Italeri B-57 Canberra

[Dansk]

All looking great craig.

i have the utmost respect for anyone that can engrave panel lines like that. Its really really difficult and you have made it look perfect! Very impressed (and envious) me 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

1 hour ago, modelling minion said:

To be fair I think I have overdone the scribing in some places and think that when I build another I will just remove all the raised details and have a smooth surface.

Some people sand it smooth and use a drafting pencil and straight edge to do panel lines. Its beyond my skills as i have tremors, my panel lines would look like a heart monitor. Or as you Brits call it “The machine that goes Ping !!!”

 

https://youtu.be/wshyX6Hw52I

[modelling minion]

9 hours ago, Dansk said:

All looking great craig.

i have the utmost respect for anyone that can engrave panel lines like that. Its really really difficult and you have made it look perfect! Very impressed (and envious) me 

Paul you are being far too kind, as usual, if you had as close a look at some of the lines as I have you would see that they are not perfect.

8 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Some people sand it smooth and use a drafting pencil and straight edge to do panel lines. Its beyond my skills as i have tremors, my panel lines would look like a heart monitor. Or as you Brits call it “The machine that goes Ping !!!”

 

https://youtu.be/wshyX6Hw52I

That was what I was thinking of doing next time Dennis, not sure my lines with a pencil would be better than with a scriber though!

[Hewy]

6 hours ago, modelling minion said:

are not perfect.

Your being too modest,fine bit of scribing that,like paul, i find anything more than a little seam line rescribing painfuully difficult, usually making more of a mess than improvement,  looks great so far 👍

[modelling minion]

As if by magic..... a B-57 appears!

 

Well not so much by magic more by way of gluing,  filling, sanding, filling and more sanding.

Getting a decent joint on the top of the fuselage was a bit of a pain but it has been beaten into shape now, to be fair it wasn't that bad it was just that little bits kept needing re-doing.

The joint for each wing was pretty good and with a bit of Vallejo plastic putty and a swipe with a damp cotton bud this was the result;

 

Not bad at all really.

The bomb bay rotating door has also been fitted, not the best of fits even after the application of some filler but I am going to live with it for two reasons, one is that the doors don't seem a brilliant fit in some pics I have seen of the real thing and two is that it is safely hidden underneath the aircraft and nobody will see it unless they pick it up and turn it over, which will NOT be happening! Anyway, here it is;

 

The tailplanes were a bad fit and needed a fair amount of filling and sanding to get an acceptable joint and finish but they look okay now;

 

And now onto something really frustrating, the target tug conversion. More specifically the instructions and their total lack of any help. After getting the airframe to the state that you see above and being pretty happy with it I decided I would unpack the conversion parts and see how they looked, it was at this point that I noticed one of the pieces is a replacement tail cone for the aircraft that requires you to remove part of the kit and replace it, all before fitting the tailplanes! "Oh dear", I said "how bothersome" , I will let you all use you imagination as to what was actually said but needless to say I couldn't repeat it here. Okay it's not that different I can make it look closer without replacing it so lets take a look at the resin tubes that the target banners were kept in and see how they will fit to the fuselage, after much trawling of the internet I came across a couple of decent pics that showed fairly clearly how and where they fit so it was time to offer up the resin parts. This is where it went from bad to worse and some more "engineering language" as my wife calls it was used. The real things are straight and hollow, the resin bits are most definitely not;

 

I'm not sure if the picture does justice to just how wobbly these bit actually are but they are everything other than straight. Now I do have some brass tubing but nothing this diameter (3mm) and this leads me to a quandary, do I finish her as a different B-57 or do I finish her as the original one but leave the target tug gear off? Now there is more than a fair chance that she flew in these colours with the gear off as the editor of the book from which the picture comes of her states that it was very unusual to see B-57E's at Edwards with the towing gear still attached because it was usually removed. Another option is to order some drinking straws of the right diameter (they do exist) and wait until they arrive before I can do much more. Any thoughts guys??

Thats it for today anyway so as usual thanks for looking in and all comments and criticisms are gratefully received.

