 

For this I’ll require this (along the way I optioned it up to the max with lots AM stuff….as you do), though I won't be using it.

 

 

No I’m not going to cut it up, sacrilege plus also a huge waste.

 

Now I’m going to require some balsa wood, some PinkySil, and some resin of course!

 

I’m going to cast a complete new rear end…easy huh, what could go wrong!    One good thing is being a tail sitter I don’t have to worry about weight so it’ll be solid cast.

 

I made a start…..but ran out of PinkySil!!   The bottles were just there to take up space so I didn't use as much silicon....didn't quite work!

 

 

I’ll buy some more tomorrow and continue with my Frankenstein creation! I'm also going to do something different with the casting as well!

[Mottlemaster]

How about option 6

Buy the Dragon 262 Mistel set which comes with a complete spare fuselage and use that . Ok you have a 262 mistel you may not want but i guess you could sell it cheap

[trickyrich]

5 hours ago, Mottlemaster said:

How about option 6

Buy the Dragon 262 Mistel set which comes with a complete spare fuselage and use that . Ok you have a 262 mistel you may not want but i guess you could sell it cheap

hmm didn't think if that (or actually knew about it), but I want to keep with the Tamiya fuselage if possible as that's with this model is mastered off. Plus the worry with the Dragon fuselage is that it may not match!

[Mike]

You've really bitten of a sizeable chunk of self-inflicted pain there Rich! I wonder why they didn't just cast up a conversion set for the Tamiya kit?  Fewer parts, less resin & RTV, and I'd have gone for one!

 

Is it a big job to convert the Tamiya kit with scratch-built stuff?  I've always fancied one, but never quite had the nerve to go hacking things up. (he says whilst surrounded by scratch-built parts of a T-Stoff tanker! )

[trickyrich]

11 minutes ago, Mike said:

You've really bitten of a sizeable chunk of self-inflicted pain there Rich! I wonder why they didn't just cast up a conversion set for the Tamiya kit?  Fewer parts, less resin & RTV, and I'd have gone for one!

 

Is it a big job to convert the Tamiya kit with scratch-built stuff?  I've always fancied one, but never quite had the nerve to go hacking things up. (he says whilst surrounded by scratch-built parts of a T-Stoff tanker! )

arrr yes I have!!  It may have been easier to just convert a Tamiya but after comparing the two the nose section is quite different. Roughly the same basic shape but fatter, not that easy to get right and there are a couple of minor differences else where.

 

But the casting is done and I've finished casting up the new resin tail and cut off the old one....and run into more issues! I haven't had the chance to write up a post yet, only just managed to dig my way out of the dungeon through waist high resin dust! Even managed to almost kill the vacuum cleaner! The resin poor old Marcelo has to use is super hard and really brittle, have totalled a couple of my razor saws as a result, completely bent out of shape.

[Mike]

7 minutes ago, trickyrich said:

The resin poor old Marcelo has to use is super hard and really brittle, have totalled a couple of my razor saws as a result, completely bent out of shape.

I'm double-glad that I didn't succumb when you posted up about it now I might look into it myself one day, but I hope you're wearing some breathing protection while you're doing all this sanding? :mum:

[trickyrich]

most definitely!!

[trickyrich]

This 9 to 5, Monday to Friday stuff is really affecting the building progress! Work on al project has come to a crawl, I’m not too sure for how long I’m going to be stuck with this either!

 

So this update accounts for the week that passed. 

 

I got some larger bottles of PinkySil as I have a felling I may be needing them for later projects. The mould came out pretty well, so time for resin!

 

 

Due to the strange effects of time I completely forgot about taking photo’s post pour. But it all worked out quite well and I had two complete rear sections of a Me-262. After block sanding flat I ground out the inside surfacers, this allowed me to run a bead of CA cement on the inside join. Just a tiny amount of finishing was required, plus I cut off the section I didn’t need and ground out the centre section as well.

