"Picchiatello", the Italian Stuka - Ju 87 B-2

[The Spadgent]

19 hours ago, giemme said:

🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤 Holy mackerel. That is Stunning!!!!! Bravo Giorgio. 👏👏👏👏👏

[TheBaron]

Your colour work never fails to be a pleasure Giorgio, plus some nifty texture work on that anti-skid piece. Bravo! 👏

[giemme]

On 16/11/2020 at 11:17, keefr22 said:

That's some lovely work on the 'pit Giorgio, cracking stuff! And that method of embossing the plasticard is genious - I'm going to try & remember that!

 

Keith

Thanks Keith  The embossing was just a spur of the moment idea, and I'm glad it turned out OK. I was already prepared to try that with the Curio, but I don't think it would have work as smoothly...

 

On 16/11/2020 at 11:36, Spookytooth said:

Fine work there G as per norm.

Looking forward to seeing her buttoned up.

 

Stay safe.

 

Simon.

Cheers Simon, thanks - me too!    

 

On 16/11/2020 at 13:05, bbudde said:

Great work on that Giorgio. High standard as usual.

Cheers

Thanks Benedikt

 

On 16/11/2020 at 19:52, The Spadgent said:

🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤 Holy mackerel. That is Stunning!!!!! Bravo Giorgio. 👏👏👏👏👏

21 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Your colour work never fails to be a pleasure Giorgio, plus some nifty texture work on that anti-skid piece. Bravo! 👏

 

John and Tony, you are both too kind, guys  TBH, the more I look at this cockpit, the more I think a resin AM would have looked miles better, but probably once inserted in the fuselage and with all the canopies and gribbles on, this one should hopefully show a  busy enough appearance....

 

Ciao

 

[Fritag]

6 hours ago, giemme said:

TBH, the more I look at this cockpit, the more I think a resin AM would have looked miles better,

 

Beg to differ G.  As Tony said, your colour work never fails to be a pleasure; and I’ll add likewise the craftsmanship.

[The Spadgent]

6 hours ago, giemme said:

the more I look at this cockpit, the more I think a resin AM would have looked miles better

Nope! 🤣

[giemme]

20 hours ago, Fritag said:

 

Beg to differ G.  As Tony said, your colour work never fails to be a pleasure; and I’ll add likewise the craftsmanship.

You are within your rights, sir .....  

 

19 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

Nope! 🤣

Are you sure? This is 1/48 resin for you:

 

  

 

Ciao

[The Spadgent]

On 18/11/2020 at 15:20, giemme said:

You are within your rights, sir .....  

 

Are you sure? This is 1/48 resin for you:

 

  

 

Ciao

It's nice sure but so is your scratched one.

 

[Marklo]

Lovely cockpit. Not a big fan of resin or aftermarket at all. While there are things that might be difficult or ( a very few) impossible to scratch I always think there is so much more skill and art in making your own. After all we’re model makers not model assemblers. 
 

That said if aftermarket’s your thing, I won’t argue with you; each to their own. It is after all a hobby and about the enjoying the experience.

[giemme]

12 minutes ago, Marklo said:

Lovely cockpit. Not a big fan of resin or aftermarket at all. While there are things that might be difficult or ( a very few) impossible to scratch I always think there is so much more skill and art in making your own. After all we’re model makers not model assemblers. 
 

That said if aftermarket’s your thing, I won’t argue with you; each to their own. It is after all a hobby and about the enjoying the experience.

I'm not an AM fanatic, and TBH I really enjoy scratch building  In fact, each time I used resin cockpits and/or seats, I added a few scratch built items to complete the job; and when I use PE AM, I normally use only the parts that IMO give a closer rendition of the original, discarding what looks too flat or not improving the final aspect. Having said that, sometimes the crisp details of resin are just unbeatable, and since to me a good part of "enjoying the experience" is the final aspect, I just feel like using it.

 

Ciao

[Marklo]

2 hours ago, giemme said:

enjoying the experience"

Tbh that is the main objective. When the end result looks good whatever way it’s done, that is a bonus  

 

Dint get me wrong I hate making wheels and radial engines so I do sometimes go the am route for them, and I did a special hobby JU 87 recently which came with a resin cockpit which did look good on completion. 
 

Not to beat the subject to death, but with the cost of am sets I don’t think I could afford the hobby if I were to indulge too much. I’ve seen builds on Airfix model world where a good €50 or €60 worth of an was put into the build, add in the kit and consumables and you’re getting close to €100 per model.

Edited November 18, 2020 by Marklo

[giemme]

Hi everybody, here's a quick report of this week progress; as I mentioned earlier, before buttoning up the fuselage halves, I needed to scratch build the opening command for the sighting window covering panel. Which I did after raiding the spares box:

 

This is basically the Lightning plastic pitot form my last build, with some sprue and plasticard add on, painted and weathered by brusch.

 

In place

 

 

And here's the whole tub, bar the IP

 

The IP received some levers, from spare PE bits

 

And here's the tub dry fit to the fuselage

 

 

To make it fit properly, I had to reposition the ammo drums at a steeper angle, because they were fooling the empty drums container; I also had to reposition the pilot seat adjusting lever, because it would interfere with the side wall. After that, I committed to gluing the fuselage halves

 

There still was a small bit missing form the cockpit, to wit the gunner's back belt, supplied as PE part in the kit. This got painted and weathered 

 

and inserted in the cockpit in a loose position

 

 

Now let's take a few steps back for a moment; some of you may remember that I did some initial checks of the kit parts with the drawings supplied in the Valiant book; I had determined I needed to reshape the rudder, because it looked quite off compared to the plans. Something was bothering me though, so I did another check before gluing the fuselage halves:

 

As you can see from the above pic, if I line up the fuselage with the drawing, the problem appears to be more on the fin rather than the rudder.