 

Craig.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

3 hours ago, modelling minion said:

This is where it went from bad to worse and some more "engineering language" as my wife calls it was used. The real things are straight and hollow, the resin bits are most definitely not;

 

I was going to suggest either straws or brass/Aluminum tubing. However see you are ahead of me. Though you could leave it off, Id like to see it on as its not a common fit on a build. 

[modelling minion]

11 minutes ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

I was going to suggest either straws or brass/Aluminum tubing. However see you are ahead of me. Though you could leave it off, Id like to see it on as its not a common fit on a build. 

Cheers Dennis, I would much rather have the target gear on too as like you say it makes it a bit different, I will have to look into getting some straws or something.

[Dansk]

I still love your panel lines craig. Any thoughts on the bmf section yet - Alclad or ak xtreme metals, or foil even?

[modelling minion]

24 minutes ago, Dansk said:

I still love your panel lines craig. Any thoughts on the bmf section yet - Alclad or ak xtreme metals, or foil even?

Thanks Paul, I will be sticking with my usual Vallejo Metal Colour acrylics for the bmf, but first I have to figure out what to do about the target banner tubes.

[Jinxman]

I'd go for the brass tube myself - it's a reasonable price on eBay for the K + S stuff.

You might need extra weight in the nose though to stop it being a tail sitter...

 

Looking forward to seeing the Vallejo Metal acrylics on plastic. 

[MarkSH]

I use the Vallejo Metal colour range and they really are excellent, although they can be a bit delicate. the key is proper agitation before usage and a sound primer base. the big advantage is no nasty niffs! Looking good Craig.

[modelling minion]

33 minutes ago, Jinxman said:

I'd go for the brass tube myself - it's a reasonable price on eBay for the K + S stuff.

You might need extra weight in the nose though to stop it being a tail sitter...

 

Looking forward to seeing the Vallejo Metal acrylics on plastic. 

 

27 minutes ago, MarkSH said:

I use the Vallejo Metal colour range and they really are excellent, although they can be a bit delicate. the key is proper agitation before usage and a sound primer base. the big advantage is no nasty niffs! Looking good Craig.

Cheers guys, I will have a look into the brass tube though I don't think I can get any more nose weight in as she is all closed up.

The Vallejo range is what I use for the same reason as you Mark, it doesn't stink the house out! I know it can be a bit fragile but I will be using primer so hopefully all should be well.

[Hewy]

Smashing job craig, looks like it was a great fit

[modelling minion]

4 hours ago, Hewy said:

Smashing job craig, looks like it was a great fit

Thanks Glynn, to be fair the fit has been pretty good other than the tailplanes.

 

I've ordered some straws for the target banner tubes so the build is pretty much on hold until they turn up.

[Hewy]

13 minutes ago, modelling minion said:

I've ordered some straws for the target banner tubes

The post isn't exactly running a full speed at present, maybe you could start another kit😋

[modelling minion]

17 minutes ago, Hewy said:

The post isn't exactly running a full speed at present, maybe you could start another kit😋

Nice try Glynn, I've still  got my Harrier to finish.

[Hewy]

Worth a try😋

[stevej60]

Great progress Craig panel lines spot on.

[PlaStix]

Hi Craig. I hope you and yours are all keeping well. Sorry I'm a bit late - but this Britmodeller thingy is quite big and I keep getting lost!! So much to see and keep up with!! Well it looks like you have been making excellent progress all the same. I think you have done an excellent job with your panel lines! I always avoid kits where there's much scribing involved! Looking forward to following more of your progress.

Kind regards,

Stix

[modelling minion]

4 hours ago, PlaStix said:

Hi Craig. I hope you and yours are all keeping well. Sorry I'm a bit late - but this Britmodeller thingy is quite big and I keep getting lost!! So much to see and keep up with!! Well it looks like you have been making excellent progress all the same. I think you have done an excellent job with your panel lines! I always avoid kits where there's much scribing involved! Looking forward to following more of your progress.

