1/48 Trumpeter Vickers Wellington IC

[Stephen Allen]

I had to shoot some primer on the undercarriage before painting, so I took the opportunity to do a primer coat over all the areas where I had filled up and sanded down the geodetic surface. I left this to dry then compared the surfaces for consistency. I decided to do some more gentle sanding on the top left wing, shot the primer again, and the results are as shown here. First up, as a reminder, is the bare plastic wing surface.

 

 

and now the modified and primed wings. First the lower wings.

 

 

Then the top wing surfaces.

 

 

and the vertical tail surfaces.

 

 

So the surface detail is still there, but, in my view anyway, it is more restrained and blends better into the overall surfaces, especially with the elimination of the harsh edges to the panels. Its now at the point where I am thinking that’s enough prior to the eventual final primer and camouflage coats. You could do more, or less, depending on your taste.

 

[Thom216]

Your tastes look more than adequate enough! Great work on the wings!

[Stephen Allen]

Thank you!

 

I looked at the wings again this morning and decided enough was enough for me, but this is a very subjective matter. It is still ‘more’ than would strictly be visible in most circumstances on the real thing, but I do want to leave enough to say ‘Geodetic’ to the viewer after painting is complete.

 

cheers

 

Steve

[Stephen Allen]

Time to do some general painting. The interior of the Trumpeter Wellington painted to depict the metal geodetic framework and the Irish linen fabric covering. I used SMS paints IJN Deck Tan to lay down the linen base, then covered it with a dappled coat of German Red Brown. The SMS paints are very dense indeed and a little goes a long way- I did this coat 75% Flat clear/25% Red Brown as I wanted it to build up gradually. The idea is to show the coats of red dope bleeding through the linen fabric. The geodetic detail is just Metallic silver pencil. This is just the start, as the sections of framing over the windows need a more consistent treatment so they will be painted not pencilled, and the various metal bits at the front and the rear and around the bomb bay also need separate work. I’m trying not to go overboard as a lot of the interior will never be seen once the fuselage is zipped up. Trumpeter has provided a ‘so so’ depiction of the geodetic structure, and no interior detail at all for the numerous wood stringers, but short of leaving a side off, its probably adequate.
 

[Stephen Allen]

A little more progress. I plugged in ‘Vickers Wellington’ as a search term for the IWM online photo collection, to do a survey of how the aisle windows in the planes were painted - the aluminium dope of the internal structure, or painted to match the exterior camouflage. The conclusion I came to was that for the early war period the likely answer is aluminium, where the windows haven’t been painted over altogether. Most photos show a much lighter tone for the geodetic framing peeking through the perspex compared with the external colours. I brush painted the inside of the areas of the geodetic exposed by the windows, using Tamiya flat aluminium lacquer dredged from the bottom of the unstirred bottle, and airbrushed SMS Aluminium over the exterior bits for a smoother finish. With the paint in the airbrush I also waved it in the direction of the landing gear and wheel bays. These had been black-based, so I sprayed light coats to let it peek through the aluminium. Just the start to some wear and tear/weathering.
 

This will be the last update for a few days as I am off on the motorbike to western Victoria to have a look at the under restoration Anson Mk I displayed in the Nhill Aviation Heritage Centre. 

 

 

 

[Stephen Allen]

Back home, with lots of photos of the Nhill Anson. So back to the Wellington with a bit more progress and a decision on the subject. I’ve just read the latest issue of Scale Aircraft Modelling with the Paul Lucas ‘Colour Conundrum’ column discussing the use of modified roundels in Bomber Command during the early part of the war, focusing on the evolution of the ‘Bomber Command Roundel’, and variations within 4 Group. There was overpainting of the brighter colours of the fuselage roundels and also variations in the proportions of the yellow outlining circle for the same marking. One of the featured aircraft discussed and illustrated is R 1593, Aircraft ‘N’ of 149 Squadron. Paul’s article suggest that for this aircraft, the outer yellow ring of the roundel was both reduced in size, overpainted with a mixture of roundel yellow and light earth, and the white circle was repainted with medium sea grey. There are markings for this aircraft, with its crudely painted ‘Firefly’ artwork, on a Techmod 1/48 decal sheet. Varying the markings using Paul’s research will make for an interesting aircraft.

