72topia FMA IAe.20 "Boyero", 1/72nd superb resin kit from Argentina

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

36 minutes ago, Mr T said:

Look a a very nice little kit, reminds of SBS kits which are also of very good quality

You are spot on, Mr. T, and the marvel is that this one is produced on a small board in a room of the house, with the little materials and tools you can get due to the particularities of the economy of some Latin American countries.

No CAD here, no tooling, no CNC.

Pure love and tremendous skill.

 

 

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

The other side follows:

 

 

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Once the windows are in, and the seat belts added, the fuselage halves are joined.
 Check the width of the internal components. I had to sand a smidgen of all of them (inst. pan., seats, pedal frame) for the fuselage to close properly.
Once the fuselage was glued, wing and horizontal tail were added too, checking the angle, dihedral, etc., which in my case practically rigged itself due to the good fit.
I decided to slightly bend down the elevators and push the control stick just a teeny-weeny forward.
All the components were placed, double checked, and then with a fine wire thin superglue was run at the seams. It worked well for me.
As you can see, almost no interior can be seen... but we know it's there, as they say:

 

The fuselage seams will need a delicate touch with filler or putty.

 

There is a balance between sanding the inner face of the fuselage sides, and the fit later of all the other parts. If you sand too much, then the wing and stab, that "embrace" the fuselage, will be a little loose, and the vac windshield may end up being a tad wider than needed. I got a good fit with wing and stab. The kit part for the front of the nose is a smidgen small now, and the windshield a hair wide, and there is why I write about balance. If I would have sanded more, the front of the nose would be spot on, but the windshield too wide.
So I sanded the nose sides, top and bottom -just a very small touch-, for a perfect good with the nose part, and also sanded the relief that is meant to align the front part, since I didn't need it and was a bit in the way.

 

 

[Courageous]

Good descriptive work Moa but I'm wondering where you've picked up the word 'smidgen' from, hardly from your part of the world.

 

Stuart

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

 

Two pieces of masking tape are placed along the two inner stringers to limit the working area, then later putty is applied sparingly and sanded. It's a good idea to protect the interior somehow (I use damp toilet paper) so dust doesn't get in.

 

Notice the subtle ribbing effect, the aileron hinges, and such. Now tell me why manufacturers with industrial power, computerized production and plenty of resources many time fall short:

 

 

The prop and wheels are painted (I will use the wood color one and the uncapped wheels, but painted them all):

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

21 minutes ago, Courageous said:

Good descriptive work Moa but I'm wondering where you've picked up the word 'smidgen' from, hardly from your part of the world.

 

Stuart

Hi Stuart:

I am in many parts of the world!

Also remember that I am married to a Yorkshire lass.

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

The belly receives the same treatment, masking using the inner stringers as a guide, and puttying. There is some very nice detail there, but I can reinstate it once the sanding is completed, and I rather do this than work around it.

If you don't feel confident, or find this approach too blunt, use for the seam liquid putty, typewriter corrector (white-out), or whatever is that you prefer:

 

I mentioned before that you have to provide the white background for the decals that need it (they are printed in clear stock with an inkjet printer). So I made a copy, cut the pattern away, and used it as guide to trace on the back of white decal stock. Then I cut the individual images:

 

Be sure to cut it a smidgen inside, so the white doesn't show:

 

There is a resin part for the rudder control horn, but it jumped away from the same "small parts" container that I sent flying, so I made another from aluminium:

 

 

[Head in the clouds.]

Nice work in small detail Moa, it is annoying is it not when those little details fly off into eternity never to be seen again. 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

10 hours ago, Head in the clouds. said:

Nice work in small detail Moa, it is annoying is it not when those little details fly off into eternity never to be seen again. 

It is!

But it's a common occurrence.

I like to work in advance and in many projects at the same time, that is, when I get a kit or start a scratch I usually make small things that I want to add firsthand, so I don't have to worry about them later when the model is almost ready. Therefore I have a myriad of containers of different sizes sitting everywhere. And, as we know, if things can happen, they will happen.