Kind regards,

Stix

Hi Stix,

All well at this end thanks mate, don't worry about replying and keeping up with builds as I know you are snowed under with work and there is a LOT going on on BM lately,

You are far too kind as usual with your comments, especially regarding the scribing.

I'm still waiting for the straws to arrive before I can make any more progress unfortunately but hopefully play will resume shortly.

[Whirly]

Hi Craig,

I just found this topic and I read it with great interest because I've planned for a long time to build one of the target-tug B-57. Since references are quite scarce I would like to submit these two I found online recently. The top colour varies a lot in images but should be 12197 International Orange, not pure red, according to the notes I have collected.

 

 

 

 

Note also that looking at the target containers from behind their section is not exactly a tube but more like a cam, which shows a more gentle fairing into the lower fuselage shape than a circle would.

 

I hope you find this notes useful, I can post more images if you like from what I collected over the years. Anyway, please go ahead with your build, should be a really spectacular model once finished!

 

[modelling minion]

Thanks for the interest and the info @Whirly, these target tugs are an interesting and overlooked subject.

I have seen the picture and the video that you have posted and they are good ones, I used the picture to help position my tubes. I have gone with a tube as I have seen some pics which show the end as circular and in fact so does the video at 42 seconds in to it.

As for the upper surface colours I agree with you about the variety of shades that they can appear to be and that by far the majority were in the colour you suggest but the one in the pic that I am copying does indeed seem to have a red upper fuselage, it really stands out form the dayglo band near the tail and the author of the book knows his stuff and was the one who took the pic and he says red, so red it will be for me. He is well aware of the differences between international orange, dayglo and red and has very clear pics of each in the book.

[klr]

1 hour ago, modelling minion said:

Thanks for the interest and the info @Whirly, these target tugs are an interesting and overlooked subject.

I have seen the picture and the video that you have posted and they are good ones, I used the picture to help position my tubes. I have gone with a tube as I have seen some pics which show the end as circular and in fact so does the video at 42 seconds in to it.

As for the upper surface colours I agree with you about the variety of shades that they can appear to be and that by far the majority were in the colour you suggest but the one in the pic that I am copying does indeed seem to have a red upper fuselage, it really stands out form the dayglo band near the tail and the author of the book knows his stuff and was the one who took the pic and he says red, so red it will be for me. He is well aware of the differences between international orange, dayglo and red and has very clear pics of each in the book.

I mixed myself a tin of International Orange last year. I think it was about 6 parts Revell gloss orange to 1 part Revell gloss red. I've seen more than one FS number quoted for International Orange, so who knows if there's even a single, undisputedly "correct" version?

[Whirly]

On 5/23/2020 at 6:03 PM, modelling minion said:

I have gone with a tube as I have seen some pics which show the end as circular and in fact so does the video at 42 seconds in to it.

Didn't notice that scene! Seems there may be two different shapes, look at this image, it' not exceedingly good but you can make out the oblong section I talked about: https://tinyurl.com/ya87r642

On 5/23/2020 at 6:03 PM, modelling minion said:

As for the upper surface colours I agree with you about the variety of shades that they can appear to be and that by far the majority were in the colour you suggest but the one in the pic that I am copying does indeed seem to have a red upper fuselage, it really stands out form the dayglo band near the tail and the author of the book knows his stuff and was the one who took the pic and he says red, so red it will be for me. He is well aware of the differences between international orange, dayglo and red and has very clear pics of each in the book.

What I see on my monitor is quite ambiguous but if the author of the book is so adamant I would trust him as you do! What is the book you are referring to? 

 

[modelling minion]

6 hours ago, Whirly said:

Seems there may be two different shapes

It does indeed doesn't it, you would have thought there would there would have been a standard type.

6 hours ago, Whirly said:

What is the book you are referring to? 

The book I'm using is "Edwards AFB , open house at the USAF flight test centre 1957-1966 a photo chronicle" , an excellent but dangerously inspirational book, there are some great schemes in it. having second thoughts though about the International Orange, I will have to give it even more thought.