 

while thinking about this I have assembled the wings and the horizontal stabilisers. Everything went together without real issues - I shimmed one of the outer flap segments to get a better flush fit with the wing surface, and put some piano wire through the end of an aileron to keep it level with the wing trailing edge.  Both issues were probably due to operator error, not the fault of the kit. Neatly, Trumpeter has designed the Elevators so that they plug into the stabilisers with a slight droop.

 

 

 

[Stephen Allen]

A bit more progress. I have been working away on this as time permits - life has been a bit busy of late. I decided to get the the rest of the wing assemblies as complete as possible before starting on the fuselage. The engine and cowling assemblies are what I would describe as complex, but not complicated - there are quite a few parts but they all go together quite logically. The engines themselves are pretty good; unless you were going to open a cowling up the detail that is supplied in the kit is enough, and can barely be seen once the perforated cooling plate is attached to the engine.

 

 

Once

 

inside the cowling there is little visible. Some weathering and wear will hopefully make them less of a black hole.

 

 

One disappointment is the absence, as usual, of any depiction of the inside of the annular exhaust manifold at the front of the cowling. Haven’t decided whether to try to do something about this - you really have to peer in from the edges to see that it is missing. 

 

As I said, everything goes together logically, though the fit is not exceptional. There is also some wear evident to the moulds, with a lot of light flashing.  Attaching the cooling gills to the firewall might have been problematic, as the part is quite flexible and just presses on to three small attachment ledges. To avoid distortion I glued the cooling gills to the firewall, then taped the cowling to the front to square things up. This worked nicely.

 

 

 

I am using the CMK resin exhausts, which have the correct long port and short starboard units. These need to be raised with 20 thou strips to align better with the kit parts. These will need some fairing in as well, with some sanding back of the kit front sections to match the resin sections.

 

Next I plan to cut out the navigation and formation light positions and fill them in with clear sections of sprue. I also watched ‘Target for To-Night’ on Youtube today. Looking at the fictional ‘F for Freddie’ - which despite the fiction appears to be a genuine 149 Squadron aircraft of the correct period - has given me some food for thought about how to go about painting and weathering when I get to that stage. And also has me wondering why blankets need to be stuffed into the exhausts when the engines are started?

[Stephen Allen]

On with the navigation and formation lights. Razor saw cuts out the necessary sections in the wingtips.

 

 

Then blocks of clear acrylic are glued in and sanded to shape- couldn’t find any bits of clear sprue big enough to have two flats sanded on them and still have enough left to fill the holes. Small drill holes are coated with the appropriate clear red, green or silver to depict globes. I used to use bits of coloured toothbrush handles before I realised that most aircraft have coloured globes behind clear covers. The acrylic I used is not perspex, but comes from a somewhat softer clear sheet bought at the local Bunnings for some other project long forgotten.  From the smell when sanded it’s probably ABS.  It’s still harder than the kit plastic so I rough sanded the blocks down to near size with a disc sander - Else wise it would have taken all night!  Final shaping is with a rigid 400 sanding stick, then gradually finer grades of foam sanding stick to get it to this stage. A bit more polishing and they will be fine under a coat of clear gloss. Again, odd that so recent (and otherwise highly detailed) a kit has such naff representations, especially given that the landing lights are moulded as clear parts. Mind you, so often separate clear covers don’t fit well anyway so its probably just as well.

 

[woody37]

Great to see you getting more bench time on this Steve.