In fact, the rudder appears to be a substantially correct shape, provided I fix the mass balance at the top by adding some length

 

while the fin needs a triangular shim reproduce the correct shape

 

This will lead to some rescribing, but nothing that a good scriber and some patience can't fix  

 

Back to the bench now, tomorrow for more progress. All comments welcome

 

Ciao

[Spookytooth]

That office is taking shape quite nicely G.

And I am sure that you we crack the problem at the back end sir.

 

Stay safe.

 

Simon.

[hendie]

Modeling of the highest order Giorgio.

The cockpit areas look very convincing 

[CedB]

Stunning work Giorgio, just stunning  

[The Spadgent]

Looks even better all assembled. 👍👌

[keefr22]

Top job G...!!

 

K

[Nikolay Polyakov]

What a fantastic work, Giorgio! 👍 The cockpit details are superbly done.

[giemme]

On 21/11/2020 at 16:43, Spookytooth said:

That office is taking shape quite nicely G.

And I am sure that you we crack the problem at the back end sir.

 

Stay safe.

 

Simon.

Cheers Simon, thank you!  Back end tackled during the WE, see below for a detailed report

 

On 21/11/2020 at 16:52, hendie said:

Modeling of the highest order Giorgio.

The cockpit areas look very convincing 

On 21/11/2020 at 22:24, CedB said:

Stunning work Giorgio, just stunning  

23 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

Looks even better all assembled. 👍👌

23 hours ago, keefr22 said:

Top job G...!!

 

K

1 hour ago, Nikolay Polyakov said:

What a fantastic work, Giorgio! 👍 The cockpit details are superbly done.

Thanks Alan, Ced, Johnny, Keith and Nikolay   All in all, I think the cockpit looks busy enough once buttoned up inside the fuselage - should improve a bit more once I put the transparents on  

 

Modelling work on the WE focused on ... chores mostly, to wit sorting the seams and reworking the back end.

First some sprue gloop to fix a molding dimple in the tail wheel fairing and the rudder cable fairing (I removed the molded cable both sides, I'll replace it with some appropriate copepr wire)

 

More gloop on the front part of the fuselage

 

You may also see that the two halves didn't line up perfectly at the firewall end. For this reason, I added a plastic shim to bring them back to flush

 

There's a beautiful video on Youtube about the exemplar at the Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum

 

which clearly shows the bottom fairing for the rudder and the rudder cable pass-through, so I added the latter using a drill bit held almost parallel to the fuselage

 

 

One thing to fix was also the antenna wire connection point on the fin

 

There's a sort of anchoring point on the D and G models, but way thinner and quite different in shape compared to the kit one, but I couldn't find any evidence of such a thing on the B series, so I cut that away and filled with CA + flour

 

Then I started working on the rudder; as I mentioned in my last post, some thickness was needed in the front part (1.3mm according to scale drawings), so I glued on a couple of layers of plastic card; the mass balance got extended with a sprue cutout, pinned and glued to the kit part

 

I did glue some sprue cutout to the back end of the fuselage too, to reshape the rudder fairing according to the above video and the drawings

 

So, after all that prepping work, the real chore started  in terms of filing/sanding/polishing/checking and back again ....

 

Front end got sorted

 

The top panel across the seam line is going to be covered by a supplied PE bit, so I wasn't too worried about the surface finish here.

After a first pass of sanding on the fuselage seam, I checked it with my usual white marker method, and that showed some more filling to do

 

 

So after more sprue gloop and sanding (and rescribing)

 

 

Here's the reworked fairing (it needs cleaning up and refining, bit I'll do that once I've sorted the rudder)

 

Speaking of which: after much reworking, this was how it compared to the drawings

 

The mass balance obviously needed to be fixed, so I cut through the top of it with a razor saw and straightened it

 

It needed shortening too, but I first fixed it in position by filling the cut with  CA+flour

 

This will now cure overnight.

 

That's it for the WE, ya'll stay safe. All comments welcome

Ciao

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CedB]

Marvellous attention to detail Giorgio, as usual!  

[keefr22]

All coming along really nicely Giorgio!

 

Keith

[perdu]

Nice

 

Very nice glooping and drilling and sawing and

 

Well simply put, nice

[Brandy]

Your usual attention to detail, and another stunner on its way!

 

Ian

[corsaircorp]

Stunning work Giorgio !! 

as ever really great paint job !!

Very good rectification too !!

I'll keep it in mind for the day I'll start mines...

Keep carry on that really good job !!

And have a Mc Chouffe cosy at home !!

Sincerely.

CC

[Biggles87]

I just wanted to say ‘ lovely cockpit ‘ but you seem to have come a long way since then. We’ve had some beautiful weather recently so I’ve been spending most of my time outdoors doing manly thinks like chopping logs and repairing fences and haven’t paid as much attention as I should to the important things.

 

Stay safe.

 

John

[rob85]

Nice work master surgeon Giemme, your showing that fin who’s boss and giving it a full reconstruction.

 

the cockpit is just gorgeous, really nice, clean detailed work.

 

Rob