It's a bomber, it's a bomber...

[arfa1983]

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need some longer bolts, bits of timber, slates, and paper cups...

[81-er]

Somewhat of a mammoth airbrushing session tonight, which has got almost everything that needed painting prior to closing up the fuselage painted, which means work towards that should proceed fairly quickly from here. Just a quick shot of some of the drying area (there’s a couple more bits elsewhere):

 

 

Parts there are variously coated in primer, RLM 02, the “lighter” RLM 66 grey, and the full-fat RLM 66. The padding for the nose gunner has had a coat of leather as well. The eagle-eyed may spot there’s a number of parts from my Me-202 build in there as well, that should just be some cockpit detail painting away from being able to get the fuselage closed up on that as well.

 

Until next time

 

James

[81-er]

Painting backlog out of the way, I settled in to some proper progress last night. First off, a shot of a couple of the bits that got some colour on them:

 

 

A couple of touch-ups needed, but not too bad. I’m quite surprised that the Hr Hobby RLM 66 I sprayed on the seat and control column has a metallic quality to it, leaving the parts with a graphite-like sheen. There’s never been any metallics through the airbrush I sprayed them with. Odd. Also worth noting is the difference between the two undercarriage bays; the one on the left looks like I did some great pre-shading on it, when the reality is it’s just badly sprayed. I mixed the colour in the cup for that, so I suspect I didn’t mix the thinner in well enough as I add thinner before the paint and that one was the first to be sprayed. Still, it looks good side on:

 

 

Those both got a Flory dark dirt wash to even them up, but I haven’t knocked it back yet. The plan was to let it dry while I added some PE, then clean up after. Then I got absorbed in adding the PE and forgot! Still, it was worth the effort on the PE. First up the control column with the instruments added to the strip “box” I made, and the IP (which is two layer):

 

 

The dorsal gunner’s station also got a two-layer instrument cluster (and damn these macro photos for showing up the minute fret tangs that I thought I’d cleaned up!):

 

 

Both sides of the other IP that frames the edge of the sliding roof panel (cocktail stick for scale). I’m hoping some matt varnish will make the CA residue disappear:

 

 

 

The rear cabin area:

 

 

And finally a couple of views of the cockpit:

 

 

 

There’s a whole raft of teeny levers to be added to the pilot’s side console, as well as another IP that extends from the front of it. The glue joint on that is miniscule, meaning I’ve already knocked it off twice. Who knows if it’ll survive long enough to be safely housed behind the glazing!

 

Join me next time to see how many of the remaining bits of microscopic PE make it on to the model, how many feed the carpet monster, and how many I manage to superglue to myself instead!

 

Until next time

 

James

[Chrisj2003]

1 hour ago, 81-er said:

Join me next time to see how many of the remaining bits of microscopic PE make it on to the model, how many feed the carpet monster, and how many I manage to superglue to myself instead!

... made me laugh.  Nice work with the very teeny details. Just hope the side windows are clear enough to see them.

 

Chris

[81-er]

Thanks Chris. I had a look at the clear bits last night and they are indeed extremely clear, so there's some vague hope the cockpit detail will be visible.

 

James

[arfa1983]

Very neat work James! 

[81-er]

A bit more bench time last night, though mostly working on paint touch-ups that I didn’t photograph. The cockpit is the critical path for getting the fuselage closed up now, with the navigator/bombardier/nose gunner’s station being the majority of it. His seat is now assembled and painted in RLM 66, I just need to paint the padding in leather to match the rest of the cockpit and then that can be stuck on. I got the PE stuck onto his side of the cockpit as well:

 

 

Excuse the excess superglue around the big dial thing, I had to flood the area to get it to stick as it’s raised from the surface with almost no contact points. Fingers crossed it disappears under the varnish! The cluster of controls at the front is made up of 3 pieces; two slightly different sized panels and then the two dials which attach to the side. I’m glad I replaced their plinths with styrene strip early on, getting them to stick would have been a nightmare.

 

The final part added there is the map pocket, which proved somewhat complicated to fold and even harder to stick together. It had a natural tendency for the back to spring away from the sides, so I squeezed it together with tweezers and ran thing superglue down the sides to keep it together. That worked perfectly until I realised that I’d glued it to the tweezers. It took some of the printing off when I removed it, but thankfully that’s on the back and will never be seen.

 

For a bit of scale:

 

 

You can just see the edge of the Flory wash in that last shot, which is mixed up from their grime and dark dirt washes. It’s a bit lighter and browner than I’d ideally have wanted, but having dry fitted the fuselage together it’s a real coalhole back there, so I figured the extra contrast might help some of the detail being visible. I’ll knock it back next session and photograph the results.

 

The remaining quandary I have now is the levers for the pilot’s side console. They’d be easier to fit now, however they’ll be really fragile, and the cockpit floor has to be added after the fuselage is closed up, putting those at risk. But it’ll be a pain to install them after the cockpit floor. I foresee a coin flip in my future.

 

Until next time

 

James

[Col.]

Nice progress in there James. Fitting such tiny parts as those wee levers is, in my opinion, about balancing effort and reward; how much of it will be visible and how much stress/enjoyment will fitting them cause.

[roginoz]

For tiny pieces of PE like control levers and the like, I've had more success with white glue, or Glue 'n' Glaze, or any similar cockpit glue.

 

It seems to provide a buffer against knocks and handling that CA does not. HTH.

Rog

[arfa1983]

I use tamiya clear gloss to stick on tiny itty bitty parts

[Billy400]

Looking good!