[Stephen Allen]

More small steps. I have shimmed out the too thin CMK resin exhausts, using thin styrene strip to provide some ‘meat’ to carve and sand to get a better match to the kit front section. I did consider sanding this down to match the resin exhausts, but I think that would have made the whole assembly look too narrow.

 

 

 

And as a quick side job, I used Brengun etched parts to depict the bulb holders on the lower wing retractable landing lights. I think technically I have fitted the kit parts wrong side out, as I used the side with the engraved lens depression on the inside to better position the etched part. Final masking will re-establish the lens separation anyway, so no real difference. I put a dot of acrylic clear varnish into the circle and used this as the glue for the etch. When this was dry I painted the back section silver. Brengun do provide separate lenses to mount behind the bulb holder, but these are difficult to attach without leaving smears, bubbles or irregular voids, so paint it is.

 

[Stephen Allen]

Not much to show. Our boat club has had a display at the ACTSMS Scaleworld 2023 over the weekend so that has occupied my modeling time. Great show with a record number of entries and many excellent models of all varieties on display. I saw one 1/72 Wellington with the cockpit side windows slid back - it’s a nice touch which I think I will borrow.
 

Anyway, I have faired in the CMK exhausts, and they are starting to look pretty good. Nothing left to do on the wings now until final assembly. Might be time to start on the turrets? Not thrilled at having to assemble, paint and fit them before painting, but at least I have separate brass barrels, so I can leave these off until the end.

 

 

 

 

[Stephen Allen]

It turns out that before I build the turrets, I have to do some work to reshape the profile of the fuselage opening for the forward turret. One of the distinguishing features of the Wellington IA and IC was the replacement of the original faired turrets by more capable Frazer-Nash turrets. As fitted, the forward turret was faired closely to the fuselage, and was consequently limited in traverse. To improve the traverse the fuselage surrounding the rear of the turret was cut back and reshaped, my understanding is that this improved the arcs each side from about 90 degrees, to around 110 degrees. There are, consequently, subtle changes to to the outline of the turret opening, which determine whether or not you are looking at a modified or original installation. Trumpeter have plumped for an outline which isn’t quite either, so it needs fixing.

 

I spent considerable time looking at photos of Wimpy’s, and consulting the 4 Plus drawings to work out which was which, and whether there was enough ‘meat’ in the Trumpeter fuselage to model my chosen aircraft, which appears to have the cut back profile. First off, here is a comparison of the Trumpeter fuselage parts with what is the original, slightly sinuous, profile of the fuselage opening. You can see it is close, but no cigar, being too straight.

 

 

 

 

Here is a comparison with the modified profile, for greater traverse. You can see that more of the rear of the turret is exposed, allowing it to turn further. Given that the modification was apparently done in the field, as well as introduced to the production line, there is a prospect that there would have been some variations on this, though you would expect that a conversion ‘kit’ or kits would have been produced to provide realigned reinforcing sections at the edge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the subject aircraft, showing the cut back style.

 

Here is a comparison of the cut back style with the Trumpeter fuselage again. I measured the distance that the turret top fairing protrudes from the extreme front of the fuselage, and you can see that while it should be about 5.5mm proud of the end of the fuselage sides, on the kit it is about 7mm.

 

 

Here are the measurements - I cross checked them against the side profiles, so I think they are pretty accurate - assuming of course that the plan is!

 

 

You can also see that the top of the curve ends with a square section each side of the fairing, in 1/48 scale this is 5mm wide each side, give or take as the surface is curved.  My conclusion is that I have to add some ‘meat’ to account for this square section, and that the rest of the gentle curve of the cut back profile can be accommodated within the kit parts. So step one is to add two pieces of 30 thou by 60 thou styrene to the top sections of the fuselage. I have cut these over-length to account for the slight curve that needs to be included, and bent them to match the fuselage sides.

Next I will figure out how much to remove and where to achieve the new, gently curved, profile.