 

 

Next I just chopped off the rear section of the main fuselage at the point where the new section would start, simple job........nah!!    The resin is just so hard and brittle, plus any heat generated in the cutting caused the razor saws the bind up! I pretty much totalled two of them doing this!

 

 

Then for some reason I decided to grind out as well the rear area of the cockpit as well.....big mistake, somehow the fuselage section there is now narrower than the new section!   Previously it was wider!!

 

 

I’ve just made more work for myself here. I’ll thrown it into a bath of really hot water and see what happens (with this resin nothing short of boiling water will effect it!).

 

 

There are a few alignment issues as well as some rather large gaps. The wing fairings on the fuselage section don’t match up along with a couple of other things, nothing that can’t be sorted out, they just take time. Plus there's a chip out of the trailing tips of each wing as well, plus the actual trailing edges of the wing are super thick! If it wasn't for the that I'll be dropping the control surfaces on the Tamiya wing then I would have recast the back half on it's wing!

 

The original cockpit tub is sort of ok, but I may replace it with the leftover Tamiya/Eduard one as some of the detail is a bit poor/vague. Strange you normally add resin to a plastic model, not plastic to resin one!

 

Aires, Antares, Tamiya

 

If it all goes pear shape/ , then these will be part of the backup plan with the Tamiya model!

 

 

[Basilisk]

You certainly throw every add-on there is on this build You have now lots of choices. I think you need them as it looks to be a challenging build.

 

How did you actually cast the tail section? In two half and then glued it together?

 

Cheers, Peter

[Mike]

Good job Rich - I haven't cast anything in resin in yeeeeeaars now.  I had big plans to make myself a vac pot and all sorts once, but never got round to it, like a lot of things

 

I bet our workshops are equally dusty now

[trickyrich]

2 hours ago, Basilisk said:

You certainly throw every add-on there is on this build You have now lots of choices. I think you need them as it looks to be a challenging build.

 

How did you actually cast the tail section? In two half and then glued it together?

 

Cheers, Peter

the add-ons aren't for this one, they're part of the backup plan if this one goes to . My backup plan is Adolf Galland's wee JV-44 beastie "White 3", thought there is a bit of doubt if he flew this one or another.

 

Yeap, I cast the tail as two sides from the original fuselage pieces from the Tamiya model. I didn't want to glue them together as it would have made fitting the cockpit tub and bulkheads near impossible. Because it was a tail sitter I didn't have to worry about the insides, so I only took a mould of each outside. Then when casting the new resin bits I placed a sheet of acetate on the resin in the mould while it was still liquid, this allowed me to help the excess really thin, plus it gave me a edge to work with. 

 

Once out of the mould I block sanded it down to the right thickness and then ground out a section about 4-5mm from the edge of the casting. It wasn't vey deep but it meant I could run a bead of CA cement along the inside join. One side of the new resin fuselage was slightly wider than the other, similar to what occurred to Marcelo I think, I knew what I did wrong but in this case it was really easy to fix.

 

As it is now I could easily cast a complete replacement resin tail which is pretty mush perfect. Though for a normal Me-262 it would be too heavy!

1 hour ago, Mike said:

Good job Rich - I haven't cast anything in resin in yeeeeeaars now.  I had big plans to make myself a vac pot and all sorts once, but never got round to it, like a lot of things

 

I bet our workshops are equally dusty now

You know I actually enjoy the whole casting process, it's really exciting to see if it all comes out ok. If I had the motivation (I'm sort of planning to one day) I'd make more and sell them, something I should do for the RF-111C Recon door in 1/48th, no one does one.

 

Dusty......yeap! My work desk and surrounds is nice a clean, but all the models on the shelves.....many layers of dust. So much so that the one's on the shelf of doom have pitch forks and torches and are chanting really horrible things, quite scary so I tend to keep well clear of them!  

[Mottlemaster]

Respect . Your well on the way to starting a cottage industry model making business .

[trickyrich]

thanks....... I wonder if there's a need for resin dust? I have mountains of the stuff I need to get rid of!