[81-er]

Thank you folks. I might well give the white glue a try on the levers when I next get some bench time.

 

James

[desert falcon]

Fantastic work so far 👍

[81-er]

Back to this after an extended period on the Ar-555. I’d pushed this to the back burner as I realised I’d forgotten to paint the leather panels of the bombardier’s seat, so I’d masked that up and painted it. I took the masking off last night to reveal this:

 

 

 

To say I was unhappy was an understatement, so it’s gone in for a soak in Dettol. This time I’ll paint the leather first and the RLM 66 after.

 

Deciding that I’d held this up far longer than I should due to that seat, I’ve pressed on as the cockpit will still be accessible for some time to come. I cleaned up the wash I’d given the insides of the fuselage, leaving it looking reasonably grubby as I don’t imagine Lemmy & the boys would have spent too much time on the cleaning:

 

 

 

After that, I fiddled the two halves into a reasonable alignment, held it there with tape, the hit it with glue:

 

 

If you scroll up to the end of my previous update, you’ll notice a nice PE map pocket added at the back of the starboard cockpit. A little too far back as it turns out, I’d stupidly glued it against the support for the bulkhead! So that had to be popped off before I could get the fuselage together. I’ll glue it back once I’ve finished dealing with the filling & sanding of the seams.

 

Encouraged by it starting to look like a plane at last, I stuck the bomb booze racks to the centre bit of the wing/fuselage bottom. I didn’t bother with weathering these at all as all you’re going to see of them is a couple of spots by the windows, as they’re pretty much touching the fuselage walls:

 

 

By now the glue was dry on the fuselage, so I had a look at the seams:

 

 

 

The main body seam isn’t so bad, but there is a bit of a step. There’s quite a gap at the cockpit bulkhead, so that’s had some sprue goo and will probably need to PPP to finish it off. I can’t say if this is the engineering of the kit, or tolerance build up. I’ve definitely seen far worse though. The massive steps when that centre section went on for starters! Apparently I didn’t take any photos of that.

 

The tail guns were removed and filler was applied to the seams on the top surface:

 

 

While that was drying I moved on to the simple (!) task of adding the radiators & cowls to the nacelles. That turned out to be significantly more work than I expected as the fit wasn’t great, there’s some pretty big steps, and there’s a variation in thickness between adjoining parts. Here follows some before/after comparisons as I’ve only completely the alterations on one nacelle so far. First off, stock on the left, modified on the right:

 

 

A close up of the stock fit. Note the dramatic difference in thickness to the duct walls:

 

 

And the other one after some work:

 

 

Stock side profile:

 

 

Modified side profile:

 

 

I did a bit more fettling of the modified one after that, which has smoothed things out ever more. I’ve completely trashed all of the RLM 02 inside the cowls now, so I’ll mask the radiators again before reapplying the RLM 02.

 

As I left them last night. Unmodified one on the left (the top panel needed some trimming of the nacelle to get the panel lines to line up), modified on the right. The radiator panel is in now and I’ve started to smooth it in. Some filler will be required still:

 

 

And just for completeness, to top panel on the modified nacelle. Some filler needed at the back of that too:

 

 

On the bright side, by the time I’d done all of that the filler on the fuselage had dried and I could get some on the bottom seams:

 

 

I’m visiting my parents tonight and out with work tomorrow, so I’ll probably not be working on this again until Friday now.

 

Until next time

 

James

[arfa1983]

Nice work James. I've been hanging out to see this one done. I want to see those decals on! 🤘

[81-er]

I'm certainly going to be doing my best to get both this and the Ar-555 done by the deadline.

 

James

[81-er]

I got back from the work meal earlier than expected last night, so a fair bit of progress was made. First port of call was to tidy up the filler on the fuselage seams and rescribe any filled in panel lines. Generally, it looks to be ok now, however there’s this area behind the dorsal turret that will need another skim:

 

 

It’s not shown up as well as I’d have liked, but there’s a couple of low spots in the filler on the two panels after of the opening.

 

My next job was diving right in and getting the wings on:

 

 

That was a time consuming process as I had to finesse the parts to fit as best as I could, then glue in sections to get the smallest panel gaps, relying on the set glue from the last section to hold enough that I could pull the next sections together. I’ve still got some awkward gaps to fill at the wing roots, which I’ll do when I fill the bits behind the turret (I didn’t fancy getting the filler out last night):

 

 

 

I’ve also got a bit of a gap/step by the u/c bays as well (and Flory dark dirt to knock back a bit in the bays):

 

 

 

And a rough joint that needs another found of filler, so I didn’t bother cleaning it up earlier:

 

 

Minor fitment gripes aside (and there’s probably a degree of build tolerances compounding contributing to that), it’s going together nicely.

 

With the wings on, I decided to press on to the tailplanes. I had a bit of a mishap during clean-up, and took a chunk out of the right elevator:

 

 

I’ll dig out the plasticard and glue in a fillet. That didn’t stop me from getting the port tailplane installed as the last job for last night, so it now looks like this:

 

 

I’ll wait until the other side’s in before gluing the elevators into their final position.

 

Until next time

 

James

[fittedkitchens]

I'm not sure if you've got any further with this one, but worth mentioning that the nacelles will take a bit of filling and sanded when mated to the wings.

[arfa1983]

Would be nice to see it done! All in good time of course! 

[81-er]

I have indeed got a bit further, and really should update this. I've got the nacelles on now, and they have indeed required substantial amounts of filler! It is going to get done, it’s just slipped a bit sideways for now.

 

James