Boundless Ambition: A-Model's 1/72 M-50 "Bounder" Supersonic Bomber

[billn53]

Rear landing gear is (mostly) done. Like with the forward gear, I hinged the wheel carriage with a brass pin, so I haven't yet glued on the various struts that connect the carriage to the main gear leg. You can see two of them here, but there are four others that attach to the little 'donuts' on the wheel shafts. I plan to scratch build those from styrene rod, since I managed to break most of the kit pieces while removing them from the sprue:

 

 

 

I've also begun work on the two gear bays . . . Here is the forward bay, taped together, so I could confirm the landing gear can be slipped into position:

 

 

 

The rear bay is partially assembled. It has considerably more parts than the forward gear, including a fair amount of what I assume is hydraulic plumbing (not shown here):

 

 

[corsaircorp]

On 3/19/2023 at 11:34 PM, billn53 said:

Sure, Tom! If you don’t mind sharing a table with CC !    He’s been in the naughty corner for a great while, so his social skills may be a bit lacking.

Lack of social skills are from my birthday 

Then, I learn....

Sincerely.

CC

[Gondor44]

Thanks for the info about the Rivet Punch set, they arrived yesterday, in fact the parcle van was following me the last few ten's of yards home and the only reason I got to the door first was that he had to find the parcle in the van.

 

Chears

 

Gondor

[billn53]

28 minutes ago, Gondor44 said:

Thanks for the info about the Rivet Punch set, they arrived yesterday, in fact the parcle van was following me the last few ten's of yards home and the only reason I got to the door first was that he had to find the parcle in the van.

 

Chears

 

Gondor

 

I used mine just a couple of days ago, but not to make rivets . . . I discovered that the wheel carriage on the rear landing gear was at a weird angle, and I had already superglued the brass pin in place. I used the smallest rivet punch to force it out, then re-drilled the carriage to get the correct angle.

 

Which goes to prove, "Necessity is the mother of Invention"

[billn53]

I got some more time at the bench this morning, working on the landing gear and their bays.

 

Did some painting and more assembly on the rear bay. The yellow hydraulic (or fuel?) lines were a pain to install! The two unpainted white parts I had to scratch build, as the ones from the kit were too small to span the gap between the silver, longitudinal bulkheads. That's probably my fault -- I may have put the bulkheads too far apart.

 

 

The forward bay is now ready for assembly:

 

 

The landing gear also got some paint thrown at them:

 

 

[billn53]

The main landing gear bays have been assembled, and after a bit of fettling, the gear slip nicely into the recesses I made earlier. 🙂

 

 

[Tomjw]

Some great work on the wheel bays and landing gear. 

 

Cheers,

 

Tom

[Gondor44]

17 hours ago, billn53 said:

I got some more time at the bench this morning, working on the landing gear and their bays.

 

Did some painting and more assembly on the rear bay. The yellow hydraulic (or fuel?) lines were a pain to install! The two unpainted white parts I had to scratch build, as the ones from the kit were too small to span the gap between the silver, longitudinal bulkheads. That's probably my fault -- I may have put the bulkheads too far apart.

 

 

 

 

Going by the gaps in the ribs? in the roof of the bay I also think you have those parts too far apart.

 

A question about the yellow pipes, do you consruct them first and then fit them painted with everything else being fitted as required before or after them?

 

Gondor

[billn53]

22 minutes ago, Gondor44 said:

 

Going by the gaps in the ribs? in the roof of the bay I also think you have those parts too far apart.

 

A question about the yellow pipes, do you consruct them first and then fit them painted with everything else being fitted as required before or after them?

 

Gondor

 

 

The piping comes in three sections: two pieces that go across the bulkhead, and a long, 'L' shaped piece that connects to a 'downspout' on the upper bulkhead piping, runs down the bulkhead, and along the long roof panel.