[Stephen Allen]

The next step was to draw a cutting guide on each fuselage side. Rather than simply guessing, I used the last frame on the fuselage as a datum mark, and measured the distance forward to the new profile along each longeron. After this I joined up the resultant dots in a fair curve, transferred the resultant outline to masking tape, and used this to cut out a paper template to mark the other side. N the photo below you can see the piece of tape marking the datum frame, and the outline drawn on the fuselage, ready to be transferred to tape.

 

 

I chain drilled inside each outline to remove the bulk of the plastic, then used a sharp scalpel and some sandpaper to clean up the new profile.

 

 

Finishing off by blending the added styrene strip into the side of the fuselage.

 

I’m not looking forward to closing up the fuselage - the front end is warped, highly flexible and only fits where it touches - not a lot even without the internals fitted. Gluing the sides around completed turrets then eliminating the seams isn’t going to be fun.

 

[Stephen Allen]

With the fuselage sides cut back work begins on the turrets. They should, I think, be practically identical front and rear, but I have decided to start with the front turret, finish it to the point where it’s ready for the glazing to be attached, then do the rear turret, just to avoid confusing any bits that might not be shared. Looking at my principal references, early Wellington turret interiors seem to be largely either aluminium dope or unpainted, so I will ignore Trumpeter’s advice to paint everything black. The plan is to assemble as much as I can into major sub-assemblies then paint. This allows me to fiddle about with fit and geometry without spoiling painted parts. It’s all pretty open so an airbrush can be poked into nooks and crannies pretty easily.
 

The guns and their hydraulic pistons are keyed so that they only fit at one elevation - that’s okay with me as I don’t plan to play gunner with them. As with most of the parts to date there is raised edging, minor flash and mismatched halves pretty well everywhere - the moulds haven’t been well looked after. I can only contrast it with my last two Tamiya Beaufighter builds where the moulds date from the mid 90s but everything is still perfectly crisp.
 

Edges were scraped, then dabbed with Tamiya thin to remove flash and mould marks, and the prominent lightening holes on the gun trunnions were drilled out to remove flash - a number 70 drill bit matches the diameter they are meant to be. The guns themselves had the barrels cut off, then drilled - a number 74 drill - to accept Aber brass barrels when the time finally comes. If you can, keep the small round receiver section at the base of the barrel and drill through this as well - this ensures the overall barrel length remains the same as the kit ones. If you damage the receivers or don’t think you can centre the drill bit sufficiently then a suitable small section of micro brass or aluminium tube can be substituted. Enough words. Some pictures.

 

 

 

 

[Stephen Allen]

The interior of the turrets, while detailed, have some problems. The trunnion detail on the inner side of each gun is a carbon copy of that on the outside, complete with the perforated circle at the top. Looking at my references, this is not correct. The circle section doesn’t exist, the guns each sit in a tray joined by a section in the middle that forms a sort of horizontal ‘H’ mounting that presumably aligns the guns as they elevate and depress. The prominent wind deflectors that are fitted to this and elevate with the guns is also missing. I also think the interior parts are underscale, probably caused by the need to fit them within the too thick for scale transparencies. Anyway, I have made a start to change the detail by cutting back the bits that don’t really exist, and I will figure out how to represent the wind deflectors - at the moment I am thinking thick aluminium foil formed to shape and added after the interior is otherwise painted. The photo below shows the inner trunnion rings cut back.

 

 

While figuring this out I glued the turret halves together - both the transparent forward hemispheres and the rear solid sections and doors are all moulded on the clear sprue. The joint on the forward turret is a problem. The designer chose to split this turret at the forward edge of the rear solid section. The rear section is consequently slightly raised in comparison with the front section it mates against, in a crude depiction of a raised frame. It also means that whee you need to glue the turret is one side supposed to be solid metal, and the other meant to be transparent. A recipe for an ugly, hard to disguise glued joint. In contradiction to this the rear turret has a section of the rear ‘solid’ framing moulded on the ‘transparent’ front hemisphere, meaning that the glued joint line is entirely within what will be a painted area - much easier to get a less visible joint when glued and sanded down. I hope the photo below shows the difference. On both turrets I cleaned up the joints as best I could, and used Tamiya thin cement to get a solid joint. This didn’t mar the plastic too badly. Forward turret on the left, rear on the right.