The best is when I leave lying around small sub-assemblies, like let's say rudder pedals; then the next day I start working by cleaning the board of "those pesky debris" from the day before.

As friend and fellow modeler Jim Schubert used to say: "Modelers are their worst enemies".

 

 

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

The seams are sanded and cleaned up, the details restored:

 

 

Time to drill the locations for the tail rigging:

 

Watch out for that tiny castoring and springed tailwheel assembly, faithful to the original and in scale, but it won't admit knocking around:

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

The plane I will be representing is LV-ZGI, painted in ivory with the national emblems, since Matías already built the beautiful blue prototype:

 

(Model and foto Matías Hagen😞

 

 

http://72topia.blogspot.com/2016/01/fma-iae20-el-boyero-argentina-1940.html

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

The white background decals for the rudder flash are cut using the same method that the chevrons:

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

The very small exhaust stubs have their ends hollowed. Talk about minuscule detail:

 

 There is a hub part that unites the leg with the wheel, with pips on both sides.
This allows you to paint it separately:

 

... so I had to fabricate another.
Piece o' cake, with a slice of styrene rod of the same diameter...

 

... and then drilled, and a smaller styrene rod inserted in:

 

 

The moral I want to convey is two-fold:

1) This kit has a lot of very tiny detail parts, that are gorgeous and well cast, but the little buggers are very easily lost, and tend not to want to be found back.

Even manipulating them requires care, and good tools (no shoddy tweezers, here).

2) But, if you loose one, or many (as I did), you can easily make replacements.

 

 

 

[AdrianMF]

The dry fit picture  really shows off the quality and subtle fabric work. Nice going.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Don't forget to insert (without gluing) the prop axle from behind the face part before gluing it to the fuselage front:

 

Front and landing gear added. The legs have precise, well thought, and sound locating devices:

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

On its feet:

 

With the remaining parts:

 

The fit of the windshield is good (dry fit here, since a frame needs to be added before adding it), but in my sample it needed just a little trick to perfectly fit...

 

...I very carefully cut where that red dotted line indicates -the shaded area marks the position of the wing leading edge root), it's a minuscule cut, but it allows the "side" of the windshield to align with the frame more precisely. Use the right windshield for the version you are building, since two are provided (that are not the same):

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Remember I took a photo of the tiny tailwheel?
Well, I left it there and forgot about it.
So it was swept away by the forces of nature.
And I had to fabricate another one, from very thin aluminiun strips (soda can) glued together as a spring, and a punched out disk, plus a yoke an a stem:

 

The windshield is bathed in floor polish:

[Ed Russell]

Mine has arrived and I'm just as impressed as @Moa. This looks like a pretty good builder's guide here so I shall keep watching.

We at  Red Roo purchased a number of these kits so if you are in Australia and want one, we can help.

Mine is behind the Ju87 STGB and a Wellington but should be finished this year. 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

And what do you know, I found the tailwheel at the very bottom of the office trash can, where I may have swept it as debris...again. Sigh...(also found two landing gear scissors that I was not looking for):

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

The transparencies are masked, the cockpit stuffed with tissue paper, and the model is ready for a light coat of primer.
I will leave the windshield and struts apart until painting and decaling is done.
The tailwheel is painted separately.

Notice the perfectly and cleanly marked positions for all components, one of the many very nice features of this little kit that makes the build so pleasant:

[Bengalensis]

Lovely work going on here 👍

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

18 minutes ago, Bengalensis said:

Lovely work going on here

Easier to do lovely work...when it is on a lovely kit! 😁

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Primer on, still a few little things to touch up:

 

Size compared with the Beech 18:

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

A light coat of white, before the final coat of ivory:

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

While the paint dries, the individual subjects of the decal sheet have to be separated (continuous carrier) and trimmed closely.

The white backgrounds we are warned in the instructions are needed for some of the images were prepared beforehand, and were posted somewhere above in the thread.

If you do a white undercoat as I did, you could also mask the areas that need to be white before applying the final color:

 

At the moment of application, I may even separate the individual letters of the wing registrations.

We will see how visible the carrier is when I apply the smaller motifs.