When 3 Become 1 - Converting an Italeri Ju52/3m to a Ju52/1m *** COMPLETED ***

[busnproplinerfan]

To bad the museum’s closed for awhile. I could get you measurements of some bits. Looks like you’re doing good so far.

[clive_t]

21 hours ago, Orso said:

I am glad that my Ford didn't have those skis. But I think that you will do a good job on those. Youre off to a good start.

Thanks Björn, I think I am getting there!

1 hour ago, Biggu said:

Magnificent   🧐

Thanks Biggu!

1 hour ago, busnproplinerfan said:

I wonder if those pictures, namely the  bottom one was taken in Winnipeg on the Red River. Canadian Airways had a water base at the end of Brandon Ave. in Winnipeg. There’s still a dock with sailboats that never move parked there.

You could well be right, although according to one web site many of the images were of the aircraft at a place called 'Sioux Lookout' - which may of course be the same place!

1 hour ago, busnproplinerfan said:

To bad the museum’s closed for awhile. I could get you measurements of some bits. Looks like you’re doing good so far.

No problem, thanks anyway

 

As hinted above, the progress on the skis is advancing. The wood has now been coated with thinned Tamiya clear yellow. Here's how it looks with the struts etc loose fitted on top the skis:

 

 

I hope to cut some small discs of thin styrene sheet and glue those to the skis with Gorilla glue or similar, then once they're stuck on I can glue the rest of the structure to those discs. I suspect that first I will have to spray them separately.

 

One final, small but significant landmark moment - the fitting of the canopy:

 

 

This went way better than I could have hoped! Next up, i can foil the fuselage roof right up to the canopy!

 

 

 

 

[busnproplinerfan]

Sioux Lookout is a town in north western Ontario. At the time they look the same in the picture. Just bush. i want to make one of these to, I'll have to study this. I want mine either on floats or how it looks today. Keep in mind, ARM today is a replica, only one original float survives.

[Orso]

14 hours ago, busnproplinerfan said:

To bad the museum’s closed for awhile. I could get you measurements of some bits. Looks like you’re doing good so far.

As the plane in the museum is a replica with many (large) faults I wouldn't use it as a pattern for a model.

[busnproplinerfan]

6 hours ago, Orso said:

As the plane in the museum is a replica with many (large) faults I wouldn't use it as a pattern for a model.

It would have faults, I know it doesn't have the roof hatch and the cockpit was never finished. It was meant to be made flyable but Transport Canada wouldn't certify it, no one knew the reason why. The original was scrapped during WW2 when parts supply ran out. If I did a current version, it would be in a dio of the museum with info boards etc.

[clive_t]

Another small step this evening - I have stuck small pads made from thin styrene sheet onto the places where the framework will join to the ski:

 

 

I used Gorilla Glue Clear for this - it's great as it doesn't foam like the normal brown stuff. Looks like a good solid join, too.

 

I also completed the framework structures, and sprayed them with Tamiya Chrome Silver X11:

 

 

OK the chrome silver is not obvious in the artificial light, but I did spray them honest!

 

[clive_t]

Roof now foiled:

 

 

It needs a bit of a tidy up in places, but I am more than a little relieved that this stage is out of the way.

 

For good measure, I sprayed the tail parts the bright red-orange colour - Obviously the reference photos being black and white, can only show these in grey scale, so this is very much my own interpretation of the colour:

 

 

You can probably see the original 'day glo' orange colour (Revell Aqua Luminous Orange) on the tissue. I felt this was too bright and garish for a 1930s aircraft, so I added a generous slosh of Tamiya Flat Red (XF7). Hopefully I now have a sufficiently large batch of paint with which to do the wing areas that need it, and a band around the fuselage aft of the large side hatch on the port side. Then, dare I say it, I shall need some decals!

 

Thanks for looking

 

[Brandy]

That canopy is lovely. I didn't realise just how different it is to the 3m. Nice job on the skis too!

 

Ian

[clive_t]

17 hours ago, limeypilot said:

That canopy is lovely. I didn't realise just how different it is to the 3m. Nice job on the skis too!

 

Ian

Thanks Ian, I'm quite taken with it too!

 

The skis are now glued, and surprisingly sturdy for a bunch of short bits of quite bendy styrene rod:

 

 

Another of those little jobs out of the way - the exhausts, made from a piece of scrap styrene sheet and some leftover rod, each piece drilled out to make it more pipe-like:

 

 

With the exhausts in situ:

 

 

Next up, the tricky bit - the top of the nose!

 

 

[stevehnz]

This is taking shape rather well Clive, I hesitate to use the term beautifully in view of how aesthetically challenged the subject is but there is definitely some beautiful modelling going on here.

Steve.

[Courageous]

Skis are looking nice and sturdy and a good set of exhausts too.

 

Stuart

[clive_t]

23 hours ago, stevehnz said:

This is taking shape rather well Clive, I hesitate to use the term beautifully in view of how aesthetically challenged the subject is but there is definitely some beautiful modelling going on here.

Steve.

Thanks Steve, and I know what you mean - looks only a Junkers design engineer could love!

18 hours ago, Courageous said:

Skis are looking nice and sturdy and a good set of exhausts too.

 

Stuart

Thanks Stuart.

 

OK, the top of the nose. From what I can see there is a fixed longitudinal 'spine' down the centre, with hinged access panels either side. So first up, the spine:

 

 

Now the fun starts! The hinged panels appear to be flat at the end nearest the cockpit, and curved at the nose... what could possibly go wrong? Absolute care needed here, however, as directly underneath these are the very delicate ventilation louvres - damage to these at this stage would be a disaster! So, I am fixing the panels one corner at a time, with a very Heath-Robinson approach to holding the panels in place whilst the glue goes off:

 

 

That's as far as I am prepared to push my luck!