[Mottlemaster]

For filling gaps , air bubbles etc in resin I use a super glue talcum powder mix . Maybe superglue resin dust mix would work or even be better

[Silenoz]

Resindust works equally fine as a filler for CA... 

 

Nice work. I have the Antares HGIII conversion, for which the dragon mistel is a good donor...

 

Nice work with the casting.

[trickyrich]

I haven't used CA and talc before, but I know it's quite popular, resin dust would work nicely as well. Generally if it's a big gap i'll fill it with scrap plastic or resin. The smaller stuff either filler or CA and accelerator, I prefer CA as I can work much faster.

 

Just a quick update as I have spent most of the time on the Vigilante.

 

The front fuselage section was given a bath in hot water and it returned to the correct width with a little help of some guides I glued to it. It was then just a case of carefully lining the two sections up and gluing together.

 

 

Just a light sanding was required, am very happy how that turned out.

 

 

I did some test fitting of the wings and found more issues, namely the position of the wings to the wing fairings on the fuselage. You can just see it in at the bottom of the top photo. If I extend the lower fuselage profile from the new rear fuselage, which I know is the correct depth I find that the wing sits too high and nose section is too shallow. I knew there was an issue here but I didn’t realise how bad it was and had attempted to just sand it out.

 

It’s not that far out that I need to re-cast it so I’m going to build it up by re-skinning it with plastic strip. It’s much simpler then using just filler and it keeps it’s original profile.

 

So I had to re-grind in the edge I removed and started to add thin strips of plastic flat rod. I had attempted to do it in one sheet but it was just too hard to get the curves right.

 

 

So the first layer is on, I’ll finish lightly sanding it before a start a second layer about a third the way in from the edge on each side.

 

 

 

Then it’ll just be a matter of re-profiling it all. Hopefully that won’t take too long. Then I’ll have to figure out what to do with the fuselage wing fairings!

[fewr9fkr9595]

Wow mate you make my efforts messing about with resin look like childsplay! 

 

Keep up the good work. 

 

Tony

[trickyrich]

4 hours ago, Tony Oliver said:

Wow mate you make my efforts messing about with resin look like childsplay! 

 

Keep up the good work. 

 

Tony

Thanks Tony, though I have to say the fine stuff you're casting is really good as well, you now just have to try something large! With stuff like this you just have to jump in at the deep end and make it up as you go, she would have ended up a "stash queen" if I hadn't gone this far. If I had owned the original moulds or had permission I would cast the new section as well and sell it off as a correction set. But there are so few out there and I don't want to disrespect Antares I won't be, these are a pure one-off.

 

Right a small bit of progress. I completed re-skinning the new section nose section, once it’s completely dried I’ll start sanding it back and profiling it to suit. I should be able to get it almost to where I want without filler or at least the bare minimum….well that’s the plan.

 

 

Just roughly sitting in place you can now see what the underside profile will look like. Before it was too shallow and they just didn’t look right when compared to drawings of the fuselage.

 

 

Though it’s not easy to see you see how the wing fairing on the old fuselage section compares to what it should be on the new section. Plus the extremely thick trailing edge, a small matter that needs to be sorted out later.

 

 

Right the wing to fuselage join. There is a big gap, I basically have to redo the lot, not an easy task to replicate easily, however….

 

 

 I intend to make a cut roughly here, it’ll be a fraction above where the fuselage flattens out, or is at it’s widest and remove this section. I’ll then move it down and glue this the wing, this will give me the nice wing fairing….hopefully. The gap I’ll fill with scrape resin.

 

 

The wheel well inside will probably not look the best but it’s a trade off I’ll take to get the wing fuselage shape correct and sitting right.

 

Once this is done it should be just simple stuff to complete her. The next tasks will be to do the profiling of the re-skin and fit some location mounts for the wing, probably something I’ll do on the weekend.

[Mike]

Coming along nicely - I've just noticed that the inner wing panels aren't swept, which makes the prospect of a conversion just that bit trickier Nice scratching of the under-nose bit though