 

I painted each piping part first, glued the two bulkhead pieces in place, threaded the long pipe through the silver part (not yet glued in position), and arranged the 'L' pipe + silver pieces so that the short end of the 'L' mated with the bulkhead piping, and two legs of the 'L' were square with the bulkhead and roof panels. This dictated where the silver piece went, and the other silver piece I glued symmetric with the first. That explains why the silver pieces are as far apart as they are.

 

In other words, if I had glued the silver piece according to the gaps in the ribs, the 'L' shaped pipe would have gone down the bulkhead at an angle, which would have looked wonky.

[Gondor44]

That explains the distance between those parts and thanks for the desription about the pipe work.

 

Gondor

[billn53]

I spent about six hours today working on a programming project for my computer science class. Once that was done, I went back to the bench to see if I could get the landing gear bays to fit. 

 

The rectangular openings in the fuselage were a bit too short, which was caused by excess resin along the fore and aft edges. It took only a few minutes to fix that, and voila! The gear bays slipped into place 🙂

 

 

 . . . . but, not without some significant gaps to fix (spot putty to the rescue!)

 

 

 

I'm beginning to think this will be the rule anywhere that styrene meets fiberglass in this build.

[AdrianMF]

I'm worn out just from reading about the landing gear assembly! They do look good though.

 

That's more parts in just the gear than there are in most of the whole kits that I build.

 

Regards,

Adrian

 

[billn53]

1 hour ago, AdrianMF said:

I'm worn out just from reading about the landing gear assembly! They do look good though.

 

That's more parts in just the gear than there are in most of the whole kits that I build.

 

Regards,

Adrian

 

The landing gear aren’t done, there are still more parts to be added! But, those can wait, I’m worn out working on the landing gear assembly 🥱

 

Time now to move on to finishing the fuselage, there’s a bunch of styrene parts waiting to be installed (dorsal spine, tail cap, various scoops and bumps)

 

[RichieW]

Those undercarriage bays are amazingly detailed and look beautiful. Even more parts to come? I'm feeling dizzy!

 

Richie

[billn53]

9 minutes ago, RichieW said:

Those undercarriage bays are amazingly detailed and look beautiful. Even more parts to come? I'm feeling dizzy!

 

Richie

 

 

Yes -- The gear retraction/extension actuators that run from the bay roof to the gear legs, plus a few small braces that connect to the wheel carriages. Maybe a couple of other things, too . . . I'll have to check the instructions.

 

 

 

 

Not to mention, all those wheels!!!

[RichieW]

It's mightily complex, it never ceases to amaze me how much and how quickly the technology changed. 

 

Richie

[VT Red Sox Fan]

Bill , incredible work here—I thoroughly enjoyed catching up—I am not familiar with the medium so learning a lot—while u are slogging through the wheels, it’s interesting to think of how this gem will look next to your impressive B-58–best, Erwin

[billn53]

15 hours ago, VT Red Sox Fan said:

Bill , incredible work here—I thoroughly enjoyed catching up—I am not familiar with the medium so learning a lot—while u are slogging through the wheels, it’s interesting to think of how this gem will look next to your impressive B-58–best, Erwin

 

Just for you!

 

 

 

The Bounder is about twice as long as the Hustler, as you can see, but similar in wingspan.

 

And, because you mentioned the wheels (slogging is definitely the appropriate term), I wasn't going to post this (don't want to wear out @AdrianMF any more than I have already), but this is where they stand after about two hours of work:

 

 

[AdrianMF]

Wow that B-58 is a beauty! NMF holds no terrors for you.

 

(Comparatively) small, but perfectly formed...

 

Regards,

Adrian

[billn53]

As promised, I've set the landing gear aside for the time being and have started work on the fuselage. Aside from various detail parts to be added, there is a dorsal spine that runs the length of the fuselage. A-model provides this in four parts, which have to be lined up and glued to top of the fuselage. There is also a small, two piece endcap at the tail.