 

Thanks for watching, as ever

 

[Brandy]

That's one way of doing it!

 

Ian

[Courageous]

1 hour ago, limeypilot said:

That's one way of doing it!

...and another way is possible to use something more solid and can be easily shaped, something like a block of wood. Just saying.

 

Stuart

[clive_t]

52 minutes ago, Courageous said:

...and another way is possible to use something more solid and can be easily shaped, something like a block of wood. Just saying.

 

Stuart

Possibly, although to be fair my fingers/thumbs and carving blocks of wood don't mix well

 

Still, I think I've got it done now. Just a little more persuasion required:

 

 

... and we are there:

 

 

Of course, the ubiquitous corrugations, and foiling, need to be applied at some point. One other minor job off the list - the undercarriage legs supplied with the kit have a fairing on them, which is not in evidence on many of my reference pics. So I've made a start on paring them down - the one on the left I have done, the one on the right still awaits its fate:

 

 

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

What a great job you are doing, Clive.

Nice to see it taking shape!

Cheers

[clive_t]

19 hours ago, Moa said:

What a great job you are doing, Clive.

Nice to see it taking shape!

Cheers

Thanks Moa, much appreciated.

 

The top of the nose is now fully corrugated:

 

 

I will leave that a while before foiling.

 

For now, though, and just for laughs, I loose fitted the fuselage and the wings:

 

 

It's beginning to look a lot like the beast I always feared it would be!

[clive_t]

Hi all, back at it after a short enforced absence - firstly a week of 'fun' in DisneyLand Paris, followed by a few days repairing the damage caused by my mistaken belief that a glass shelf could easily be supported by 4 thin plastic wall-plugs stuck in the holes where proper shelf pegs should have gone... fortunately in this latter case, the damage was relatively light - requiring repairs only to the MiG-15, the flying bomb and the Vampire. To be honest, I did lose some sleep the night that I found the collapsed shelf - not for the damage that was done, but for what could have happened to my more prized models. Suffice it to say, the wall-plugs are now out of there, replaced by 30mm lengths of 5mm aluminium tube that are (a) stronger, and (b) a push fit into the holes.

 

Anyway, I have at last managed to progress this a little further, firstly I managed to foil the nose section:

 

 

After giving the whole fuselage a light sanding to try and reduce the shine, I masked up the front in preparation for spraying the nose black:

 

 

With a liberal application of some Tamiya flat black and a bit of drying time, the masking was carefully removed - a big relief to see the canopy still all present and correct, if in need of a minor touch up here and there:

 

 

Next up, I need to try and apply the orange/red banding to the wings, and possibly around the fuselage. Still, we are back on the road!

[clive_t]

Another very fiddly job on the way to completion - the tail ski! I'm not massively blessed with reference photos on this, but from what I can see it appears they kept the principle of interchangeability that allowed them to easily substitute wheels for skis on the main undercarriage. Basically, my starting point was the kit tail wheel structure:

 

 

I cut out the wheel part leaving the 'leg' section:

 

 

I then drilled out a hole for where the wheel axle would go, and made up some struts for the ski:

 

 

All glued up, taking care that the axle is free to rotate:

 

 

Whilst that's drying, I set about making a small tail ski in a similar way to the larger ones - the minor exception (aside from the obvious size reduction) being that I only used two laminates. I also wet the pieces of wood prior to trying to bend them, so as to try and prevent the thing splitting where I am attempting to curve the wood up at the front:

 

 

Hopefully once this is all dried I can move on to painting and assembling the thing.

 

Thanks for watching!

 

[clive_t]

Today's modest progress - the ski was cut and sanded to shape, and some small discs of styrene were stuck on with Gorilla Glue clear:

 

 

I spray primed the framework with Tamiya flat black, then followed that up with some chrome silver (X-11). Whilst I was about it, I did the legs for the main undercarriage also:

 

 

Finally, the rear tail ski was assembled:

 

 

Hopefully that will look the part once it's stuck on the fuselage - when the time comes, of course!

[rob Lyttle]

Wow, Clive, you're really sorting this, big time!! 

Great to have caught up with this build. 

And you've got the foiling off to a T. 

And the self-fabricated corrugated panels. 

Looking splendid altogether. 

😎

[Courageous]

Great work on the tail skid, looks neat.

 

Stuart

[Biggu]

This is top drawer , Clive, I love the foiling, Rob Lyttle is absolutely right, you have nailed this.....

[Adam Poultney]

Looking great, can't wait to see her finished

[clive_t]

Thanks to @rob Lyttle, @Courageous, @Biggu and @Adam Poultney for your comments

 

Progress has been a bit thin on the ground in the past month - a combination of domestic things and a receding mojo I suppose. I've resurrected the latter to some extent by doing a small vignette (thread link in my sig below), but I have at least started to get things together. I sprayed the wings with the fluorescent red/orange mix used earlier:

 

 

 

Whilst the wings came out fairly well, there was - predictably - a lot of bleeding on the fuselage band. Fortunately, the overflow, once dry, was fairly easy to remove with a sharp scalpel blade - it looks a bit ragged at the moment but hopefully I can paint a straighter line by hand.

 

So, wings and things all attached:

 

 

A bit of filling needed, then I can finish the foiling.

 

Thanks for watching