 

 

My answer to the ugly seam is simple. Sand it down flush, polish everything back to clarity. Then move the start of the solid framed section forward so that the whole of the joint, like that of the rear turret, lies under a solid painted section.

 

 

Next I will paint in the solid rear sections so that I get an idea of what, if any, filling or further sanding along the joints needs doing. How I am disguising the joint will become clearer (or, indeed, completely opaque!) once I have done this. Oh, and I will add the additional side frame to the forward turret that Trumpeter forgot about!

[Stephen Allen]

I have painted the rear section of each turret with Interior Grey Green. The 4 Plus publication suggests that early turret interior frames and doors were this colour, later in Night. The first photo shows masking up, and how prominent the joint between front and rear halves remains. This is the forward turret, and the masked edge shows how I have moved what will be the edge between solid and transparent sections very slightly forward.

 

 

Next photos - rear section painted, but showing areas needing more finishing. I used SMS acrylic lacquer, this is compatible with Mr Surfacer etc, so the bad bits can be filled, but won’t be seen through the underlying layer of grey green.

 

 

 

After further work, a bit of Mr Surfacer to fill, sanded back and then resprayed. 

 

Ditto for the rear turret, which was easier to clean up as the joint was at the rear, not the front of the frame where the solid and transparent bits meet.

After this I brushed on some clear acrylic (In this case AK Gauzy) to improve the clarity of the clear bits, and next I will start masking up the frame lines. Incidentally the need to get a solid and sandable joint meant using a solvent cement on the turret halves and this decided me against using the otherwise excellent Rob Taurus vacuform equivalents. I just wasn’t convinced that acrylic glue, or CA, or indeed epoxy, would give me the kind of rigid and non-cracking joint needed for this.

[woody37]

Just caught up Steve, great progress.

[Mpfiend]

Stunning work on this build.

Keith.

[Stephen Allen]

Thanks both!

 

It’s nice to make some paintable progress!

 

[Stephen Allen]

And through the magic of a modified Eduard masking set and some Tamiya tape, completed frames for the turrets. Interior green followed by Colourcoats Night Bomber Black. I am pretty sure this airframe would have been refinished in Special Night, but I am thinking that a maintenance unit or squadron repaint might have avoided fiddly bits.
 

Idiot that I am I forgot about the small viewing windows in the entry door/rear section of the turrets. I will use small squares of black decal on the insides to depict these - sitting at the rear of the turrets I am hoping the boo boo won’t be too noticeable. Now comes the hard part - protecting the completed parts while I assemble and finish the turrets and fuselage.
 

Its not as simple as just leaving the masking on, as the longer it stays on the more likely that it will stick to and delaminate the gloss acrylic coating. Some sort of non-adhesive, non rubbing covering is needed for the whole turret.

 

 

 

[Stephen Allen]

So back to the turret interiors. A small block of styrene helps to bulk out the GJ3 gunsight. Still to come is the lens and the usual curved lens cover. I have also cut curved windshields for the guns from the usual heavy duty aluminium foil tray.

 

 

Here are the shields roughly fitted to the front of the gun receivers. The thickness of the turret glass and the under-scale interior make it hard to get these totally correct, but they should give a decent impression and add to the claustrophobic feeling!

 

[Stephen Allen]

Goodness, its been a while, but in between festivities I have managed to make a bit more progress on the turrets. I’ve managed to finish off the interiors, painting and adding the Eduard etched seatbelts. Early war turrets seem to have a lot of either aluminium paint or bare metal; later airframes seem to have more Night.
 