 

I began by taping the first two parts of the spine to the fuselage, starting at the back of the canopy:

 

 

 

I also taped the tail cap in place, and the remaining two dorsal spine sections:

 

 

 

And (surprise, surprise), there is a gap in the middle, as the dorsal spine moldings are not long enough to span the entire fuselage length:

 

 

 

This is clearly an error that belongs to A-model, as they highlight this problem in the instruction sheet and advise the modeler to scratch build a piece to fit:

 

 

 

I considered a number of possible solutions, and decided on this as my course of action. I glued a thick piece of styrene to section aft of the gap:

 

 

 

The forward section has a lip at the end, to which I glued a .040" x .060" strip bent into shape:

 

 

 

Together, they span the errant gap pretty well. There's still a bit of work to be done here, but the biggest part of the job has been done.

 

 

 

Next step will be to ensure the dorsal spine parts are centered and in-line, and start gluing them down using superglue.

[RidgeRunner]

There is some pretty accomplished work going on here, Bill. I love it. It is the kind of "cut and shut" stuff that has occupied my modelling time for the past few years. When done it all feels very worthwhile. Nice! 

[billn53]

7 minutes ago, RidgeRunner said:

There is some pretty accomplished work going on here, Bill. I love it. It is the kind of "cut and shut" stuff that has occupied my modelling time for the past few years. When done it all feels very worthwhile. Nice! 

 

Thanks! My last build (Flyhawk's little 1/72 Dauntless) was a quick, relatively-easy out-of-the-box project. After that, I felt the need to try something bigger and more difficult/complex. Looks like I found it! 🤪

[LorenSharp]

Great job so far Bill. I feel for you having done a couple of fibreglass/resin/ short run  subjects. Fibreglass is especially a pain trying to clean up or correct,  or even add any openings.  And I won't go into the constant itching from the fibreglass dust. I do hope you are wearing at least a paper mask when doing any cutting. I hadn't stopped to realize that the Bounder is almost as BIG as the Valkyrie. Brings new meaning to the phrase "Go Big or Go Home".

[billn53]

Using extra-thin superglue, I glued the long dorsal spine segments in place, as well as the shorter ventral spine behind the rear landing gear. Clamps ensured the spine parts were sitting snugly against the fuselage when I applied the glue. This was particularly helpful near the nose and tail, where the fuselage curvature is at its highest.

 

 

 

Next job is to putty the seams along the spines. I began with the joins between the four dorsal segments. Once those are taken care of, I'll tackle the long seams that run from nose to tail either side of the spine. The fit is actually pretty good, except for a few places. Bottom line is, I want to get it as perfect as possible.

 

 

 

 

[billn53]

While waiting for the putty to dry, I thought I'd work on something that would be quick and easy. "What about the tail surfaces?", I thought. There are just two parts for each one: one side has the leading & trailing edges molded in, the other is slightly smaller and fits into a recess in the first side:

 

 

 

Foolish me! I'd forgotten this is a short-run kit, and nothing fits exactly how it is supposed to. In this case, the 'smaller' sides were a hair too large in all dimensions (including thickness) to fit into the opposite side's recess. A lot of sanding, scraping, and old-fashioned fettling finally gave me parts that would fit, and I glued them together with the help of plenty of clamps to keep them from popping out!

 

 

 

Another thing about the tail surfaces that I'm not fond of is that they fit into the fuselage empennage with a single peg:

 

 

 

Granted, the actual aircraft had "flying" tail surfaces (i.e., no separate rudder or elevators on the stabilizers), but that poses problems for a large model like this one. Firstly, the tail surfaces want to 'flop around" when trying to glue them in place. More serious, having just a single peg creates a single point of failure. I'm certain that somewhere along the line I'm going to bump the tail when handling this monster, and I'll be seriously angry if anything breaks off. 

 

So, note to myself: When it comes time to install the tail surfaces, add a couple of hefty brass pins to secure them in place.

 

Here's a preview of what the empennage will look like when assembled: