Avro Lincoln Conversion.

[PeterB]

As usual the primer has shown up a few imperfections, but the engines are on - not the sharpest of pics unfortunately.

Blending the inner engine nacelles on to the cowlings was a bit of a pain and I need a bit more filler on the wing joint but it is getting there. As you can see I have replaced the small twin landing lights with a hole for a single bigger one which I will glaze nearer the end. I should be ready to get some paint on before long.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

I will be painting and partially decalling the wings and fuselage seperately, but I thought I would see how they went together.

The wings look like they should be a pretty good fit and the span is as near as I can measure the correct 120ft give or take a couple of scale inches. At just under 51cm she is a big old bird - 18ft or scale 7.6cm bigger than the Lanc width wise though it looks longer - something to do with the taper perhaps.

 

This has gone better than I expected so far but as you can see a lot of wet/dry paper was used - 320 to 3000 grit! I have also tested the tailplane and rudders and although the latter were for the Revell kit they look like they should be OK. I still have to fit vac-form nose glazing, rear turret glazing and the large "double bubble" H2S dome, and modify the kit canopy and ideally I should also make a wider but shorter astrodome. Clearly there could still be problems so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

 

I will see if I can get some Medium Sea Grey on in the next couple of days.

 

Bye for now.

 

Pete

[Johnson]

Hi Pete,

 

I'm between GBs at the moment (feeling a bit burnt out after completing 2 1/2 Mustangs in that STGB and waiting for the Spitfire/Seafire STGB to start) so I thought I'd see what's going on in the others. Nice to see that you're still making large and complicated AVRO machines! It's all looking very good, those wings are really impressive, its going to look great I'm sure.

 

Cheers,

[PeterB]

Hi Charlie,

 

If I have time I will have a go at a rather smaller Avro (at least in terms of the wings) - the Planet Models resin 1/72 Manchester - must be mad. Just hope the paint does not run out as getting more could be darned nigh impossible now - can always fall back on my reserve stock of enamels I guess. If I have time with this plus the "In The Navy" ongoing and the "Spitfire/Seafire" GB pending, I might just be able to refurb my old Airfix Lanc, which needs repainting and replacement decs as the old ones are falling off (applied direct to matt paint and not sealed with varnish in those days). Then I will have almost a "full set" - Manchester, Lancaster, Lincoln, and Shackleton MR3, which should make an interesting family pic. Of course to be fully complete I would need 3 other Shacks and a York, but I am not that mad!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[LaurieS]

35 minutes ago, PeterB said:

Hi Charlie,

 

.

but I am not that mad!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Think you are getting there Pete. 

 

Laurie

Edited March 24, 2020 by LaurieS

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

58 minutes ago, PeterB said:

Of course to be fully complete I would need 3 other Shacks and a York, but I am not that mad!

Are you sure ? 😉

[PeterB]

Depends on how long this ruddy virus keeps me shut in the house!

 

Pete

[Johnson]

3 hours ago, PeterB said:

Just hope the paint does not run out as getting more could be darned nigh impossible now

I think you're right.

 

3 hours ago, PeterB said:

the old ones are falling off (applied direct to matt paint and not sealed with varnish in those days)

I have a few like that Pete. Just what we did back then.

 

3 hours ago, PeterB said:

Manchester, Lancaster, Lincoln, and Shackleton MR3,

A full set will be most impressive!

[PeterB]

42 minutes ago, Johnson said:

I think you're right.

Hi Charlie,

 

Yes - Hannants announced earlier they were closing down both the shop and the mail order business. Not sure if anybody else will consider asking their staff to travel to work as hardly essential! Perhaps the odd family business, particularly if "living over the shop", but does not look promising. However, that is the least of our worries at the moment.

 

Keep safe

 

Pete

Edited March 24, 2020 by PeterB

[LaurieS]

Just now, PeterB said:

Hi Charlie,

 

Yes - Hannants annouinced earlier they were closing down both the shop and the mail order business. Not sure if anybody else will consider asking their staff to travel to work as hardly essential! Perhaps the odd family business, particularly if "living over the shop", but does not look promising. However, that is the least of our worries at the moment.

 

Keep safe

 

Pete

Yes keep very safe you only have one life. Some should buy a measuring stick 2 meters long.

