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


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Thanks for your comments, @rob Lyttle @Biggu @phildagreek and @Adam Poultney, much appreciated!

 

A bit more progress - all fully foiled now, and the undercarriage legs are in place:

 

vcTLUhm.jpg

 

For a bit of an experiment, I loose-fitted the skis and the prop:

 

5xj85a7.jpg

 

Just for laughs, let's fire up the engine:

 

gMerLr3.jpg

 

Rounding the final bend now, I think!

 

Thanks for watching :)

 

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  • 1 month later...

It's been a while since any progress with this - but a couple of days ago I received this through the post, courtesy of Arctic Decals:

 

qbAEtEj.jpg

 

I appear to have the same decals on 2 different thicknesses of carrier film (the blue is the thinnest), as well as masks in case I am brave enough to go down that road for the wing markings. I am extremely nervous at this point, the opportunities to nause this stage up appear many and varied! I think I may defer actually trying it until I've done as much research as I can from other threads. I seem to recall @stevehnz had a thread somewhere which mentioned applying decals to corrugated surfaces? Or did I dream that? There was another thread as well, but I cannot remember whose it was or the aircraft involved, save to say it was a civilian aircraft like a Trimotor or similar?

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Hi Clive. On my Trimotor I used the “bed down in Future” technique, as I described in the WIP that Steve mentioned. Perhaps I wasn’t generous enough with the Future, but I did get some areas where the clear decal areas were noticeable over the wing corrugations. Perhaps because I was using home-printed decals with rather thick carrier? Fortunately, in my build it didn’t matter in the end due to the substantial weathering I applied. 

In any case, if faced with the same task again, I’d be sure to apply each character individually ( I.e., “C”, “F”, “-“, etc. instead of the entire “CF-ARM” as a single large decal with lots of clear decal areas. 

 

- Bill

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Thanks for your reply Bill, much appreciated.

 

To be fair to Mika at Arctic Decals, the instructions that came with the decals were pretty comprehensive:

 

YzWzeDw.jpg

 

... but they haven't done much to curb my nervousness over doing it. To make matters worse, having cut out a complete set of decals from the blue sheet (with its 8 micron carrier film, apparently), I noticed that the bright orange/red fuselage band I sprayed on isn't wide enough for the flying goose emblems, by about 4mm at a guess. So I've had to shelve my plans for doing this until I respray the band wide enough to take the decal with no overhang. No matter. There's no deadline for completion, and I think it would be outright foolish of me to mess it up at this stage just for the sake of trying to get the thing finished and out of the way.

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Thanks Björn, in the end I went with the blue decal set:

 

oCS6hg0.jpg

 

I have used the diluted 'KOE' as recommended by @stevehnz so we'll see how that pans out over the next day or so. I still have the underside registration markings to do, but I didn't want to push my luck with ruining what I'd already done. So hopefully all decals on by tomorrow!

 

 

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Thanks Adrian, I am quite pleased with how it's looking so far. Apart from the goose emblems and a couple of areas on some of the wing registration letters where the decal hasn't settled completely, the KOE looks to have done its job. I am not sure how to proceed now, though - persevere with the KOE on what I have already laid down, or resort to the 'brute force and ignorance' approach of old, ie MicroSol etc. Advice on this gratefully received :)

 

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A mini update this morning - the underside registration letters are now on:

 

ZtUBAbM.jpg

 

I'll let it rest for a while, but I think I would regard myself as 'rounding the final bend' on this one!

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2 hours ago, clive_t said:

resort to the 'brute force and ignorance' approach of old, ie MicroSol etc. Advice on this gratefully received

I'm sure I've read that microsol applied on a decal where the gloss surface is Klear can affect it not in a good way, perhaps do a trial piece first. If the ends of the corrugations are still open, you could try running a little more dilute Klear into them & gently roll the decals into the corrugations with a cotton bud dipped into warm water. I've used this to persuade decals into bigger panel lines. Carefully does it though.

Steve.

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Thanks all for the comments, likes etc, much appreciated.

 

Another significant step forward over the weekend - the control surfaces are now all on:

 

Rg5dP8t.jpg

 

I didn't take any chances with this, I used CA glue to secure them even though not all contact points were foiled. Seems to be holding up! Not so 'holding up' was the registration letter 'F' on the upper wing surface, where it was found to be lifting in places. I have reapplied some more KoE, albeit in a stronger solution (ie 60-40) in the hope that it finally gives up and does as it's told.

 

All I have to do now are the door/window panels, and assorted fiddlies dotted around the place. Finish line definitely in the distance!

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  • clive_t changed the title to When 3 Become 1 - Converting an Italeri Ju52/3m to a Ju52/1m *** COMPLETED ***

Calling this done now. All doors and windows are now fitted, as are the fiddlies:

 

hRlNe4E.jpg

 

Hopefully better photos to follow with an RFI next week.

 

Thanks to all who commented and shared info, links etc - these were all very much appreciated :thumbsup2:

 

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