 

The next step was gluing the outers to the inners. For this I used a slow setting epoxy, as I didn’t want to take any chances with either liquid cement or CA going places where it shouldn’t, or fogging up the transparencies. It also let me rotate the two sections to get the gun barrels pointing in the right direction before the epoxy set up.

 

 

 

Thats all nice, now to make sure they fit where they are supposed to!

[Stephen Allen]

The short answer to the question above is that the rear turret fits perfectly, albeit tightly…

 

 

 

 

 

And the front turret didn’t fit at all! This was a combination of both the fuselage parts being too thick where the turret is seated, and the turret base itself being too wide. I could, possibly, have forced the fuselage closed around it, but the fuselage would then be under a lot of tension and might subsequently split open, and the turret itself would have been pushed back about a millimetre or perhaps more, leaving an ugly step at the front.
 

Over the course of a week I progressively worked to make it fit. First I reduced, then eventually removed entirely, the seating rings in both the fuselage and the matching rings on the turret base. So goodbye to any thoughts of being able to traverse the turret.  I then used a variety of grinding bits in a motor tool to thin down the areas of the fuselage that seat against the turret base, and also some areas around the top of the turret transparency, which were interfering with the already poor fit of the fuselage halves.  Nearly there, but it was apparent that the base of the turret was still pushing outwards on the fuselage, so the final step was to thin down the whole circumference of the turret base. Finally, it will fit.

 

 

 

 

 

In the photos above you can see just how much I took from both the fuselage sides - in places down to less than half the original thickness, and from the turret base, compared to the original. One of those frustrating points in a build where you are tempted to chuck the thing against a wall. I’m not bothered function-wise as I generally don’t play with the working features once finished, but it’s weird that one end of the plane fits perfectly, and the other extremity requires bad words and quite a bit of effort.

 

On that note, Happy New Year to all, and may all your models in 2024 fit like a Tamiya kit!😎

[Stephen Allen]

It’s been getting on for sixteen months since my last entry, but it’s time to get the build log moving again. In the interim I have built Trumpeter’s Fairey Fulmar I, and a 1/72 scratch-built Steam Coaster, the latter occupied most of the last year. The workbench is clear so it’s back to the Wimpey with a plan to get it finished this year. I’ve spent some time catching up with where the build was at when I left it, and have started with some gentle progress on the interior fit out. I am not looking forward to closing up the fuselage as there are a lot of separate bits and pieces to squeeze in and try to achieve more than a ‘fits where it touches’ closure. In terms of interior detail I’ve also decided to leave out anything that can’t be seen, which is basically anything aft of the picture windows. Anyway, I’ve painted the bulkheads Medium Sea Grey, and the bomb bay Night. I’m pretty sure the bulkhead colour would have been some anti corrosive coating like Cerrux, but poor inventory control means I have only one tin of Colourcoats Cerrux, and a dozen tins of medium sea grey, so its the latter that gets used.

 

 

 

No weathering yet, and I plan to keep it to a minimum.

[Stephen Allen]

More progress. Although Trumpeter offer a reasonably busy interior, they have missed some quite large items, and misinterpreted others. There is no representation of the wing spar, so I built one. It’s not perfect but will fill the obvious hole when you look through the side windows. Ditto with the large rest bunk that is usually folded against the port side. Neither of these parts are in their final positions. The Airfix 1/72 Wellington  is far and away a better detailed kit for interior details, and it’s worth following the various builds of this on Britmodeller to cadge details. Or you could just model your subject with the blackout curtains closed and put nothing in aft of the cockpit!

 

 

I painted the parts below black, as per the kit instructions, only to check my plans and realise that they are supposed to be parachute packs! Back to the spray booth with these. One of the side benefits of pausing this build is that I have acquired the recent Wingleader publication on the Wellington. It has some excellent interior shots of early Wellingtons, and the number of photos they have in their photo archive have also been added to. The new photo index on the site by serial number for RAF airframes is also very helpful when researching a specific aircraft.