 

Laurie

[PeterB]

Thanks Laurie - know what you mean. Just checked and one of my local model shops is proposing to keep going by mail order but I suspect they do live in. However, as they point out it depends how long the postal services keep operating "normally". So maybe I could get Tamiya and Humbrol acrylics for a while. Can't see E-Models staying open as they are in a warehouse.

 

Cheers and take care yourself.

 

Pete

 

 

[LaurieS]

4 hours ago, PeterB said:

Thanks Laurie - know what you mean. Just checked and one of my local model shops is proposing to keep going by mail order but I suspect they do live in. However, as they point out it depends how long the postal services keep operating "normally". So maybe I could get Tamiya and Humbrol acrylics for a while. Can't see E-Models staying open as they are in a warehouse.

 

Cheers and take care yourself.

 

Pete

 

 

Despite living in little old Jersey we have a toy model shop which stocks the whole range of Tamiya in including airsol.

 

Also very reasonable at about £1.60 a bottle.

 

Plus they have not taken advantage like this Mike Ashley of Sports Direct who has doubled his charges on equipment.

So disgusting. Despicable. Just hate people who make money out of peoples misery.

 

Laurie

 

 

 

[Johnson]

13 hours ago, PeterB said:

Hannants announced earlier they were closing down both the shop and the mail order business

I checked the Hannants site this morning and it had the following announcement;

 

Hannants News: 24/03/20

 

We have received guidance from our Government and they are encouraging mailorder firms to stay open! So we will be staying open!

 

You may get your paint after all Pete. And I'll hopefully get my Falcon Spitfire canopies!

 

Cheers!

 

[Rabbit Leader]

23 hours ago, LaurieS said:

Yes keep very safe you only have one life. Some should buy a measuring stick 2 meters long.

 

Laurie

Mrs RL has had one of those for many years now! 

[Whofan]

18 hours ago, LaurieS said:

Despite living in little old Jersey we have a toy model shop which stocks the whole range of Tamiya in including airsol.

 

Also very reasonable at about £1.60 a bottle.

 

Plus they have not taken advantage like this Mike Ashley of Sports Direct who has doubled his charges on equipment.

So disgusting. Despicable. Just hate people who make money out of peoples misery.

 

Laurie

 

 

 

He's not the only one. here in the Midlands there's a chain of pharmacies where - as an example - they've raised the price of a bottle of Calpol to £19.99 from something like £5.99 and Wolverhampton council have been inundated with complaints about shops raising prices by at least double for essentials.

 

Actually, Mike Ashley might just have created his own Ratner moment.

[PeterB]

I suppose we have to bear in mind that retailers like the chemist mentioned above may have to pay a lot more from their suppliers at the moment and are just passing it on. Ingredients may be in short supply so whoever makes the stuff could be faced with big increases as well, but this sort of thing does need checking to avoid profiteering. Sadly there are always some people who will take advantage.

 

Pete

[CliffB]

Just catching up with this one Pete (and in fact the GB as a whole).

As always, your thread's a great read and your Lincoln's turning out beautifully.

The unexpected highlight for me though, was your mention of the Wolf electric drill (all metal, as I recall) - it took me straight back to the early 60s!

 

Cheers

[PeterB]

Hi Cliff,

 

That's right. All metal - the Wolf Cub , as the name suggests, was quite small, had only one speed (no hammer action in those days) and nothing like as powerful as the modern ones but it gave great service. Over the years we aquired not just rotary sanding discs, but an orbit sander attachment that clamped on to the end, and a weird (and rather dangerous) circular saw attachment that just had a spindle to go in the chuck and a handle to try and hold it against the torque - no safety guard. Eventually my father got another saw attachment that doubled up as a sort of router by having different sized spacers/washers to allow the blade to "wobble". We built a large wood framed greenhouse between us and the later saw attachment made rebates for the glass to go in. Your comment got me to thinking - I found this from 1955 - the drill apparently first went on sale in 1949.

An ad like this was almost certainly how my dad found out about it - I think he bought it by mail order. Note the reference to model makers - clearly not plastic!

 

Crude by today's standards but a real game changer for us back then. As there were few if any DIY shops, all the fittings had to be tracked down in newspaper ads and quite a few bus trips were made to back street warehouses in Bradford and Leeds. Things have changed an awful lot since "I were a lad".

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited March 27, 2020 by PeterB

[LaurieS]

I built myself a paint mixer for  large tin of emulsion. It was a large tin.

 

A Blacker Decker was the base & into the drill a large Allan key.

 

Worked fine until the Allan key decided it wanted freedom through the side of the paint can.

 

At the same time bringing freedom to lots of emulsion paint as the tin can revolved around the Allan key.

 

But all worked out OK just 6 hours to clear up the mess in the garage. So all was well.

 

Laurie

 

 

[PeterB]

It's been a while since I did anything with the Lincoln due to a combination of factors., not least of which is trying to do 4 kits at once - might have been OK with small kits but the Linc needs more space that I have had available. Anyway, with my F7F-3 Tigercat nearly finished I have sprayed the Lincoln with Medium Sea Grey and am leaving it to dry before masking and putting on the black undersurfaces. Not worth a pic as the MSG is almost the same colour as the primer I used! In the meantime I will knock up some serials and squadron badges for the plane I have decided to build - SX926 of 61 Squadron as seen at the Coronation review at RAF Odiham in July 1953 assuming I can get the larger H2S dome to fit.

 

More in a few days.

 

Pete

[LaurieS]

Pete 4 on the go 😚🙄🥴. Do you think you may be a bit mad .

 

One is a problem for me & I am mad. 🤪

 

All the best.

 

Laurie

[woody37]

Not sure I could cope with 4 on the bench. Just one looks like a hand grenade has gone off and scattered everything across the workbench😂

[PeterB]

I usually stick to 2 - 3 at the most, but because of the size of the Lincoln it is getting to the stage where I will need to clear some space. I was going to put a new shelf up, but can't at the moment as I don't think I have enough brackets - need to dig around in my shed and storage boxes to see. Curiously, already being retired, having to stay at home does not seem to have given me any more time for modelling, in fact just the opposite for some reason - guess it is a motivation problem as I am distracted with organising food deliveries and the like. It will get done, but the Manchester follow up may not as the Spit/Seafire GB starts this week and the Buccaneer one is looming on the horizon. Still at least one is a 4 month build so not too bad.

 

Cheers and be safe.

 

Pete

 

Pete.

Edited April 9, 2020 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Bit more progress at last. As you can see I have painted the fuselage though there is still some touching up to do.

I suppose the demarcation between the MSG and Black is a a mil or so lower than it should be but it will have to do. The tailplane and resin Lincoln style fins are on and painted so that is a step in the right direction. I had fun with the vacform large “double bubble” H2S Mk IVa radome – it is thin and a bit oversize so had to be "squeezed" to fit. Perhaps inevitably it ended up a bit deformed but it is not too obvious. I have painted it in a red/brown as shown on a profile of the plane I am modelling, but others were black, MSG or even clear.

One thing the conversion set does not include and which I had forgotten until I re-read the SAM conversion article was that the Lincoln had a large fuselage intake over the Starboard wing root. Not too difficult to fabricate one from card but I had one from my Halibag conversion mentioned earlier in one of my spares boxes so I have used that, slightly re-shaped - my plans show a top view, but it is hidden by the wing in the side view so a bit of guesswork was involved. There also seems to be a squarish box on the nose just in front of the bomb aimer, and some planes had the dome for the "Village Inn" gunlaying radar under the rear turret, though I have not been able to confirm if this one did.

 

I bought several sets of Modeldecal 48* RAF post war white number/letter decals many years ago for this project and could use them but I will first try a set I have printed myself. There were two styles of serials in use it seems – the later “rounded” post war ones and the earlier “square” ones, and this plane needs the latter. Not being able to print white I have used white decal sheet with a printed black background. I printed off some 61 Squad badges at the same time – the so called “Lincoln Imp” based on a carving on pillars inside Lincoln Cathedral I gather.

 

The wings are just about painted so when I have finished the touching up I will give everything a coat of Future/Kleer/Pledge and start putting some of the decs on.

 

Getting there slowly.

 

Pete

 

Edited April 9, 2020 by PeterB

[Rabbit Leader]

That looks really sharp Pete and I love that  bulbous H2S dome, looks great.

Cheers.. Dave